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| Winchester Ranger RA45TP with Multiple Hard Primer Strikes, but No Ignition |
Just wanted to put out a quick reminder to everyone to periodically rotate carry ammunition. Recently, there was an advisory from Gwinett County (GA) PD regarding an incident where an officer found himself in a deadly force encounter only to discover that the chambered round in his duty pistol would not fire. Fortunately, the officer’s training took over and he was able to successfully clear the malfunction and end the encounter.
The round in question was examined by the manufacturer, who discovered that the primer mix had been knocked out of the primer when the round was cycled through the firearm multiple times. Two cases of the same ammunition (presumably from the same lot) were tested and functioned normally.
Recently, one of my Detective partners and I were teaching at the range when three carry rounds failed to fire. We examined the firing pin strike and saw they were solid, centered strikes. We are now in the process of rotating all officers’ duty ammunition, which we typically do once a year.
Federal, Remington and Winchester all recommend that cartridges should not be chambered more than twice before being discarded. Bullet setback can cause pressure spikes and primers can go dead. In an AR or M4 type carbine, this is even more critical as the chambering process is very hard on the cartridge.
In the end, I wouldn’t lose a ton of sleep over this, but it is good practice to regularly rotate the ammunition in your duty sidearm or carbine. This is not the area where you want to go cheap.
Be safe out there!
Tim Lau
10-8 Consulting, LLC
I know a guy who while in Iraq got a fails-to-fire from his M4, transitioned to his Glock 19 and it also failed to fire.
Issue was the retarded rules about having to clear weapons going in and out of the wire. In this case he had to do so multiple times per day.
Fortunately he was able to get the guns running and finish the problem.
Ammo QC is down, it behooves us to keep an eye on this stuff as a continuing process.
Weirdly enough, had a friend text me yesterday, he was shooting up his duty ammo to rotate his ammo and was getting issued new stuff. First and third rounds in his mag were dudes. They had been rechambered multiple times.
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Wow!!! I love this article,iv known about rolling marks and such but this is great information to follow not just for my students but also my self,we get complacent and must learn from that.
Stay low and reload.and swap and rotate round,ha,ha.
Why do people continually clear and load their chamber? Load it and leave it alone!
Hard to “leave it alone” if you are doing solid dry-practice, or live fire training regularly where you are off-loading duty/carry ammunition and shooting training ammunition. As I do both dry practice and regular live practice, this is an issue. A spare pistol and SIRT pistol help with the dry practice. I will often rotate the round that came out of the chamber to somewhere else in the primary or secondary magazines, but will also try to shoot up “the good stuff” bi-annually. To me, this is the kind of stuff that the recent ammunition shortage is affecting that many people do not see. It is getting hard to replace ammunition (especially premium duty loads) when you either cannot find it or it is prohibitive due to outrageous cost.
I have some OCD about ammunition rotation.
I’m a firearms instructor for my agency (D.O.J) plus do a LOT of instructing off-duty.
I have developed some “Cardinal” rules about ammo rotation. I rotate all “Carry” ammunition in firearms, quarterly! I used to shoot the carried ammunition at the next range session or requal, but now move all duty grade ammunition in to secondary storage. Living in California and with changes on Capitol Hill all the time, I figure better safe, then lacking. I place all ammunition from magazines in to the original box, write with a sharpie carried from (start date to end date) and place in GI ammo cans, in case of. The exception is the chambered round. That one round, will be expended at the next range day. I don’t do any administrative with the exception of a press check. My “carry” guns are either with me or in my soley controled safe.
Additionally, I have range ONLY magazines that never get mixed with carry magazines. As of late I have been useing the Korean KCI magazine for Glock pistols with 100% success. This keeps precious and expensive Glock factory mags from being dropped, kicked and steped on throughout the day.
Of course with what ever platform, factory magazine are carried on and off duty.
Very respectfully
john