trust your life to factory ammo?

[taylor]

Assuming you're a reloader-I had always thought that you use handloads to practice and factory(like gold dots) for carry. Most of the gunwriters seem to agree with this.
And then I read an article where the gunwriter said he had a drawer full of factory ammo that failed to fire for one reason or another. He said when it comes to his life he's going to carry the best handloads he can make.
I agree with him, I've never had a fail to fire on my handloads but I've had with factory. Just yesterday I was at the range and the guys next to me were yelling about how lousy the ammo was they bought and how he felt like throwing it all away.
What do you guys think?

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[Trailboss]

I've experienced two types of misfires. The first was from absence of powder (squib) and the second was from weak pin stike. Over the years, I've eliminated any firearms in my ownership that misfired due to firearm fault. That is unless I could correct the problem. I've also pretty much eliminated squibs by shaking each cartridge of factory ammo and listening for powder. Factory loads are very rarely compressed and I have always been able to hear the powder shake. If I couldn't hear anything, I pulled the bullet and reloaded the casing. For my reloads, I have to agree with M67 in that I'm very careful. I powder charge a tray of casings at a time and then look into each with a flashlight to verify. Any empty cases are pretty obvious. I also stack my cases primer up before powder charge and primer down after fill. Been reloading for more than 40 years now and havn't had a failure in too many to count. So after a long explanation, the short answer is as long as I practice the above, I will trust either.

 

[HandSolo]

I've experienced two types of misfires. The first was from absence of powder (squib) and the second was from weak pin stike. Over the years, I've eliminated any firearms in my ownership that misfired due to firearm fault. That is unless I could correct the problem. I've also pretty much eliminated squibs by shaking each cartridge of factory ammo and listening for powder. Factory loads are very rarely compressed and I have always been able to hear the powder shake. If I couldn't hear anything, I pulled the bullet and reloaded the casing. For my reloads, I have to agree with M67 in that I'm very careful. I powder charge a tray of casings at a time and then look into each with a flashlight to verify. Any empty cases are pretty obvious. I also stack my cases primer up before powder charge and primer down after fill. Been reloading for more than 40 years now and havn't had a failure in too many to count. So after a long explanation, the short answer is as long as I practice the above, I will trust either.

I highly doubt everything you said

 

[Blitzkrieg]

My handloads, especially the handgun rounds are as reliable and better feeding than factory ammo.. this is because I taper crimp every round, this improves feeding.. factories stopped doing this (if they ever did) as a cost cutting measure.. even many police depts use jail trustee labor to taper crimp all duty loads

There have been a number of recalls of bad factory ammo.. loaded too hot, loaded with the wrong powder, etc

 

[pchewn]

Can't you ensure the presence of powder in the cartridge by weighing it?


i.e. Weight of xxxx means no powder and weight of xxxx + yyyy means with powder?

I would imagine a precision scale should be able to detect with/without powder.

If I were setting up quality control at a factory, I would use weight of each cartridge as one (of several) measurements.

NOTE: I do not reload. But I am an engineer with experience setting up quality controls in the manufacture of products.

 

[pchewn]

.. even many police depts use jail trustee labor to taper crimp all duty loads

YIKES!!!! Really? This sounds like the WORST way for the police to get high-quality ammunition. If I were police, there would be no way I would trust jail labor to supply my ammo. This can't be serious?

 

[gunnoob75]

I realize that internet experts prefer to keep Factory ammo for carry.

But let's be honest; I can trust myself to properly load a round a -lot- more than a machine I've never even seen. Couple that with being able to shoot my carry ammo more often (Due to cost of reload vs 1.25 per round) and I'm sold!

 

[jonn5335]

I believe I personally have had only had 4 fail to fires in factory metallic centerfire ammo two would have been 9mm I believe 1 was cheap federals and the other was a blazer still cheap one was a remington cor-loc 30/30 and one was a federal blue box 7mm rem mag. However I did sell my buddy a hunting rifle which I had no ammo for and we went to shoot it (sight in) he bought a box of factory federal blue box 30-06 there were 2 defective round in that box one was so over crimped it would not chamber and the second was a dud primer failed to ignite. I have yet to produce handloads that have failed to fire and while I have damaged some rounds ( I admit it ) on my bench due to over crimping/seating a bullet to deep and other haywire episodes I always catch it and a bad handload has yet to make it to the field. I am very careful and inspect every cases powder charge before seating a bullet

 

[Blitzkrieg]

YIKES!!!! Really? This sounds like the WORST way for the police to get high-quality ammunition. If I were police, there would be no way I would trust jail labor to supply my ammo. This can't be serious?

I am 100% serious.. Tacoma is just one such police dept. All the trustees do is taper crimp, they do not load the rounds.. it's a very simple no brainer process involving one die

 

[pchewn]

I am 100% serious.. Tacoma is just one such police dept. All the trustees do is taper crimp, they do not load the rounds.. it's a very simple no brainer process involving one die

But this is so wrong on many levels:
A) Can the police really trust criminals to properly load their ammo?
B) I can understand trusting a trustee with increased freedom of motion, various jobs, but AMMUNITION?
C) A hand-operation on police ammo using labor that is hostile toward the police? -- NOT the way I would design a reliable process.

 

[Trailboss]

I highly doubt everything you said

Oh my, let me file that in the somejackwadwhodoesntmeansquatdoesntbelieveme file.

 

[deen_ad]

There have been cases lost in court where the shooter used his reloads in a defense situations and couldn't prove that they were what he claimed as far as powder loads according to Massad Ayoob.
The only misfire I've had was a .22. Guess I need to shoot more to test the theory!

 

[WIRED tactical]

I reload my own 9mm and .223 but I do use Hornady ammo in my defense and carry pistols. I've never had a problem with Hornady manufacturing and their loads work great from my experience. I usually only reload for cheap target ammo, not defensive rounds.

 

[Steve06]

I do not reload. I have had more ammo problems with gunshow reloads than with factory ammo. I quit using reloads.

 

[Misterbill]

I don't know what kind of ammo you guys are claiming issues with. I can count on two hands or so the total number of defective center-fire ammo I've ever run into out of God only knows how many tens or hundreds of thousands of rounds down range. We're talking a failure rate along the lines of .00001%

I've had malfunctions (FTEs) resulting from very dirty guns or guns with feed-ramp problems and seen FTEs resulting from limp-wristing guns, but a solid hit on the primer and no boom is so very rare I'm just not worried about it. If it happens I can clear anything but a squib PDQ. And I've never once had a squib from factory ammo.

Add to that the potential problems encountered particularly at a civil trial from using hand-loads for self-defense and I see almost zero upside and some potentially nasty downsides. I for one, don't want to be asked at a civil trial why the ammo the cops use isn't sufficiently deadly. You're going to have to do a lot of work to show me routine unreliability of factory ammo before I'd even consider using my handloads for defense. I've certainly not seen such unreliability.

 

[Misterbill]

Your jury won't have people who know anything about defensive ammo on it. You can pretty much count on that from pre-emptory challenges alone. Your jury will consist of the most hysterical anti-gun hoplophobes the opposing counsel or prosecutor can manage to get onto it and at the least, is very UNLIKELY to have anyone on it who knows anything about defensive ammo or reloads.

If commercial ammo was genuinely problematic I would carry handloads. But that simply isn't the case so it's just one more piece of low-hanging fruit for an overzealous prosecutor or civil attorney to grab onto with essentially zero utility. In a questionable shoot, that one thing could be the straw that means a civil trial or criminal charges. Why risk it for essentially zero demonstrated need?

 

[Kevatc]

I had a round of Federal XM193 ammo cause a KaBoom in my AR 10 years ago or so. They ended up paying for my AR to be fixed.

As to the reloaded ammo being an issue I personally believe the circumstances of a self defense shoot will be of much greater relevance than the ammo, gun, mag capacity, etc.

 

[Blitzkrieg]

But this is so wrong on many levels:
A) Can the police really trust criminals to properly load their ammo?
B) I can understand trusting a trustee with increased freedom of motion, various jobs, but AMMUNITION?
C) A hand-operation on police ammo using labor that is hostile toward the police? -- NOT the way I would design a reliable process.

Apparently the answer is A-OK.. so far no reported problems. I am super sure they choose only non violent, short termers. Not saying I would do it, just saying that is what is done to make factory ammo safer and more reliable

 

[Blitzkrieg]

There have been cases lost in court where the shooter used his reloads in a defense situations and couldn't prove that they were what he claimed as far as powder loads according to Massad Ayoob.
The only misfire I've had was a .22. Guess I need to shoot more to test the theory!

Show me one, just one. Especially west of NYC

 

[M67]

Show me one, just one. Especially west of NYC

Blitzkrieg's post seems to be correct.

I just did a 30 min search and did not find a single case where handloaded ammunition was an issue against a defendant in court.

It would appear that a self defense shooting has nothing to do with what kind of components were used in the ammunition.