Current Consensus on Number of Rounds of Defensive Ammo to Vet Contemporary Pistols

[oldtexan]

Maybe I missed it, but I'm a bit surprised that no one has referenced TLG's thoughts from the last decade on this subject.

https://pistol-forum.com/showthread....ctive-by-ToddG

[Thy.Will.Be.Done]

Maybe I missed it, but I'm a bit surprised that no one has referenced TLG's thoughts from the last decade on this subject.

https://pistol-forum.com/showthread....ctive-by-ToddG

Much respect to TLG, but I don't believe that's entirely true that most manufacturer's are equals in quality. That might only be true if the metric goes like this : Do you have returns for problem guns? YES. I really don't believe working at a couple gun companies even begins to paint an accurate picture of truth here, he simply couldn't have access to enough data to begin to make an informed report here.

[DocGKR]

Yup--As usual Todd is correct.

Sure miss him.....

[feudist]

Much respect to TLG, but I don't believe that's entirely true that most manufacturer's are equals in quality. That might only be true if the metric goes like this : Do you have returns for problem guns? YES. I really don't believe working at a couple gun companies even begins to paint an accurate picture of truth here, he simply couldn't have access to enough data to begin to make an informed report here.

He worked at Beretta and SIG, 2 of the most respected gun companies, who had successful military contracts. He references known problems with other major manufacturer's guns like S&W and Glock. He just said out loud about all of them what everyone thinks about some of them.
The brand tribalism can get people killed or crippled when these guns fail.
The people who think "It's supposed to work because it's a Remchester or a Sigretta" are placing their fate in the hands of a profit driven bean counting industry that expects the average gun to be fired less than 50 rounds over its lifetime. Hence the excellent return policies. Even a police gun may well be fired less than 3000 times over an officer's career(Academy plus 20 qualifications at 50 rounds each, plus-maybe-another 30 to 50 on "combat courses"). Some rare departments qualify monthly, but the majority do it once or twice a year.

[DDTSGM]

I'm not clever enough to come up with something on the fly, but I hope you or one of your colleagues came up with a great response.

I bet that person would have had a stroke if faced with a stick shift.

As an EVOC instructor I've had to deal with officers who got their DL late in life, usually to get the LE job. I'm sure that was the case at FLETC. Plus, if they learned on a vehicle with an automatic floor shift, they may not get the connection between the floor shift and the PRNDL.

We had a lot of flexibility in dealing with the issues, if they were in one of our basics, they were a resident student so we could switch them to a later session and have their classmates drive with them on public roads during the evenings. We could also send them home w/o passing EVOC (which meant they weren't certified yet), let the agency deal with getting them up to speed and then return for EVOC.

BTW: 'you're the reason they sell bus passes' is kind of a light-hearted jab after a student has done something awesomely wrong, depending on how well you knew the student.

As an instructor, after a while you kind of become inculcated to folks seemingly trying to kill you with vehicles and firearms. We had some instructors that were screamers, that certainly helps things.

[UNK]

Just some food for thought.

If you are going to gussy up your gun, replace parts, disassemble, detail strip, clean, lube and reassemble you had better make darn sure it still works!

I know some serious dudes who said they never went outside the wire with a clean gun. Always test fired after any maintenance before going to work.

Then theres the flip side of that a very knowledgable Louisiana State Trooper who posted here before he passed away, he cleaned after every practice session, and that routine helped clear his involvement in an on duty shooting.

[Thy.Will.Be.Done]

He worked at Beretta and SIG, 2 of the most respected gun companies, who had successful military contracts. He references known problems with other major manufacturer's guns like S&W and Glock. He just said out loud about all of them what everyone thinks about some of them.
The brand tribalism can get people killed or crippled when these guns fail.
The people who think "It's supposed to work because it's a Remchester or a Sigretta" are placing their fate in the hands of a profit driven bean counting industry that expects the average gun to be fired less than 50 rounds over its lifetime. Hence the excellent return policies. Even a police gun may well be fired less than 3000 times over an officer's career(Academy plus 20 qualifications at 50 rounds each, plus-maybe-another 30 to 50 on "combat courses"). Some rare departments qualify monthly, but the majority do it once or twice a year.

The problem is that he's making a blanket statement based on a very narrow range of personal and direct experience working for 2 companies out of dozens. Would this sort of 'proof' hold up when making a scientific paper? I'm not discounting it but what I'm saying is while something may SUGGEST things are this simple you can't say you KNOW this without some serious data to observe and draw actual conclusions from. Nobody is doing this sort of science because nobody has found it to be needed yet and worth spending on, so let's just leave it at the jury's out on this one.

[Hambo]

You guys are rich, I just run a mag or two and call it good.

That's all I do with carry ammo. When it's time to replace, I take my carry gun to the range and shoot what's in it. So far, Federal HST has held up well.

[LockedBreech]

I've always done about 100-150 rounds with a field strip, clean, inspect, in between with pistols like G17, G19, HK's, M&P, B92s...

This is reasonable and roughly in line with what I do.

I clean and lubricate the pistol. Fire 3-4 magazines of the ammo I want to carry, then 3-4 magazines of range ammo, then finish with 1-2 magazines of carry ammo again. This tests feeding of my carry round in a clean, cool gun as well as in a dirty, hot gun. It usually ends up being 2-3 boxes of ammo.

I am not Jeff Bezos and good carry ammo is a buck a round as often as not, so the days of 300-500-700-1000 rounds to vet....that's just not the world I live in.

I pretty much stick to HST 147 and Gold Dot 124 +P because I have fed those two rounds through so many guns with no issues. Berettas, HKs, Glocks, M&Ps, CZs. Those are just two very well designed "cooperative with everything" rounds. Sticking with them is one of the reasons I don't feel the need to vet with multiple hundreds of rounds anymore. They probably work, my 4-6 test magazines are just confirming that.

I will say, if I worked in a profession where I'd be wearing the gun on my belt day in and day out, I still think a couple hundred at least is probably reasonable. Police guns live harder lives than mine.

[No.6]

Not being a professional user of firearms, part of the enjoyment of the new purchase is to take it and thoroughly exercise it as often as possible including trying to see what might make it hiccup (analogy: I don't run benchmarks on my work laptop; I enthusiastically do on my overclocked gaming hardware). Since I'm past the "first ever gun" stage by a few decades, there's no reason to carry a new arm vs. a proven one until that's done.

I would assume the encouragement to anyone on carry arm #1 would be to go exercise it, then do it some more, preferably with coaching and even classwork. Practice makes permanent.