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Question Of The Day: Do You Know How Old Your Defensive Ammo Is?

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When properly stored, modern ammunition has such a long shelf life that your grandchildren could spend their retirement years punching paper and filling their elk tags with those handloads you assembled last month. Riding around in your pocket or a sweaty leather holster ten hours a day (for months at a time) does not count as ‘proper storage.’ How old is your defensive ammunition? If you don’t know, you’re not alone.

0 thoughts on “Question Of The Day: Do You Know How Old Your Defensive Ammo Is?”

  1. I open carry rarely,I personally believe, just me no one else, that open carry folks would be advised, not mandatory, to go through a CCW class,for their own protection,so they know what we conceal carry folks know about laws,rules ,regs, do’s, dont’s.Just a suggestion.

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    • I agree; the more information, the better. However, given the higher risk of having a negative interaction with law enforcement; by and large, OCers tend to know quite a bit more about the laws, regulations, do’s and don’ts than the concealed carry only individuals. It’s not uncommon for rank and file CCers to come to OCers with questions. I carry either way and, in my state, it takes a higher information level to OC compared to CC if we want to avoid legal hassles and misunderstandings.

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  2. I “rotate” my defensive cartridges in the magazine and chamber about once a month. I completely swap out for brand new cartridges once a year. Is there a generally accepted standard?

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  3. I cycle out my defensive ammo every 2 to 3 years. Rims tend to get dinged up and hollow points tend to get deformed when I unload. They always fire fine, but why take chances?

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  4. Given that this is taking place entirely on twitter with hashtags, I’d be interested in if there’s a way to track how many people actually use their tweet-your-critter service.

    It’d be another metric for judging their support.

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  5. Karl Rehn with KR Training suggests shooting the defensive ammo you’ve had loaded in mags ready to go every 6 months. Seems like a good number to me.

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  6. Every couple of range trips I’ll run 2 cylinders worth of Gold Dots thru my LCR while I’m there (mostly because it points differently then the guns I tend to shoot most, not because I’m worried about the ammo to be fair) . So 3 weeks to a month max.

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  7. Does anyone really need to open carry? After all it makes some people uncomfortable and they might call the police and make further laws that endanger our civil rights. We should just sit quite and keep what freedoms we currently have.

    Did Rosa Parks really need to sit at the front of the bus? After all it makes some people uncomfortable and they….

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  8. Kind of off topic, but how long are magazines good for when stored full i.e. spring compressed fully for several years. Does spring fatigue develop and cause misfeeds? This is something I always wondered about – my guess is that it is not good.

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  9. The number of Britons killed each year, before and after the Firearms Act of 1997 banned handguns, has remained substantially the same while violent crime has skyrocketed. #Whoops #RealGunSense #GunControlFails

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  10. I typically shoot the 9 in the gun and the 16 in the b/u mags every week and then swap mags with three others that have been left unloaded. I recently found a Chip McCormick Shooting Star mag that was at the bottom of an old range bag that my son used when we were shooting IPSC weekly. The last time he used it was over 12 years ago and was filled with old 175+ PF reloads (5.7 grns 231 + 200 grn H&G 68 SWC). They all ran just fine and chrono’d within 10 fps of the original load data.

    20 plus years ago I was able to buy 10K rounds of WWI era 30.06 ball and 20K Viet Nam era 7.62 ball for a song that were all in USGI ammo cans. The 06 stuff functions flawlessly in my Garand and is what I use in NRA High Power. The 7.62 stuff is all Lake City, but it isn’t nearly as consistent. They all go bang, but you can definitely feel and hear the difference in some of the rounds.

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  11. My own confession: I’m not exactly sure. I know I bought several boxes of Hornady Critical Defense 9mm in the spring of 2010, and my SIG magazines are still filled with it. When the copper jacketing starts to develop an antique patina, I figure it’s time to shoot it off and replace it.

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  12. For the most part, I agree with e shortcomings of pistol caliber carbines, particularly when rifle caliber carbines are so prevalent and the ammo prices since recent events has made decent 9mm, .40, and .45 allot less “digestible” to practice with. That said, I have two pistol caliber carbines in my collection – both KRISS Vectors (one CRB and one SDP waiting for a stamp) and I can’t say how much I love shooting them. They’re not for everyone, but they fit a niche in my collection. I feel that a pistol caliber carbine is a relatively decent home defense weapon, preferably in .45, due to its maneuverability and the reduced noise with some subsonic rounds. As for the Century Arms UC-9, the only real reason to own one is nostalgia. That may be ok for some, though, but not for me at $900 for the Volvo of sub-gun clones.

    As an aside, I’ve owned a .40 Kel-Tec Sub2000 and found that the weapon, while neat enough, was not something I’d bet my life on. I’ll stick with my KRISS for HD or, in the extremely unlikely SHTF scenario, my PS90 side-saddled with my Five-Seven.

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  13. There is a video on Youtube of a guy finding a 7.62×39 round he lost in the woods a year prior. The thing is absolutely covered in rust and he scrapes a good bit of it off with his knife, chambers it in his AK, and fires it.

    Cycled the bolt and everything.

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  14. I only use quality brand name factory rounds; Federal, Hornady, Remington, Fiocchi, Corbon, Speer, Double Tap, and similar. In my experience if you keep your ammo in cool, dry, dark storage you should never have a problem with its reliability or performance.

    Once it is broken out and put into magazines, I typically will expend that ammo within a year, just because. I’ve never had a problem – even with several boxes of three decades old .357 and .380 Federal ammo.

    I am of course making an assumption that newer manufacture ammo production is just as reliable as that produced 30 – 40 years ago. I wouldn’t expect otherwise, but only time will tell.

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  15. I get the point of open carry demonstrations. What I’m wondering is, wouldn’t it be more effective if we injected some humor into it to deflect the criticism. My thought: instead of carrying rifles and shotguns openly (it’s your right but not politically savvy), carry super soakers or nurf guns. You can make the same point without giving aid and comfort to the other side.

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  16. If she rears her head then by all means bash her, but im simply sick of seeing the burlap sack in every other post. How about some gun reviews or more overheard at the range?

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  17. Honestly now, I would have sent the gun back immediately after finding the problem and given them a chance to make it right. Leaving this behind, and utilizing my 30+ yrs of shooting, more than one brand of ammo would have been used before proclaiming that other guns are better. I have a Windham, it has it’s quirks, it does NOT like certain ammo types and weights although some weights work with other manufacturers. I bought from these folks because of their experience, their commitment and to give the “little” guy a chance. It paid off- with the right ammo- with me doing my job right, I can get 1 1/2″ groups out to 200 yards. It falls off past this but I know it’s me not the gun/ammo combo. Be fair in a review rather than capitalize on a glitch, then use it flawed with only one kind of ammo and declare YOUR favorite the winner. It’s possible to get a lemon from any manufacturer, what sets them apart is their willingness to correct the issues at hand. No one would replace a barrel with only one type, manufacturer, and weight tried out. Sorry, I just don’t think this is anything like a fair review of their product-I know, I have one and it absolutely is a joy to shoot….

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