I third snap caps.
Hello Duster340,
My own .02 cents,
I am new to M&P pistol myself, so this more about new firearms as a whole. But it sounds as though this will be a carry weapon for yourself and you take the weapons seriously. I myself am really anal retentive on my carry weapons too.
I would agree with both Desertpilot and GKC. Definitely get yourself some snap caps. Try wholesalehunter.com for good prices. I will usually get enough snap caps to fill two magazines. Most come 5 or 6 in a blister package.
I put a different color dot of acrylic dye (nail polish works too) on each magazine so I can tell them apart. I will rack the slide till the clip is empty, I do this multiple times on each clip. If you observe any feeding issues you can note which color magazine is acting up for further investigation at a later time.
Now I have been wounded in an accidental fire incident due to bad stitching on a leather holster. I had always thought plastic holsters to be generic / cheapish, so I never paid attention to them instead always going with high grade leather holsters.
However, Maddmax recommended Kydex holsters, and after checking some out this last weekend I think I will never look back and go Kydex from now on for most situations.
I am not a LEO and have not had a boat load of presentation training. Thankfully I have had to only pull my weapon a few times in my life. Each time the cowards turned tail and ran. (Mental note..shooting them in the back is a no no lol)
However, the first time really freaked me out as I pulled with so much force (adrenaline and fear cocktail lol) I damn near dropped the freaking sidearm. Thankfully they feared the firearm and not the clumsy scared dunce fumbling his weapon. This was a 1911 clone and at that time I never upgraded or modified the grips. My hands were so sweaty. I have always paid attention to the grips since that incident. Thankfully the grips on the M&P are solid from the get go.
This is also where the snap caps really come into play. A trick I started to use with any new gun or holster is to take a dummy round (preferably snap cap so firing pin isn't stressed) and I would trim and glue a "cap" (think kids cap gun, usually a red roll of paper caps) over the spring primer of the snap cap.
Only do the round in the chamber and the top round of the magazine. Otherwise they will rub off and get stuck in your mags internals.
Anyway, me and my girl at the time took turns drawing. We would say "tango tango" and at that exact moment we would draw, regardless of our position etc. That cap going off was loud enough to make you cringe lol
She had a kid, so I kept my sidearm in a GunVault bolted to the side of the night stand. Drawing from that thing in the dark was a pain to learn without errors. I didn't get the deluxe version that had a light inside. The bedroom light switch was across the room.
I almost went and got one of those clapper things for our bedroom light lol. But after weeks of practicing I could enter the vault and retrieve the weapon with confidence in the dark and bring it to bear on the bedroom door.
Practice practice practice is my mantra lol
One last thing that is common knowledge but I will repeat cause I am an anal retentive prick lol, (and I will actually be asking this question myself later today.)
When you pick a defense round fire a good few hundred through it to make sure you don't have any feed issues. I know my 1911 clone had a good handful of manufacturers and models it couldn't reliably feed.
My glocks would throw almost anything down range, but still one or two they didn't like.
Too close, I echo Duster340's sentiment. This forum is absolutely fantastic. I can't tell you how many threads I have bookmarked already lol
Later folks,
CRS
