About six years ago, before I started reloading, I bought an 800 round pack of South African military surplus 5.56mm ammo at a gun show. I took my Mini-14 and my Armalite AR-15 to the range to try out the surplus ammo. I loaded a 30 round magazine and chambered a round in my AR-15. I pulled the trigger and nothing happened. I tried to pull the charging handle back and could not budge it, I finally had to slam the butt of the rifle against the bench while pulling the charging handle and the round came out. The same problem that Baron experienced, but this was not reloaded ammo. It was in a brown sealed plastic pouch with all of the military spec. information on the pouch. I am certain that it was factory ammo. I emptied the AR-15 magazine and loaded the surplus ammo into my Mini-14 and shot them with no problem. After that I only shot that ammo in my Mini-14. I have no idea what the problem was, I always assumed that the chamber on the AR must be tighter than the Mini-14. I ended up selling the Armalite because it was too big and heavy. It was a heavy barrel, 20" model. So I never had a chance to shoot reloads in it. This is just an observation that I wanted to throw out there.
