I know when you pick up that new 1911 or whatever it maybe you’re supposed to shoot a hundred or so rounds of your carry/duty ammunition through it to insure proper reliability. How does this apply to AR’s? Should you put a hundred, a couple of hundred rounds of let’s say .223 75gr Tap through it prior to betting your life on it? I don’t remember reading about a protocol when it comes to this subject. Any advice appreciated.
I personally wouldn’t do this. Especially with expensive Defense ammo.
For an AR, I fire some M193/M855 and some Moderate .223 ammo. I like to see that it will function with hot and mild ammo.
I might run a mag of the good stuff on a clean rifle to simulate how you’d fire it in an emergency/Home Defense situation. I can’t afford to dump 200 rounds of primo stuff.
Okay, I admit I am spoiled when it comes to this as I shoot department ammo. We are in the process of converting over to the 75gr. TAP from 55gr. TAP. I just got a partial order in of only 1600 rounds. All are from the same lot. I took a box out of 10 cases giving me a 200 round sample. I will be taking them to the range and shot them through several rifles looking at accuracy and function. A neighboring agency had an issue that I was invited to assist with when they discovered it. The issue was boiled down to the ammo. We shot it in several rifles with different barrel lengths and twist rates, nothing got it to shoot better. We shot the same rifles with different ammo of various weights and they all shot fine. It turned out to be a bad lot of ammo and the manufacturer sent out a rep who agreed with the conclusion and replaced the ammo.
One of the best ways to learn is to attend a manufacturers LE ballistics lab. They are roving road shows put on mostly for LE/MIL. I have attended the Hornady class taught by Giles Stock. I learned a lot about their ammo and other manufacturers. From the lessons learned there and in other such classes we have changed our duty handgun ammo once and our rifle ammo three times. I am now very comfortable with our selections from a firsthand factual standing. With that said I still test out a sample of each lot to make sure the ammo is good to go before issuing it out.