1 thousand, 2 thousand, 3 thousand MORE???

Just to add, the real costs & expense of firearms ownership isn't the guns, it is the ammunition.

For example, if you were to fire 10,000 rounds thru a 9mm pistol. The cost of ammunition (if bought by the case) would be in excess of $2,000. If you bought ammo in smaller batches, it could be 50%-100% more -not including sales tax. IMHO, any modern pistol can easily last 30-50K worth of bullets before need complete rebuild.

Chuck Taylor has a 'famous' Glock G17 with over 250,000 rounds of ammo thru it. That is upwards of $50,000 worth of ammunition fired from a $300-400 gun!

I doubt if that many people can afford to 'wear-out' their firearms.

You're missing the point though - Rugers are DESIGNED for a steady diet of Magnums,

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Nope. Didn't miss a thing. I know Rugers as well as anybody here. I've owned a couple dozen over the years, and shot'em hard. The point that some don't understand is that even the Rugers aren't indestructible. I've seen Super Redhawks with blown cylinders and topstraps. Blackhawks and Super Blackhawks with bulges in the same places. Seen'em shot loose with steady diets of the hot stuff that wasn't overloaded.

And if you're only shooting specials, yeah, the Ruger will last your lifetime, your son's lifetime, and your grandson's.

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The same can be said of a Model 19.

If I ever manage to wear one out, I'll just buy another. I won't worry about it until all handguns are banned, but by them I'll have a healthy spare parts supply built up.

USMCDK,

this blog may interest you; fella is planning to run 50k rounds through a S&W M&P9 in 6 months. As present, he's at ~32k rounds and still plugging along...

It's been fun to track how the pistol is holding up (can't recall if it's on the blog, but I saw elsewhere w/pics that he went ~6000 rounds without cleaning it)

So I guess the thing that I am trying to get at is... Aren't you shooters (the ones that shoot off 1k+ rounds a shooting session, out of one gun mind you) kinda worried that you are quickly running down the life expectancy of your firearm???

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Nope. At least once a year, I do a complete inspection of all the itsy-bitsy parts of my Glock, replace springs and anything that looks a little worn. If you do good basic maintenance on a regular basis, you can catch problems before they really start to cause problems.

pax

I worry about wearing out my handguns about as much as I do wearing out my vehicles.

It will eventually happen to some degree, at some point, if I use them often enough and long enough. However, I can mitigate the expected wear & tear with periodic inspections and preventive maintenance, as well as accepting the necessity of some parts replacement as time passes.

Now, my role as a LE firearms instructor and certified armorer allows me access to a 'free' ammunition inventory, as well as different issued weapons (based upon assignment needs, inventory rotation, turn-over, etc.). This means I do a fair amount of shooting from time to time. Not as much as folks of a competitive inclination, but probably my fair share for practice/training as a LE firearms instructor.

I've only run up more than several thousand rounds on a few issued and personally-owned weapons, but that's because I'm able to spread out the usage across a number of different ones.

I can think of several pistols I've picked up in the last several years which have been fired around 9-10K rounds. I can think of an issued model which I estimated was fired about 45K rounds (for training) before I rotated it out-of-service for another one. Yes, some parts had to be replaced during that time. Not unexpected. Most of them only received several thousand rounds before being rotated for others for various reasons. None were 'worn out' ... and the fellow who received one of them, through which I'd fired upwards of 8-9K rounds, was very pleased with it. It had been carefully maintained and was well broken-in by the time he received it. I sort of regret having turned it back in, but I went with a compact model for my plainclothes assignment and didn't see the need to keep the full-size gun at the time. Oh well.

So, while I don't subject them to wear & tear for the simple 'exhilaration' of it, but do so for training/practice purpose, I have tended to run up more 'mileage' on many of them than what might be considered 'normal' to be the 'average' private owner/user. Not surprising, considering that a surprising number of private owners may never fire 500 rounds through their handguns, let alone 5,000 rounds ... or may only fire a couple of boxes of rounds and then lose interest. Even some LE may never fire more than 100 rounds a year over the course of their careers. In such circumstances neglect may be more of a concern than accumulated wear & tear ...

The longer I shoot, the more I've come to remember to have a specific reason for each and every trigger press during training/practice. Not just burn powder for the sake of burning powder.

Of course, that's a carry-over from my years of martial arts involvement.

Bottom line? No, I don't worry about wearing out a handgun. It may happen at some point, some time ...

I'm more concerned with losing perishable shooting skills.

I can always buy more parts, components or even another handgun. I can't 'buy' skill development, refinement & skills maintenance, though ...

Guess which concerns me more?

With handguns I usually run between two and five hundred rounds per range trip. Similar round count with semi-auto rifles(although leaning towards the lower end most times).

I've got one revolver that's on the high side of 70,000 rounds, almost 80. Always been cleaned and maintained. Still functions flawlessly.

I do have an old bolt action 22 rifle that I retired. It's been in the family 3 generations, and it's flat wore out.

While I've never put 1,000 rounds through any one gun in a single session, I don't worry about wearing out my handguns. It's the high velocity rifles that are affected by round count. My .17 Rem and .220 Swift are 2.5 and 1.5 years old respectively with a little over 1,000 rounds through each. I expect both will need rebarreled in the next year or two.

I bought them to shoot, not to lock up under glass and admire. If I shot one enough that I wore it out, I'd be like, dayum, I shot a lot!
Maintenance is important. If I get less than 250,000 out of a car or truck- there's a problem. The three vehicles my wife and I drive primarily have collectively over 550,000 miles total. I've got a Jeep Cherokee project truck with over 362,000 on the clock.