Clean your carry gun! and change out your ammo.

My go-to has been the Federal HST, both quality of the cartridge, and top terminal ballistic performance of the bullet are why. I personally like the 147gr load, but the 124gr will serve perfectly fine as well. Standard pressure.

 

That's what I do. I will say it was easier before 2020 when you could go and buy the bullet of your choice, and load it to an equivalent level... but that's a little hard to do these days with something like the GoldDot Short Barrel bullet, which is Unobtanium as a component these days. I just do the best I can.

I generally rotate my carry ammos every 6-months... I'll blast it to prove reliability, then reload with new. Honestly, I've never seen a cartridge come apart in a magazine...

 

Slide? Magazine? I must be in the wrong section...

Kidding aside, you should inspect your weapon every day, much like a truck driver must inspect their truck before hitting the road. As a revolver slinger, i get lots of clothing lint and crud in the numerous nooks and crannies.

 

A stronger slide spring and some +P+ ammo will keep it going! Lol.

Finished a bit ago and, yeah, it was gunky 'n chunky! Probably not even close to what you experienced, but more than enough to keep me from going quite that long again...

 

Does the said magazine have holes in it? If so, inspection should have made the problem clear immediately. If not, well, i guess your SOL lol!

I had a customer bring in a 9mm round from our parking lot a while back. It looks like it had been run over a few times then put through a wood chipper. But its still proper OAL and the bullet is tight as can be. I wonder if those two rounds of yours just had a mild defect. Do you have a kinetic bullet puller? You could test a few of your other loads and see how hard you have to rap it to dislodge the bullet. Of course this would only be a very crude experiment.

 

I shoot my carry gun. To stay sharp with it.

 

I believe in rotating carry ammo. Every trip to the range I shoot one magazine of carry ammo from each EDC gun. To validate reliability and accuracy. All ammo, commercial and reloads, are evaluated for performance. In times of shortages compromises are necessary and are dealt with.

 

I know I often roll my eyes about people who complain about the high cost of carry ammo with respect to periodically cycling through their carry gun/magazines.

And, honestly, I still do...going through a box (or two) a year isn't a big deal.

However, I DO feel where the high cost of self-defense ammo in recent years really sucks is when you're first feeding a new, potential carry, pistol trying to find a quality SD round that cycles reliably and has the same point of impact as your target ammo.

I like to try at least a small sampling of different brands, maybe three or four. Preferably the same mass as my target ammo, but maybe something else close to that.

With SD ammo very commonly sold in 20 round boxes, with prices ranging from $16 to $36 a box (some deals better if you can find it in 50 round boxes, or on sale), that adds up quickly.

Picking $25/box as a reasonable average, just to crunch some numbers, four brands is at least $100. Add a couple different bullet masses, that adds another $100. If you assume some base number of rounds to shoot for reliability testing (say, 100 rounds just for this posting), that multiplies this by 5, adding up to $1,000. Which means you've got to be smart about this.


With all that said, here's my approach to this:

First of all, quality SD ammo isn't hard to find these days. Nowadays, we can look up performance information from many different sources because there are a TON of shooters out there eager to do this and post the information. Not only that, but this isn't the 60s and 70s...decades of a highly competitive market has produced several well known brands which produce quality SD ammunition. Which means that pretty much any well known brand will be a perfectly suitable round with respect to terminal ballistics.

Your pistol's basic mechanical reliability is something that you can very easily verify with much cheaper "target" ammunition. If you have magazine problems, slide problems, extraction problems, etc. you're very likely to find out about it no matter what ammunition you shoot, so it might as well be with less expensive target ammunition.

Many SD rounds have velocities that are on par with that of much of the target ammunition out there with the same bullet mass. That means you're likely to have points of impact very close, if not indistinguishable, to that of your target ammo. For example, much of my 9mm target ammo is WWB in 115 gr, which has a muzzle velocity of about 1190 fps. My chosen Speer Gold Dot 9mm in 115 gr has a muzzle velocity of about 1210 fps. I can't tell the difference on the targets between the two.

SO...

1. Shoot a lot of different TARGET ammo initially to see if you have any basic reliability issues.

2. Limit your initial purchases of SD ammo to quality brands with the same bullet mass and velocity as your chosen target ammo.

3. Buy no more than one box of SD ammo that meets #2 above in however many brands you wish (based on desire, money, etc.).

4. Shoot your various brands of SD ammo, paying particular attention to how they compare on the target with respect to your chosen target ammo. If you have any mechanical issues, note them, especially with respect to the brand. (If your gun doesn't like something, then quit trying to feed it the same thing...that's just asking for frustration.)

5. Of the SD ammo that doesn't give you any problems AND which shoots very close to your target ammo, buy enough to satisfy your needs/desires to further test and to carry.


KEEP IN MIND that you do not have to do this "all at once". You can simply buy a single box of ammo under the criteria above and shoot it. If it functions well and hits the target where you're aiming at, you've got a winner at that point. Now you can buy more to test reliability and have something to carry. You can always expand your horizons later with the occasional box of something different here and there.

 

Solid advice

 

I've never had my carry guns dump powder from ammo and I carry probably 364 days per year 17 hours per day.

However, the chambers and magazines are always loaded unless I'm cleaning them, working on them, or have just finished firing them.

My autoloaders tend to mar up any ammo that gets cycled by hand. Whether simple scratches or dings. So, I don't cycle them unnecessarily. My carry guns get stored in my safe with chambers and mags full up. I will rotate out mags to relax the springs, but there is always a full mag in the gun. I do check for full chambers, but I don't have to cycle the slide for that.

Revolvers of course don't have this problem. And having a revolver with a full cylinder is the same as an autoloader with a full chamber and magazine from a ready to fire perspective.

Of course, this all depends on the mechanicals of a particular gun whether this is safe to do or not.

 

So… you use reloads. Cool. Then, you load and unload your magazines 4 to 8 times per day. Interesting.

If I saw a kid about to jump off a bridge I would advise them to not do that. Even if they didn’t want “to debate that”.

Factory ammo is much higher quality than your reloads. They have access to low flash powders that you probably don’t have access to. They seal the bullets and primers with sealant, which you probably don’t. They load projectiles to certain velocities to optimize performance. Too fast decreases penetration and too slow means bullets don’t expand. Speer and Federal and Hornady and Winchester spend millions and millions of dollars a year on quality control.

Why are we unloading magazines almost ten times a day?! Load it, leave it alone. Bullet setback also can blow your gun up. Load it, leave it alone. Leave it in a holster, right into a safe.

 

Yet it just failed correct? Least you were at the range.

 

Stop doing that!!! Stop finger ____ing your carry guns.

I shoot my carry guns (Glock 43X and Ruger LC9S Pro) once a month. Otherwise they stay chambered an holstered. When going to bed my loaded & holstered gun comes off my belt and goes into a drawer all as one unit. In the morning, I slide that loaded holstered gun back onto my belt.

I carry Federal 125gr +P JHP HST in both guns and backup mags.

 

I like to shoot off my carry rounds about once a month. Then I clean the gun & load new ammo. I have found after a month a lot of dirt & lint from my clothes gets stuck in my gun & has caused jams. So as long as I shoot up the carry ammo every month I feel safe that if I have need to use my carry gun it will function properly.