Thursday, July 16, 2009

Ammunition Quality Control

I emailed a question to James Rummel, a professional self-defense instructor:

As a newbie to guns, one of the things I've asked myself is "How do I know what is quality ammo and what is not?" There seems to be quite a price range between brands, even if other characteristics are the similar. Are there brands that are of poor manufacture and are more likely to misfire? Are there brands that really top-shelf, but needlessly expensive?

I know that with cars, I would never buy a Chrysler but I would buy a Toyota -- if for no other reason that quality control issues. Should a new gun owner have similar concerns, or should he just buy the cheapest ammunition he can find?

James wrote a lengthy response. Thanks!

10 comments:

Jeff the Baptist said...

Depends what you want to use the ammo for. I use cheap stuff for practice all the time. If it gives me trouble then I get training in failure drills. I use mid priced stuff for defense because hollowpoints cost more. I rarely buy expensive stuff because I'm not made of money.

Ultimately you're going to have to check out what works in your guns. Buy some, run it through the gun, see what works. Each gun is a little different and sometimes it will have preferences. My 1911 is picky. My hipower is not.

About the only ammo a lot of people don't like is the steel-cased Russian stuff. Wolf, silver bear, brown bear, etc. I also don't like Ultramax because it burns really dirty. It's cheap though.

John said...

Yeah, I've wondered about the Russian stuff. Their heavy industry isn't known as the height of quality control.

John said...

What's a 'failure drill'?

John said...

Oh, it's another name for the Mozambique Drill. Okay.

Jeff the Baptist said...

No, a Mozambique Drill is two shots the chest followed by one shot to the head. Although I suppose it is called a failure drill or failure to stop drill.

I meant the actions you train yourself to do if your gun goes click instead of bang. With automatic pistols, it's usually a tap/rack drill to seat the mag and cycle the action. The drill for M4/16 rifles is called SPORTS and is similar. If you're ammo misfires, misfeeds, doesn't eject, or generally doesn't digest well in your gun, then you get to do a lot of these.

Jeff the Baptist said...

The Russian stuff works pretty well in Russian guns. But steel isn't brass so you can develop ejection/extraction problems in some guns. My M1 carbine gets fed wolf a lot just because it's all I can find around here. It runs ok, but the empties aren't ejected anywhere near as far as with brass.

Jeff the Baptist said...

Failure drills are also called immediate action (IA) drills in some circles.

James R. Rummel said...

What's a 'failure drill'?

Oh, it's another name for the Mozambique Drill. Okay.

Actually, I don't think that was what Jeff meant....

All firearms can fail for one reason or another. When it comes to autoloaders, which Jeff seems to favor, the most common failure is a jam of some kind. Either the round fails to feed from the magazine properly, or else the spent case from the last shot fails to eject all the way out of the gun.

Whatever happens, there is a set of actions that have to be taken to get your gun back into action. You go through a drill to fix the failure of the gun to function.

The Mozambique Drill is referred to as a "failure drill" not because the gun isn't working properly, but because the bad guy fails to fall down and stop trying to hurt you after being shot twice in the chest. The failure was in the bad guy refusing to admit he was beaten, not in your gun failing to go bang.

Because Jeff is talking about his gun having problems with ammo, I think he means the failure drills to get the gun fixed ASAP, not actions to fix the bad guy's wagon.

James R. Rummel said...

oh, poop. Jeff beat me to it.

trekkerjay said...

Jeff the Baptist said:
"The drill for M4/16 rifles is called SPORTS..."

It has been more than 20 years since I did basic training in the army - and I had not thought about "SPORTS" for a looonnng time... actually no need to think about it as I don't have an M16A1 rifle... but I instantly remembered what the acronym "SPORTS" stood for... scary thought!!