A reminder to case gauge or chamber check your carry ammo.
I've become rather complacent with the quality control of my carry ammo.
Just give them a cursory look for obvious defects as I transfer them from the box to the magazine.
Well... I got a big reminder why that's not good enough this morning.
I shot my VP9SK carry ammo at the range yesterday (Barnes Tac-XP +P) and finally got around to cleaning the pistol and loading up my carry mags this morning.
Got out a fresh box of Barnes Tac-XP +P, all the rounds passed a visual inspection as I loaded them up in the magazine.
Went to chamber the first round and the slide stopped about 3/16" out of battery.
Cleared everything and my first thought was obstructed bore, despite the fact that I had just run a boresnake down the bore 2 minutes prior.
Stripped down the pistol and removed the barrel, nope clear and clean chamber and barrel.
Looked at the round that wouldn't chamber, OAL is dead on with the other rounds and the case length is good. No obvious defects on the bullet or the case.
WTF?
Drop it into the chamber and it stops short of dropping in fully.
I then take a much closer look and feel of the round.
No taper (or at best not enough taper).
I've shot several hundred (if not 1000+) rounds of the Barnes Tac-XP +P and never had an issue. They've been very consistent and 100% reliable.
I then case gauged a couple boxes (and every round in every magazine currently loaded) and didn't find another bad round.
I got lucky that the defective round ended up being the top round in the magazine and the first round I tried to chamber up.
If it was buried in the magazine somewhere I wouldn't have discovered it until it was too late.
Lesson re-learned.
It just takes an extra 30 seconds to case gauge every round as you load up and is well worth it.
While a case gauge won't catch every defect it'll cull out way more than just a visual does.