Several years ago I purchased a then new to the market Ruger Security-Nine, mostly because the price was too good to pass up. I put that thing through the wringer and could not get it to fail. I was so impressed with it that I bought three more for my three daughters. I ran them through the wringer as well with the help of my daughters, and when I was satisfied that they were 100% reliable, I gave them to my daughters for their home protection. They have been sitting at the ready for the past two years doing service in a nightstand, a recliner arm hideaway or wherever they kept them. Last week I decided that they needed to come out for some practice, so I took my daughters to the range and we all brought out the Security-nines (except for one that was out of state.) I started things off with my recliner gun, and on the third shot I got a light primer strike. Continuing on through the rest of the 15 rd. magazine I got 6 more light strikes. I was using some cheap foreign ammo that I got at a gun show, 1K rounds for $179, and was thinking to myself, "Aha! That's why it was so cheap." My oldest daughter stepped up to the line with her Security-Nine and we loaded it with some new ammo from LAX, and she had four light strikes with the rest giving off varying reports from loud bangs to muffled pops. All fired rounds cycled the action, but it was very disconcerting. Last up was my youngest, and hers had 10 out of 15 light strikes. All three guns went in my bag to take home for disection to find the cause, and I pulled out a Colt Border Patrol to finish our practice session. Later I pulled out one of the Security-nines and stripped it down. I expected to find congealed oil and dirt, but instead found a perfectly clean gun. In fact, all three were spotless inside. I did notice that the hammer tension was not quite what I remembered them to be, but still seemed adequate compared to other guns I have worked on. I then went to the firing pin spring and found it to be stronger than the hammer spring. I removed the firing pin and spring and found the rebound spring to be way overbuilt like many of Ruger's designs. It was so strong that I could not compress it with my fingers. I quickly took note that it was of the same length and diameter of a typical ball point pen spring, so my wife mysteriously "lost" three of her pens. PLEASE NOTE. I am NOT recommending that you replace your Security-Nines firing pin rebound spring with a spring from a pen, or anything else, it is just what I used for my situation. A couple of days later I took the three Security-nines back the range and ran two boxes of ammo, one of each kind originally tried, through each of them with 0 failures. All cases inspected had good, strong hits on the primer. The fourth Security-Nine will be immediately removed from service when my middle daughter returns home until it can be looked at. I am just thankful that this problem wasn't found when the gun was needed the most.
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