MCMXIautomatic
Member
How many of you inspect factory ammo before using it? I'm probably going to start being more disciplined about this with all the ammo that I buy, especially ammo that's toward the lower end of the quality spectrum. I was just recently reminded of how important this can be.
A couple of days ago, I got one of the 9mm Winchester 100 rd. value packs that Wal-Mart sells, and I decided to give the cartridges a brief look over. I soon found what appeared to be a military spec round. I continued to look at the cartridges and found some more with NATO headstamps. In total, exactly 25 of these rounds were found. I'm glad I got them sorted out, because I'd rather not shoot any high pressure ammo in my Hi-Power. I doubt that my gun was made to tolerate much shooting with hot ammo and I think I remember reading on Stephen Camp's website that even just a few mags of +P could possibly upset the locking lugs or crack the slide.
This also got me thinking that I could have just as easily found defective rounds with improperly seated primers, loose bullets, cracked cases, etc. As I understand it, Winchester's manufacturing process for this ammo is completely automated, so I imagine that there's probably a greater potential for error. I think its good practice to spend a little time to inspect ammo, especially defense ammo, since the problems it might help you avoid make it well worthwhile.
On a side note, does anyone know how this NATO stuff might have ended up being mixed into a box of range ammo? I also wonder if maybe all the cartridges were loaded to the same specs, but some of the cases just happened to have NATO headstamps for some reason.
A couple of days ago, I got one of the 9mm Winchester 100 rd. value packs that Wal-Mart sells, and I decided to give the cartridges a brief look over. I soon found what appeared to be a military spec round. I continued to look at the cartridges and found some more with NATO headstamps. In total, exactly 25 of these rounds were found. I'm glad I got them sorted out, because I'd rather not shoot any high pressure ammo in my Hi-Power. I doubt that my gun was made to tolerate much shooting with hot ammo and I think I remember reading on Stephen Camp's website that even just a few mags of +P could possibly upset the locking lugs or crack the slide.
This also got me thinking that I could have just as easily found defective rounds with improperly seated primers, loose bullets, cracked cases, etc. As I understand it, Winchester's manufacturing process for this ammo is completely automated, so I imagine that there's probably a greater potential for error. I think its good practice to spend a little time to inspect ammo, especially defense ammo, since the problems it might help you avoid make it well worthwhile.
On a side note, does anyone know how this NATO stuff might have ended up being mixed into a box of range ammo? I also wonder if maybe all the cartridges were loaded to the same specs, but some of the cases just happened to have NATO headstamps for some reason.