I have found a great group that encourages education, safe shooting techniques, and fun. It's like the S&W forum, except for the hands-on training that is provided.

Last week the instructor [who is going through the entire NRA safety course slowly] recommended that we remove the ammo in our CC gun at least every ninety days and refresh with new ammo. As he stated, the old ammo is probably still in great shape, but with the exposure to body oils, temperature differentials, etc., you are betting your life that the ammo is still in top condition. Since I occasionally switch between carry guns and load and unload them, I paid particular attention to this.

My CWP instructor had previously recommended that we rotate the magazines in our pistols and unload them every 90 days so that the springs could relax; this would enable them to last longer. So this second piece of advice strikes a cord with me.

Thought I'd pass this information along. I've marked my box so that the "used" ammo will be going to the range to be shot after it has served its 90 days in the CW...I pray it will always be 90 boring days....

I see nothing wrong with his advice....I personally shoot what is in my carry pistol each time I go to the range to keep how it shoots with that ammo fresh in my mind...I do need to mark my mags so I am not using the same one all the time.....sounds like a good course you are taking

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carpe diem
one day at a time

I suggest you find a new instructor.

Be safe.

As a general rule there is nothing wrong with this advice on either count, except it is really being excessively over cautious. It will do no harm except financial.

First point. He is absolutely wrong about automatic magazines and letting the springs "relax". What wears springs is compression cycles, not constant compression. This has been proved many times by loaded magazines for the 1911 being found in a deceased relatives goods which were loaded with appropriate vintage ammunition from WWII and even WWI. They have usually been reported as functioning normally after many years, both the magazine and the ammunition when the reporter has taken the gun and magazines out and shot them!

Second point, ammunition. Ammunition in the gun is not exposed to body oils. As long as it is checked periodically when the gun is cleaned, and the gun is not corroding from moisture, there is little to worry about. My wife has washed my speed loaders several times! When this happens I take that ammunition out the next time I do any chronographing and compare results to when I originally chronographed it. So far I have never had a failure to fire or any reduction in performance! I habitually pick up .22 ammunition I find on the ground and shoot it. It makes no difference if it has a firing pin indent, has been dented or is badly oxidized. Clean it up and if it will chamber it is shot. Of the very few that do not fire on the first strike I will try again. If still no fire I pull the bullets. Of several hundred rounds picked up over the past many years only a few have not fired normally. Of those that did not fire all had powder, and most did not have any priming. Maybe 2 appeared normal and may have been affected by water from laying out in the weather.

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Gunsmithing since 1961

You know that’s a really good way to run someone off. If you think he needs a new instructor perhaps you could tell him why you think that and point out specific deficiencies

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Retired Career Security Guard

Which course specifically? Is he becoming an instructor or is he teaching you slowly?

This advice is neither hot nor cold. If you don't handle your ammo, it will last indefinitely. I would recommend unloading your carry gun ballistically while practicing at the range. It is my opinion that your carry ammo should not get 90 days old because you'll be practicing with it at least one mag at a time every time you go to the range.

This is an old school myth. The simple truth is that magazines don't wear out by sitting loaded. A spring will compress over time, but not enough to make a difference in operation.

This is always a good prayer.

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Freedom isn't free.

Explain please formthis Newbe chronographing.

Measuring the actual speed at the muzzle.

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Freedom isn't free.

The relaxing spring tension is a misunderstanding.

A spring is worn by repeatedly being compressed then uncompressed. Being left compressed or uncompressed does it no harm.

A car sat in a driveway for years awaiting the new head gasket that somehow never gets gotten around to doesn't need to be left on jacks directly to the chassis to save the springs.

90 days is a little OTT, it's the rounds that get chambered and unchambered you need to watch... this can happen:

Sorry, Smoke; thought it was obvious.

My point is that the instructor is presenting information that, while not patently false, is misleading and not based in fact. That seems to be a trend, sadly.

LL617, hope i did not offend you. Welcome to the Forum. You will learn a lot here.

Be safe.

we like pictures.
this one is a valid carry ammo concern.
it is caused by the round being repeatedly chambered in an auto. It is referred to as set back.
most seasoned handloaders know that the seating depth of a bullet has an effect on chamber pressure.
when the bullet gets driven into the case as in the picture, the pressure runs high, sometimes dangerously so.

my solution to this is two fold.
first, do not over handle your defensive arms.
any time you have your gun in your hands. you open up some statistical odds of a negligent discharge.
with enough frequency to multiply those statistical odds, an ND becomes an eventual certainty.

second, because it is a good idea to give your arms a once over and or cleaning from time to time, when you rack the slide, ejecting the round in the chamber, have a marker handy.
that round that falls out earns a stripe.
three stripes earns retirement of that round, and is added to ammo for the range.


the body oil argument makes little sense ... the gun might see this, but the round is protected by the gun.
Body heat cycles ... hmm ... that's worth an experiment.
I don't think it would have any significant effect.
I've fired rounds scrounged up off the floorboards of my car without issue and being black as sin, it gets a heck of a lot hotter than I do.
Of course a structured experiment would trump this anecdotal observation, if available

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it just needs more voltage

This is an important point.

Years ago, when I first started to show an interest in knives, my father took me out and showed me how to use one properly. A couple of years later I joined the boy scouts. My father noticed something and told me about it; the other boys were "playing" with their knives where I didn't. His theory, and I believe it's correct, is that I got the 'novelty' of the knife out of my system before I joined the scouts. Thus, I had moved on to the understanding of it as a tool rather than a toy.

The same happens with new shooters. When I go to firearms schools, I can usually pick out those that carry regularly and those that only carry at the class or just started. How? Because the new people are constantly touching their gun. This is not a hard and fast rule, but it is 80% true.


I would add a step to your test. Every time you go to put a stripe on that round, check it against an unloaded round. Set back could happen on the first instance of loading.

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by no means would that be a bad addition to the method.
However, I'd think that an arm that would induce significant setback on the first chambering, would also have a high likelihood of being prone to jams which must disqualify the gun as a carry piece.
as I think of it ... it would disqualify it entirely as having to clear it constantly really busts ones zen when your on the range for the joy of it.

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it just needs more voltage

I agree that a gun that malfunctions a lot should be disqualified as a carry gun. However, the nature of any auto-loading pistol means that it can induce set back.

I only mention that it can happen on the first use because I've seen it. Maybe it was due to a weak crimp or something else, but it can happen.

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true enough. possibly more so now than ever since the industry is cranking full tilt production boogie and barely holding any ground.

I'd think that would start to point to a need to evaluate abnormal trends in a systems performance in general.
what changed when a smooth running gun suddenly developed an issue?
ammo and mags are the usual suspects .. but certainly not limited to just that.

another thing I think we should bring to the attention of a newbie is the importance of the first shot.
the first round fired may be the only one successfully fired in a fight due to possible malfunction or, you yourself getting shot and becoming incapacitated.

I borrowed this pic from a different thread .. as I think of this target, the more I kinda like it.
its oval zones represent the best places to put a bullet for effect.
As you practice, try to limit yourself to hits in these zones. The smaller the caliber, the more critical this becomes.
In fact, add a reduced sized oval to the center of each, and try to that.
at no time is accuracy ever a liability.

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it just needs more voltage

Ammo in the mag will last quite a long time unless you live next to the ocean. I think my current carry gun is going on about 2 years with the same 16 rounds. Nothing wrong with them. I'll probably shoot them within the next 6 months and replace with same

Mags wear out from use not from being compressed

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Hopefully you practice with your gun more than once every two years.

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Lol yes. That's the carry ammo. Speer Gold dot. I don't do too much practice with them. @ $35 a box that would be a very expensive range trip. Otherwise I shoot/practice almost every weekend

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I know it sounds like a dumb question, but not unrealistic. I know bunches who carry a gun, but have never actually fired it.

In CA a CCW must be renewed every two years. At one renewal class we had 18 students. Out of those 18, only a few had fired their gun since the last class two years prior.

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thats really kind of a shame.
they know not the joy of sending a chunk of lead 100+ yards, sure in the knowledge that it will connect based on how it felt when fired.

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it just needs more voltage

The amount of times I unload and reload defensive ammo is pretty high, so that top round gets replaced enough to raise eyebrows. I have to watch it pretty carefully.

Going by what you suggest, an ND is statistically high here. I'm more than aware of that and I run on some very strict rules.

Complacency is the father of all ND's.

I should have a double of my go to gun shortly, I want to get a couple of thousand rounds through it before it goes defacto defense and I can put this one on training, teaching and competing duty only.

I am against mandatory training and at the same time that terrifies the **** out of me.

I too recommend running a gun hard prior to adoption as a go to arm in any capacity. if they want to glitch, they may do so in the shakedown cruise. I also advise not cleaning it through the first 1500. try to make it choke.
Life gets dirty sometimes and the gun you need to draw might be full of molten gummi bears and spilled coffee.
I don't even want to think of what might get into a ladies purse carried piece. A practice I advise against, but you can always tell some women ... just not much.

Another layer of advantage to my policy of hands off gun management is its inherently uniform state of readiness.
It only takes a phone call in the middle of what your doing to leave a piece in some random state. When you return to it you could find it in condition 0 , condition 1, condition L6Z ...
the logical thing to do, as Im sure you know, is to clear the weapon.
but thats us. The rest of the world MAY go "I think I remember racking one into the chamber" holster it and carry on in condition 0... or with parts missing, or ...
I think I made the point.

I try to apply this principal to as much of my machinery as possible. especially my music gear.
when recording, I have a 16 track which involves processing several layers deep. and Im lucky if I get to carve out 5 minutes to set up. its very easy to pooch a take due to some odd effect applied to an input that you cant get rid of, or a band pass filter totally inappropriate for whats going to the track.
as a result at the end of a mix session I zero everything to achieve a ready state I can count on the next time I have 5 min or less to set up.
Simplicity is so underrated

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it just needs more voltage

If they are factory Speer Gold Dot, then the boxes are only 20 rounds each, I'll wager.

As an instructor, I tell people that this is not an area in which to be frugal. If you shoot five (5) boxes of this (100 rounds) and a single round malfunctions (failure to feed or eject) it is my opinion that you should not be staking your life on that round in that particular firearm.

Five boxes costs you only $175 for piece of mind and (better still) confidence. Confidence in one's abilities will often (in my experience, mind you) make the difference between hitting or missing.

You miss understand. I don't use carry ammo as practice ammo. I will put a few hundred to make sure it works and that it. On my normal range day I shot about 500 rounds, usually once a week. If I did that using Speer Gold dot I'd be very unhappy.

$20 for a 50 round box of LE 124gr +p?

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[QUOTE=Rastoff;137804127]Which course specifically? Is he becoming an instructor or is he teaching you slowly?

He's teaching, since many in the class are new or fairly new to shooting.

[QUOTE=The Big D;137804482]Sorry, Smoke; thought it was obvious.

My point is that the instructor is presenting information that, while not patently false, is misleading and not based in fact. That seems to be a trend, sadly.

LL617, hope i did not offend you. Welcome to the Forum. You will learn a lot here.

Been here a little over a year now. I have already learned a lot. However, I still consider myself a newbie.

Someday, I hope to progress to where I can teach gun safety to others. A long way to go!

Also, the remarks made to change out the magazine where made by a previous CWP instructor, not the gentleman teaching the class now.

I had read, I will try to find the link, not to go for centermass but to go for a lung. Then, if necessary, the femoral artery.

When offspring, who work nights, got CWP, they also got the lecture that lack of practice made them flat out dangerous. I often send pictures of my range target to remind them to practice.

One more question: Do the kind of ND's you mentioned occur in revolvers?

I'm 100% on board with this statement.

I say it this way:
No license or training should be required to exercise a fundamental right guaranteed by the US Constitution. However, I believe it is incumbent on a person, who carries a gun (or any tool) for self-defense to seek proper training with that gun.

"Owning a gun doesn't make you armed any more than owning a guitar makes you a musician." -Col Jeff Cooper

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This will sound condescending, but I don't intend it that way. I think this is very important though...This is very poor advice.

The first shot is always at center mass. Why? First because it's the largest target. Aim small, miss small. So, you always want to pick the largest target presented. Second, this is generally where the vital organs are. Shooting toward a lung means you'll be aiming off center. The heart is in the center. If you miss the heart, you'll get a lung, but if you hit the heart, the fight is over.

Cutting the femoral artery is almost a guarantee that the person will die. However, it is a REALLY small target. Most of us can't shoot a group smaller than 2" at 7 yards under time pressure. How do you expect to hit a target that is smaller than 10mm(less than 1/2") while trying to protect yourself? AND, you have no idea where it is under the skin. So, hitting an artery in the leg is lucky at best and it still won't incapacitate the bad guy right away.

So, put these thoughts out of your mind. Concentrate on the center of the mass presented.

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The low oval zones do not represent the femoral artery, but rather the hip joints.
If your caliber is adequate to do so, shattered bone is the result.
if they can't stand, they cannot fight.
the artery's just so happen to be in there too.

simple systems are best under pressure .
center of mass is the canonical zone to target, theres a lot going on in there.
First you have the heart, which most often will end the fight. you also have the lungs infringing upon this zone and a bonus chance of a ballistic spinal tap.
It don't matter how big, and or drugged up they are, a solid CNS hit will plant him.
The Mozambique drill (chest chest head) is engineered around this.
COM first because its the largest effective zone, followed by a direct CNS attempt if they are still standing.
In reality, where its difficult to become seasoned enough to know you'll keep your wits in a gunfight .. COM only is your best bet, with the alternate zones being targets of opportunity if things get protracted beyond three rounds and you happen to remember them.

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it just needs more voltage

Unless they have a gun.

My comments were directed at LL617's and not the target.

I don't think the pelvic shot is bad. Just not a first priority.

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it was LL who made the implication of the low ovals being arterial rather than skeletal. Thus, my clarification was directed there.
I don't always argue with ya Rast ... just usually

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it just needs more voltage

ND can happen in revolvers - thinking that all chambers are empty, when there is one loaded.

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Freedom-Liberty-Peace

Interesting thread, thanks for all the input.
It is much easier to avoid an NG with a revolver than an automatic, but smaller odds still mean that the possibility is there.

The odds of an NG are higher with a revolver when someone other than the owner handles it, since firing a revolver is usually more intuitive for those who don't own a firearm or have any training with one. Semi-auto pistols, especially if they have a safety or do not have a round chambered, are much harder for an inexperienced person to fire. Yes, I'll expect some flak for that statement, but it does make the gun safer in a neophyte's hands.

A policeman told me that the one time somebody really shot at him, he heard a bullet breeze by his head. He returned fire and put the man down where he could be captured and arrested. In the following review session, the officer conducting he review asked him how many shots he had fired. The officer said he didn't know, maybe four or five.

He had actually emptied his clip. So, I know under stress unique things happen.

we prefer the term magazine, or mag for short.
its one of the ways we spot the inexperienced.
running a gun dry under stress isn't at all uncommon.
one of the strangest I've seen was a friend of mine, fresh out of the USMC.
He figured he'd add a few guns to his collection, one of which was a 629.
I'd have thought the Marines would have made him recoil and blast callous, and at least a little pressure seasoned .... nope.

we all set up my range for a good old blastathon session.
multiple targets, a DOA car for firing from cover and a skeet trap to force transition between weapons.
we just loved to make guns to hot to touch while beating the snot out of ourselves.
We'd do anything to make it more challenging.
well it was his turn .. with that 629 he had for less than two weeks and full of hot 200G loads. The blast and recoil shook him.
the idea was to put two into each of three targets .. he fired all six at one, hitting once ... and he kept pulling the trigger.
"Click click click click" and kept right on clicking while he turned the gun to look down the barrel to see if anything was coming out.
I'm glad he never saw combat.
If thats what he'll do with a gun that might be a little more than he anticipated, in a controlled environment, I dread the possibility of what he'd do with lead traveling both ways.

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it just needs more voltage

This just goes to show that we all can use more training and practice.

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Freedom isn't free.

he's a special kind of case. He's one to loiter in the noob category about 3 or 4 times longer than the average joe.
It's not that he's an idiot, its that how he learns is a study in two distinct layers of leaning.

The guitar is a good example of this.
with 5 chord shapes, and a system of transposing and modifying them into various voicings, one can strum along to just about anything
the shapes and system being hardwired into your head allows you to apply them to the song.
the song itself is more likely to be a temporary memory kind of thing, like cramming for a test where everything falls out of your head while its being graded.

His issue is transferring the temporary cram for the test layer into the permanent hardwired retained level.
If you managed to get two things to stick at the end of the day, you did very well as an instructor.
I eventually taught this guy to fly model airplanes.
funny thing was. after it all clicked for him, and he in fact, had total control of his plane, the following week he forgot he knew how to fly at all. I got EVERYTHING to stick, except for that. the simple piece of knowledge that he did know how.
after a cup of coffee, I dug out the buddy box, told him to take off, fly the landing pattern and land.
He did so, with adequate skill. Landing was a little bouncy, but left the plane perfectly intact.
I never touched the sticks.
I sent him up again, same arrangement, telling him to add one loop and a roll to the downwind leg.
again, I never touched the sticks.
I don't think the USMC had anyone patient enough to fully train this guy. thus he didn't re up.

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it just needs more voltage

This is probably true. They don't have time to go one on one much. They're more into the group 1 hour lesson and off you go to war. It's the nature of the military.

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