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I bought a bunch of American Eagle 5.56mm at Bi-Mart. It's Lake City brass. I was under impression that I needed to swage it before I could seat primers. So I was planning on buying the RCBS swager. That was until I picked up a case at the range that had a Lake City/NATO head stamp. Upon closer inspection of that case I saw what looked like four straight score lines surrounding the primer pocket (the crimp?). When I compared it to the American Eagle 5.56mm brass I didn't see score marks. So, I decided to try and seat a primer (CCI 400) in a American Eagle 5.56mm Lake City case. The primer went in without a problem. So I did a bunch more and they too went in without issue.

Is this normal for this brass? Does it normally require swaging? Or was I under the wrong impression from the beginning?

If you look closely at these two pieces of Lake City brass you will see the score marks I am talking about. Interestingly, the case on the right would not fit into my shell holder so I could not re-size/deprime it, whereas the case on the left fit fine.
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If the primer is crimped it will have a crimp ring around the primer you only have to swage the brass once not every time you reload it and some brass is'nt crimped very hard and you can seat a primer even though its got a crimp I swage all of my crimped brass before it goes in my reloading rotation
 
Some brass like this is crimped and some not. The only brass they crimp is for ammo that's headed to a F/A capable weapon or the military. When they package it strictly for civilian sale they don't bother. That said, sometimes they fill the civilian boxes with mil crimped brass because it's just sitting there without a military customer.

When encountering LC brass, you just have to look it over, there is no hard/fast rule. Same with Federal. Can be crimped and then sometimes not.
 

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