Matt Sims — Owner and Editor of Record

Credentials

I am Matt Sims. I own HILLTOP ARMORY LLC and I am the editor of record for this site. If you have read a pressure figure, a velocity table or a shipping restriction on one of these pages, it was published under my name and under the company’s federal licence. That is the point of putting a name on it: there is a person to hold to it, not a brand.

• Federal Firearms Licence. HILLTOP ARMORY LLC holds ATF licence 5-43-119-01-6B-18066. It is a Type 01 licence — a dealer in firearms other than destructive devices. Anyone can confirm it against the ATF’s own FFL eZ Check service; the licence page explains what the number means and how to verify it.
• Licensed premises. 955 Coopers Road, Pineville, Missouri 64856. A real address on the licence, not a mail drop.
• Editor of record. The policy, compliance and safety pages are published under my sign-off. The standards they are written to are set out on the editorial standards page.
• What I am not. I am not a lawyer, a ballistician, a certified firearms instructor or a range officer, and nothing on this site claims otherwise. Where a question needs one of those, the page says so and stops.

What I am responsible for on this site

The scope is the whole catalogue and the reference material published beside it:

• Cartridge ballistics guides. The ballistics library covers every cartridge we stock that a published standard describes — for example 30-06 Springfield, 9mm Luger and 12 gauge.
• Compliance pages. Where ammunition may lawfully be delivered (state restrictions) and who may buy it (age and eligibility).
• Safety references. The four rules and ammunition storage.
• Trading terms. Shipping and returns, which are promises this business has to keep.

How the figures on this site get published

Every number on a ballistics page comes from one of exactly two places, and the page says which:

1. The published standard. Reference velocity, maximum average pressure and the test barrel come from the relevant ANSI/SAAMI standard for that cartridge. SAAMI does not publish energy, so energy is computed — grains × fps² ÷ 450,437 — and every page that shows an energy figure says it was computed rather than published.
2. The manufacturer’s own page for that item number. Nothing is taken from a retailer, a marketplace or a forum. Each recorded figure is then checked by code against a fresh fetch of the maker’s page, and a load whose numbers cannot be found there is dropped.

Figures that fail those checks are removed, never adjusted. Two examples from the current data: a 150-grain 8mm Mauser load whose published energy disagrees with the arithmetic by more than five per cent, and a 7.62×39 load whose velocity could not be found on the maker’s page. Both were dropped rather than corrected, because correcting a manufacturer’s published figure would mean inventing one. The data standards page sets this out in full.

Where my sign-off stops

• We publish no first-hand testing. There is no chronograph data, no pattern board and no round count from this business anywhere on the site. If a figure is not from the standard or from the manufacturer, it is not here.
• Nothing past the muzzle. SAAMI measures at 15 feet from a test barrel, and at 3 feet for shotshells. It publishes no ballistic coefficients and no downrange data, so these pages make no claim about drop, retained energy or effective range.
• Not legal advice. The shipping restrictions are how this business ships, written against the statutes cited on the page. Firearms and ammunition law changes and parts of it are in active litigation. Your jurisdiction is yours to confirm.
• Absent is a final answer. Where a standard or a manufacturer publishes nothing, the page says so and leaves the row empty.

Why a real name is on these pages

Ammunition is the kind of subject where being wrong costs something. A pressure figure decides what a shooter is willing to chamber; a shipping restriction decides whether a parcel is lawful when it arrives. Pages like that should name the person who stands behind them and the licence they trade under, so a reader can weigh the source and check it.

That cuts both ways, which is why the limits above are on this page rather than buried. A byline that only ever claims expertise is marketing. One that also states plainly what it does not cover is the useful kind.

Contact and corrections

If a figure here is wrong, tell me and it gets fixed or removed — including the removal of a whole table where the source turns out not to support it. Write to support@hilltoparmoryllc.com, or use the contact page. Quote the page and the figure and you will get a straight answer about where it came from.