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Will Your Mags Fail You?

One thing has surprised me a little. I've got maybe 30 Magpul 30-round AR-15 magazines. I've never had one fail in my AR. Yes, I've had my Hellion choke on .223 from one of these....but my AR platform eats up those .223's from the same mags, so I'm not convinced it's the mags. And for $7-8ea...that's not a bad investment for those Magpuls. (They're now $9.99 at my LGS).

Apologies if this thread was strictly about pistol mags...none of my Sig mags ever failed, had a few FTF with my 10mm Ronin running Wilson and OEM MecGars...but nothing that has me worried. Those may have been near or in break-in. I don't keep records like old_me, so I suffer from CRS.
 
HansGruber said:
Yeah, but those examples don’t include using a firearm; if you do, you have to be prepared for a failure.

Mr. Murphy is always waiting in the wings, and delights in mucking with the unprepared.

Prepare for it to not work out in your favor.
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We are in agreement my friend, just saying I have not faced that threat in public life. Hopefully my gear is adequate if I am facing an armed advisory. I am at the range almost every weekend, mags are numbered and if a chronic malfunction occurs I will most definitely pull from edc lineup. I 99% carry (iwb, or aiwb) sig p320 rxp xcompact or p365 micro. Only oem mags. No issues when firing. I value your input and will apply to my thought process in future. Thanks for sharing the knowledge.
 
Jfal said:
One thing has surprised me a little. I've got maybe 30 Magpul 30-round AR-15 magazines. I've never had one fail in my AR. Yes, I've had my Hellion choke on .223 from one of these....but my AR platform eats up those .223's from the same mags, so I'm not convinced it's the mags. And for $7-8ea...that's not a bad investment for those Magpuls. (They're now $9.99 at my LGS).

Apologies if this thread was strictly about pistol mags...none of my Sig mags ever failed, had a few FTF with my 10mm Ronin running Wilson and OEM MecGars...but nothing that has me worried. Those may have been near or in break-in. I don't keep records like old_me, so I suffer from CRS.
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My “serious use“ AR mags are HK 416 mags. Never an issue with them…but I’ve had a few builds that didn’t like PMags.

But, since I prefer an AUG over an AR, I’ve never had an issue with an AUG mag.
 
SL66 said:
We are in agreement my friend, just saying I have not faced that threat in public life. Hopefully my gear is adequate if I am facing an armed advisory. I am at the range almost every weekend, mags are numbered and if a chronic malfunction occurs I will most definitely pull from edc lineup. I 99% carry (iwb, or aiwb) sig p320 rxp xcompact or p365 micro. Only oem mags. No issues when firing. I value your input and will apply to my thought process in future. Thanks for sharing the knowledge.
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I mainly carry revolvers…kinda makes the mag issue moot.

But when I do carry autos…it’s either a Wilson X9, an Sig 238, or a HK USP…all with OEM mags that have been proven with my carry ammo.

I was trained by professional pessimists. I assume things will not go my way, and like to think I’m ready to deal with that.

Which my instructor would mock as overly optimistic…;)
 
HansGruber said:
It’s a surprisingly hard concept for a lot of people to wrap their head around; I’m not ashamed to admit I was one, until I had it beaten into me by someone who had literally been there and done that numerous times (and never bothered getting the t-shirt)…

You know how much it sucks to s-can a P7M13 mag because it got f’d during an emergency change?

As the gentleman training me said—“Would you prefer a (expletive) bullet in your (expletive) gob because you were fretting about dinging your precious magazine?!? Get your (expletive) gun back in the (expletive) fight and don’t (expletive) (expletive) (expletive) worry about (expletive) damaging the (expletive…etc) mag for (expletive)’s sake!!!”.

That lesson has stuck with me.
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It would be very interesting to see how many times per year in any civilian shooting that an entire magazine is used. In war, yup. In LEOuse, maybe. In civilian SD situations? I’d guess less than one in 10,000 incidents (your odds of being hit by lightning are 1 in 15,000). Train as you please and do what makes you comfortable. Me? I’ll continue to concentrate on quickly delivering controlled pairs on sets of two and three targets at varying ranges. I’m betting the first round or two on target will resolve 99++ % of all situations. In ANY situation, you are basically”playing the odds”. Could yYou find yourself in a shootout with massive numbers of armed assailants-in theory, Yes. On the other hand, in YOUR particular lifestyle is that likely? In mine, No. YMMV
 
Shibadog said:
It would be very interesting to see how many times per year in any civilian shooting that an entire magazine is used. In war, yup. In LEOuse, maybe. In civilian SD situations? I’d guess less than one in 10,000 incidents (your odds of being hit by lightning are 1 in 15,000). Train as you please and do what makes you comfortable. Me? I’ll continue to concentrate on quickly delivering controlled pairs on sets of two and three targets at varying ranges. I’m betting the first round or two on target will resolve 99++ % of all situations. In ANY situation, you are basically”playing the odds”. Could yYou find yourself in a shootout with massive numbers of armed assailants-in theory, Yes. On the other hand, in YOUR particular lifestyle is that likely? In mine, No. YMMV
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Still not a very good argument against carrying extra mags or ammo. A lot of things can happen that have nothing to do with emptying mags at bad guys.

Failure to train for a SHTF situation is not going to be the reason a group of "Zombies" kills me and my family and takes my stuff. Is it likely ? Probably not, but Covid should have shown you it is definitely possible. If you would have told me 10 years ago that a presidential candidate would be targeted for termination by parts of our government I would have said it would never happen. Now, I think it absolutely could happen.
 
Probably dropping metal mags that are empty is not going to hurt them, especially if you have one of them bumpers on the base. I dropped a fully loaded thompson smg drum on the top of my foot years ago. somehow i pushed the release and it hit my foot. it hurt like a big dog. lol. I'm just glad it wasn't a 100 round drum. lol
 
I understand perfectly, but when might you find out your last practice session damaged the mag in your gun enough to cause a problem? I know lots of folks and experts encourage it, but until I have a separate (but identical) gun and mags to practice with, I won’t be dropping such a critical piece of equipment on the ground on purpose. To each his own I guess. :)
 
When practicing combat speed reloads at the range, I put my TekMat (rubber cleaning mat) down in my bay on the horizontal shelf to catch the falling mags. So far, this has allowed me to practice combat reloads with no damage to the mags although I use my range mags rather than my carry mags for these practices. That said, in an actual self defense situation, I don't care where the empty mags fall once the threat is stopped. Just my opinion. YMMV.
 
Knock on wood, I have never had a mag fail. I do know for a fact that you can load 22short in a Beretta jetfire 25 mag and use in in a Beretta Minx and if you hold your mouth just right it kind of works, sometimes. I know that you can load 7.62x25 in a 9mm mag and they will stay until you look at them cross-eyed then they all fly out like it was a Monty Python skit, 44-40 will fit and work just fine in a speed loader made for a 44 spl/mag, but the damn things won't fit in the cylinder of a 44 mag, and last but not least you can shoot 41 mag from a 44mag Dan Wesson but they are a son of a gun to extract and accuracy flies (;):ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO:) out the window.
 
Winchester67 said:
Thirty some years ago I sold my best friend a Colt 1911. He is not a gun guy, and the Wilson Combat mag was still loaded with Federal Hydra Shoks from back in the day. The Wilson mag was in the pistol, two more Colt 7 rounders fed with no problems.
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Kind of my experiences as well. A good quality Mag will last a long time UNLESS it gets physically damaged (typically damage to feed lips). I’ve got a couple WW2 GI .45 mags that work slick as can be
 
HansGruber said:
I’m just gonna throw this out there.

You will fight how you train.

This important, so I’ll say it again:

You WILL fight how you train.

Why is this important?

A while back, when revolvers were the standard LE issue…in training, officers would drop their brass into their hands, and then put the empties in their pocket before reloading, so the wouldn’t have to pick their empties off the ground.

Then officers were killed with empties in their pocket.

You fall back on practice.

Mags are CHEAP.

Let ‘em hit the f’in ground; if they get mucked up, buy new ones.

You do not rise to the occasion; you fall back on what you do at the range.

Practice how you intend to fight.
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That was CHP, my department taught us to let them fall. That was also before speed loaders came around. There were a lot of videos out at that time about their tactics.
 
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