Brownells AR-15 magazine reliability

[That Guy]

Another range trip, another bolt over base malfunction. With a different gun this time.

I gave my girlfriend Brownells magazines which we've used before and know to be good, and her gun ran without issues. However I tested one of our unused Brownells magazines in my gun and had the first malfunction ever in my rifle. (My rifle is a similar Colt 6920 as my girlfriends, and has about the same amount of live rounds through it. I've done somewhat more dry fire with mine, but that shouldn't make a difference here. My rifle is recently cleaned, well lubricated, and hasn't been used enough for springs to have worn out.) Now granted, with this magazine I only got one failure to feed out of the whole magazine, but that's still not acceptable.

Not getting a farm fuzzy feeling about these magazines anymore... First one magazine malfunctioned in live fire in my girlfriends gun and in dry fire in my gun, and now a second magazine which malfunctioned in my gun during live fire. And that's out of five magazines so far. Now granted, those Brownells magazines which do work, work very well - I think our Brownells magazine numbered #1 is the most used magazine in the house, and it has never given either of us any trouble. And the ones that create malfunction, do so right away, so it's easy to check which ones work. Still though, the failure rate is a tad excessive for me.

Ammunition remains the same GGG 55gr FMJ as before.

I'm thinking the next batch of magazine I buy will be gen 2 P-Mags. The ones we have have never given us any trouble. And the price will be very close to the aluminium Brownells magazines.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

Anecdotally, yesterday we had a carbine match. In one stage, we loaded a full mag and then gave the SO an empty mag so he could load it with 1 to 5 rounds.

The stage was:

1. Engage four targets with two rounds each.
2. Then do a tac or speed reload.
3. You reload with the mag with unknown number of rounds.
4. When it goes dry, you continue to engage by transitioning to your handgun. By then the targets are the farthest.

So when I reload the mystery mag - which is a Brownell's 20 rounder, it give me a nasty double feed which does not immediately clear with standard yelling and screaming. I continue with my handgun. Only 4 down for the stage but time went to hell.

I vaguely recall some discussion of the twenty rounders being funky at times. The other mags in the match were Brownell 30s and Pmag 30s - not a hitch with them.

Ammo was a mixture of misc. 55 gr. PMC, WWB and the like.

Thoughts?