Thread: Shield 9mm ammo
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Old 09-02-2018, 04:44 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jim46ok View Post
If I estimate correctly, you have shot nearly 1000 rounds just to see what it likes. That's about the value of the gun. I would have stopped at the first brand with no malfunctions.....
Wow.
It took me a while to get there. My Shield 9 had persistent failures to eject and occasional failures to feed (31 total in 4800 rounds). That's way too many for a self-defense gun. A trip back to S&W didn't improve it. I noticed, however, that self-defense ammo seemed to be more reliable, so I started buying well-regarded brands on-line in bulk, set an arbitrary standard of 200 problem-free rounds, and proceeded to fire away. (It was actually kind of fun.) If none of the ammo had met the test, I would have dumped the Shield. It took me a about a year, but when I was done, I knew I had found a round I could count on (the Hornady Critical Duty 135g+P). The performance of the HST 147g was a bonus. I'd first tried HST 124g +Ps, and my Shield choked, refusing to feed 10% of them, so I wasn't expecting much from the 147s.

In the end, I finally got a gun I could count on. Every six months, I shoot some Critical Duty and some HST 147 rounds just for practice. My current no-failure total for Critical Duty is 362, and for HST 147, it's 225.

Was it expensive? You bet! But I figure it's cheap compared to what my life's worth. And the leftover rejected rounds will not go to waste. They'll do just fine in my SIG P320, which will fire anything.
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