Let's talk about vetting carry ammo

[DAB]

That sounds like a good start...
But the long history of the M9 demonstrates the validity of the gun design. It doesn’t tell you whether your sample was manufactured to spec, and whether that particular gun is reliable.
The FBI demonstrated that the Critical Duty 135 gr met recommended standards for penetration and expansion. It doesn’t tell you anything about reliable interaction of the particular cartridges you bought with the combination of the particular pistol and magazines that you have.

So, buying a quality firearm, and quality ammunition is a great starting point. But there is certainly something to be said for validating the combination in your hands before betting your life on it.

and that's where you get different opinions. how much "vetting" is sufficient? i've shot this pistol and other similar ones many times, thousands of rounds of range ammo. i don't recall the last malfunction. it's been a while. my stash of Critical Duty ammo is limited, so i reserve it for it's intended use. what i have fired, has all worked.

i'm satisified with my gear.

[JBP55]

I buy HST or Gold Dot for carry and American Eagle or Lawman for range work.
I clean, lube and fire a few rounds of carry and range ammunition through each new pistol.
I have been shooting for more than 60 years and every round I purchased worked in my pistols.

[DMF13]

Based on being forced to carry guns with little to no "vetting," due to how things played out in my LE career, I'm going to offer a somewhat contrarian view of this issue.

Several times I was issued a gun where I got little, or even no, opportunity, to "vet" it, prior to having to carry it on duty. Often it was; clean/inspect it, maybe fire a 50 round qual course, load for duty carry, and get to work. It might be several days, or even weeks, before I'd have an opportunity to go shoot the pistol on my own. Over the years, I eventually shot the snot out of most of those guns (as an AFOSI reservist there were occasions I had to carry a pistol that I never got a chance to shoot), and none of them were revealed themselves to be unreliable. I'd have some mags eventually go bad, and one time I wore out the slide release spring on a Glock (you really should follow Glocks suggestions for how often springs should be replaced ), but never had any of the SIGs I was issued, or the Glocks I was issued, have major problems.

Over the years I've seen two pistols, both Glock 22s, that suddenly turned into "jam-o-matics." Both had several thousand rounds through them when the problems showed up. I was an armorer by then, and thoroughly examined the guns both times it happened. I tore them apart, detail cleaned them, and replaced any parts that were even slightly suspected of being a problem. The first was all gunked up, because the agent had been dowsing his gun in oil, like he used to do with his Beretta and SIGs, and the striker channel was packed with crap, and so was the extractor. Again, best to follow Glocks advice to only sparingly oil the gun in the few spots they recommend. After the very thorough cleaning it was flawless. The other had been properly maintained, and I couldn't get it to work despite my best efforts, several other extremely experienced armorers couldn't get it to work right either. So it was taken out of service and scrapped. No one can explain why that happened, but it was one pistol, out of thousands in service with our agency, and it occurred after thousands of rounds had been fired through the gun. No 200, 500, or even 1000 round "vetting" process would have revealed that the gun was full of gremlins just waiting to pounce.

So I say, if you have purchased a quality firearm and mags, and have quality ammunition suitable for the firearm, you are extremely unlikely to have problems with the firearm. Clean and inspect it, function check it, and if able put a few magazines through it, then carry on (pun intended).

Having said all that, I now fully expect to be "tarred and feathered," by the forum members!

[FNFAN]

When I came into my current agency, the initial firearms day was 350 rounds of practice ammo and here here's your 40 rounds of duty ammo. Firearms trainer thought it was quite a waste of my money for me to run 100 rounds I had purchased through the gun. Of course he also thought it a waste of money to buy something other than the issued Serpa holster, so there's that.

[feudist]

I think KevH is onto it.

Malf clearing should be done at every practice session, live and dry. Carry a spare mag because that's the fastest way to clear a jam.

Carry and train with a BUG. Practice the transition. The best place to carry it is AIWB weak hand. I carried mine with a Barami Hip Grip and a Tyler T grip.

I used a 442 and with the Hip Grip it rode very low tucked behind my duty belt just aft of my mag pouch. Our shirts were navy blue so it wasn't noticeable.

Any input on what a valid statistical number of rounds is? 20 rounds would prove the gun/mag/ammo system to less than 1/20. Do it for four mags(gun, 2 spares plus

off duty) and that's two boxes of duty ammo. You'll need a third to load up all four with. That leaves a handful to replace your chambered round with after reloading

several times if you see any setback.

[willie]

Guys like me should identify themselves as hobbyist and then admit that there once formal training was taught by men who are long dead. I did learn that lot numbers identified batches of ammo produced at the same time. Further, a case of ammo contains that from the same lot. Vetting ammo from the same case allows us to make generalizations about 1 box to the rest in the lot in our possession. When I open a new box of defense ammo, I dump the entire box onto a towel. With clean hands I examine each as I put the rounds back into the box. I did find a deformed case in one instance.

I have bought many defective pistols. Kel Tec takes 1st prize. Springfield Armory, FN, CZ, and Colt contributed to this list. I would lie about owning a Taurus or Hi Point. CZ is now good. Smith and Glock are good. Staying within these groups assures one that their new purchase will most likely function correctly.

[Erick Gelhaus]

I think a leading cause of stoppages with polymer pistols is how you hold them.

I was going to add on to this, but then KevH responded ...

@feudist

What you're describing is not that uncommon.
<snip>

Your malfunctions appeared during "Oh SNAP!" moments (being charged by dogs). Watch a bunch of OIS body cam videos and you will frequently see malfunctions that I'm sure the involved officers seldom or never experienced in training. I can tell you from prior experience that your brain/body do weird things under stress and that combined psychological/physiological response commonly causes issues between your biological hand and your mechanical gun.

There is NO WAY to replicate real life lethal force scenarios in training....NONE! Why? Because your body only produces and discharges chemicals during those type of situations. I think the closest thing you can do is some type of SIMS that actually induces pain, but even that isn't quite the same. The only way to get inoculated to stress (combat) is equal stress (combat). Since that is very rare in civilized society chances are you will never reach that point. Even then there are other variables.

The only thing you can do is try to train as best you can. This is why malfunction clearance drills are important and should become mechanical second nature. As for your Gen2 Glock, I wouldn't trust the opinion of a "gunsmith." Back to Glock it would have gone.

<snip>

With the number of BWC recorded shootings, gunfights that are out there, watching them you'll see a bunch of stoppages occur. Ones that appear as if they would be quite difficult to recreate on the range. I think they happen because of grips that are good enough to get the gun out of the holster and one to a few rounds off but not much more than that. Why? A startled reaction, rather than a planned one - Oh Kitten! That dude just shot at me! versus Let's go detain & arrest that known to be armed bad guy & I'll start by drawing my pistol. As KevH mentioned, that sudden stress can't be easily, if at all, replicated in training.

At one point last year, I saw back to back to back OIS videos with odd stoppages involving just Glocks. Why the frequency of Glocks? The sheer number of them out there? If I thought there was still a real large number of Gen 3 .40SWs out there, I'd add that to my hypothesis.

[deputyG23]

in the time of the Covid.

Ammo is scarce and two and a half to three times as expensive as it was before the pandemic and the commie riots.

Carry ammo, when you can find it, is shockingly expensive. An additional problem is that ammo made under huge back logs can have less QC and QA.

With that in mind how do we vett ammo to carry? What are the best practices?

Throwing ammo at it doesn't assure function, as I found out twice. I had a Gen2 Glock 17-chosen specifically under the doctrine of "original caliber/original engineering",

like people recommend 5" 1911s in .45acp, and shun the .40 and .45 caliber Glocks.

I tested this gun with over 500 rounds of Blazer ammo, then I fired an additional 500 rounds of duty ammo, Winchester 127+P+ Ranger Talon. I shot the Winchester

at a private lesson with a USPSA GM, fast and furious.

I then fired another 200 rounds trying to make it malfunction. Not cleaned and dry as a bone I fired one handed strong and weak, fired with elbow and wrist limp.

I fired laying supine holding the gun by thumb and trigger finger only with the gun upside down.

Moving at a sprint forwards, backwards and sideways, jerking the trigger as fast as I could, typically with splits in the .14-.16 range-jailbait.

Then I put the gun in service and for the next 2 years I only shot Blazer and 127+P+ through it for over 16,000 rounds(remember when Blazer Aluminum

was 84.50 per thousand?)

Not a single, solitary malfunction. Nothing. No stoppage, jam, light strike or hesitation of any kind.

There was a total of two full cases of 127+P+ shot through it.

One night I ran a box of 50 127+P+ through it at the range and cleaned it.

The next afternoon I shot a charging pit bull outside a Post Office where he had a dozen people hemmed up.

He came so fast that I had to take 2 steps back as he slid to a stop dead at my feet. I fired 5 rounds and hit him 5 times in the head and neck.

My Glock was jammed with a horizontal stove pipe.

wat?

Guess what? The gun never ran right again. I took it to my gunsmith and had him check it out. Nothing. It just didn't work right, regularly choking in various different ways.

I bought a brand new Gen3 2003 vintage 17. Changed to Gold Dot 124+p and conducted a near identical vetting process.

A year later, another dog shooting and at 6 rounds the gun chokes, I tap/rack and it double feeds. I drop it and draw my 442 carried AIWB Werner style and finish it.

Again, no apparent cause of malfunction.

I nearly went back to a Model 10.

Ed Lovette, in his book, The Snubby Revolver, writes,
“A number of years ago, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) did a study of a 10-year period during which officers of the department were involved in 6,000 armed confrontations. They could not document a single instance in which an officer’s revolver failed to fire during one of these confrontations”
A VSP trooper friend of mine, in the late ‘80s, had a DUI suspect manage somehow to get him in a chokehold from behind. He had to shoot the suspect off of him with his M64. Two rounds, I believe.
I wonder if any of their subsequent SIG semi-auto pistols would have done as well in that instance.

[SWAT Lt.]

I have seen otherwise totally reliable Glocks malfunction when the shooter, for whatever reason, moved the gun backwards as he fired a round. These guns were inspected and also passed "limp wrist testing" without issue. Moving the gun back just as it fires may be the cause of some of the malfunctions that are observed in real-life events that are not experienced on the range (or in testing). These events would include any type of sudden stress-inducing incidents such as being suddenly attacked, firing while quickly moving back away from an immediate threat, or new recruits who may be unfamiliar with and/or intimidated by firearms. Not much rearward movement of the firearm is needed to cause a stoppage as long as it occurs at the right moment.

[ST911]

Have you ever heard of plunk testing carry rounds? In addition to visual inspection, field strip your pistol and 'plunk' each duty round into the chamber to make sure they will chamber.

I have heard of it and don't find it necessary with quality factory ammo. If you want to get really fancy you can use a gauge for all your ammo, but it isn't necessary. I'm more worried about flipped primers (which I have seen).

The value of the plunk test is exaggerated, like a lot of other stuff. The concept is valid though, and if it's been awhile since you've bought a new supply of a historically trusted load it may be worth doing if you can't or don't want to shoot some it. Manufacturers make subtle changes all the time and impact compatibilities. Plunk testing isn't an indicator though, and shouldn't be a substitute for live fire function testing.