Not sure how long ago you bought your P2000 but HK dropped prices on the P2000 last year. If you look on line you should be able to find one for $599ish.Originally Posted by Notso
It's all the other stuff, holsters magazines spare guns, sights, etc that make platform hopping so expensive.
Can you elaborate on "several ways"?
Assuming we have a hammer fired gun and you mean "under full [recoil] spring tension," as long as after chambering the extractor holds the case rim and the slide is in battery, what else is important?
How does the force of being chambered differ from the life of a military cartridge being transported, bouncing around in a vehicle, etc?
I understand an abundance of caution, but I've not yet seen an issue with cartridges cycled a few times, and as we have 1600+ officers, 2-4 inservices a year, and only get issued ammo either every year or every other year, you'd think we'd have seen some issues over the years if one rechamber was causing any significant issue.
I suspect there's a bit of extremism on both sides of this, never rechamber vs rechambering never hurts.
Bullet setback can occur when the cartridge is slammed into the feed ramp during the loading process. This is not a factor when ammunition is bounced around in a vehicle. In addition, military rifle ammunition is crimped at the case mouth. This is done to help prevent case setback.
Some manufactures' rounds are better than others at withstanding this.
We have about 1,200 officers, issue ammunition annually. I have personally experienced it with the original Patrol Rifle duty ammunition which was the 55 gr Winchester Silvertip. Initial chambering of one round had set the bullet back to where the plastic tip was flush with the end of the casing, causing powder to spill inside of the gun. This was not at training, but while managing a scene of a bank robbery where the suspect car jacked two separate vehicles in an attempt to escape. I had no idea this had occurred until I took the round out of the chamber to put the carbine back in my car. This example leads to another topic of why it's important to match the round to the weapons platform. This was a bad combination, and the selection was made by someone with no experience and no business making the decision.
I was involved with the selection process for new duty ammo in 2011. Because of what I saw with the previous rounds, a crimped case mouth was on the top of my list of things I wanted. Our new duty round for the AR is the Winchester RA556B, which I believe is crimped.
I've seen bullet setback on the CCI Gold Dot rounds, and back in the day, on the Winchester Silvertip. Our original 9mm duty round was the Winchester 147 gr loading (now the white box load). On occasion you would see bullet set back. Not too sever, but noticeable. As I mentioned, the act of setting the bullet back in the case decreases the case volume and increases the pressures when the round is fired. Our new pistol duty round is the Winchester 147 gr RA9T, Ranger-T series. These rounds seem to withstand bullet setback rather well. But I still encourage my officers to rotate their rounds.
Last edited by Beat Trash; 12-13-2015 at 04:07 PM.
I tend to start a range session with a mag of defensive ammo as a base line. With that in mind I do the Sharpie thing so I can have defensive annoying for the range. I've measured and measured and measured OAL after repeated chamberings and have yet to measure anything past measurement system noise. But then that is my gun and my ammo. Doesn't necessary apply to everyone else. $20-$30 a month on cycling defensive ammo regularly isn't that steep a price for stuff you're betting your life on.
So in that case, ONE chambering of the cartridge caused extremely significant setback. So that's a failure with zero "rechamberings" of the cartridge if I read you right.
I suppose that's my point. If someone is going to tell me to NEVER rechamber ammo, I want to know how they arrived there. Anecdotal information can "prove" nearly anything. I'd like to know, has anyone done some controlled experiments and seen any statistical difference in rounds that have been rechambered a set number of times vs fired on it's initial time in the chamber. I suspect once will have no statistical difference and 5000 probably will, but where in the middle does it become something realistic to worry about?
Personally, I'm not going to chuck a duty round in the practice bin because I cycled it. I'm also not going to stop dry firing or going to the range to practice. I suppose I could buy a duplicate gun strictly for training or never use a duty round that had been chambered once, but that seems overkill and the money spent in practicing with duty ammo or buying a second gun would limit the training and practice budget for many folks. If you have an unlimited budget for such things, or have an agency that will provide them for you and has a nearly unlimited budget, find, chuck it after one chambering if you like. That's an unrealistic thing to ask of most gun toters, though, especially if you want to encourage practice and dry firing.
I understand keeping an eye on boolets and regularly swapping them out, but if I can't trust a round to chamber twice how can I trust it to chamber once? One guy on here said his round set back so far that it was loosing powder!? After one chamber? I do agree that AR's are a TOTALLY different animal and I never ever chamber more than once unless plinking ammo.
Same with the AR. I keep my house AR condition 3 if it ever needs to be used. I edge on the side of caution with carry ammo but found in my experience if you live in the middle ground you should be fine. Everyone has priorities, my issue is I seem to always miss when duty ammo is in stock :/
Since I'm well into my second run of 1000 Days of Dryfire, I'm dryfiring every day. I put a Sharpie mark on the base of the cartridge before I chamber it. When it has four tick marks, it goes to the bottom of the magazine. When all the rounds have four marks, I shoot them up at the range.
I've been using this method for about two years now; so far, no rounds have failed to fire. That record makes me comfortable with it. It means I go through a box of anti-personnel ammo every 200 days. I'm using Winchester Ranger SXT 147 gr 9mm.
Last edited by HeadHunter; 12-13-2015 at 08:28 PM.
When I give private lessons, if I need to demo, I use the student's gun. That way they don't think I'm using a tricked out SCCY to be able to shoot well.
I'm cheap, and when I buy duty ammo I like to buy enough to fill all of my magazines from the same lot number, so I tend to carry ammo around far longer than I probably should.
Guess I'm lazy. The tick mark thing isn't a bad idea.
Semper Gumby, Always Flexible
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