What’s the consensus on re chambering your carry ammo when range time is over after shooting practice rounds, or dry-firing your carry weapon? I have heard on several occasions that this is a big no no.
I have a friend whose hunting rifle went click when it was supposed to go bang and it turned out that he had been rechambering the same round for several weeks and upon examination of the cartridge it had a small indentation on the unfired primer from the firing pin.
I could see this becoming an issue for those who shoot and or dry fire almost daily.
Would it be wise to re load the round somewhere down in the magazine?
Am I overthinking this?
I heard this is bad on a 1911 because the bullet can be set back into the cartridge very easily. I’ve had it happen. It’s recommended to cycle through the ammo so you don’t have this problem and to check rounds when you do this.
Striker fired pistols, I don’t believe, have any worries about firing pins (strikers) contacting rounds and damaging primers.
I have reloaded a lot of SS 9mm and some 45 too, sometimes the machine has pressed the primer a little too hard and sort of deformed it but they all fired fine- well, except the one time ALL I had was a primer and the round went into the barrel on my 9mm upper and I fired a second- it completely blew the bolt back, sending all sorts of crap out to my face and glasses. The shell was destroyed.
The barrel was fine- I mic’d it up and down, all around and no problems.
I try to minimize doing so. I dry fire almost daily, and it’s a lot easier by having multiple (identical, or almost identical) guns. My primary G19 (OD frame) keeps a round chambered and stays in my MTAC in the safe. The secondary G19 (black frame) has a full mag but empty chamber, so I can drop the mag for dry fire practice. My third (a Gen4) is on the way which will allow me to have one (not sure which yet) at 15+1 with the WML affixed full time.
Unchambering is necessary from time to time in any case; I keep a spare mag in the safe with about 6 rounds that I alternate being the chambered round to reduce the number of chamberings any one round sees. Calipers are available to check OAL every now and then and I will shoot them off at the range from time to time.
The pistol I currently have is a Sig Pro. It is more of a house/truck gun during the week, (all the time carry gun is a J frame), but is used more for CCW on weekends or when not at work.
That’s what I’m working toward. Good idea on the spare mag.
One my Glocks, no more than one or two times. I mark my carry ammo with a sharpie after it has been chambered once and move it to a different mag. After a marked round is chambered again I move it to the training ammo can.
On my 1911’s I’ve had issues with setback so I usually won’t rechamber a round but I don’t carry the 1911’s anymore.
On an AR I never rechamber. Once a round gets ejected it goes into the training ammo can.
ARs- never re-chamber a round. every round chambered is literally damaged by the floating firing pin. but with handguns, i’m actually not too paranoid about it. i dry fire a lot myself, and there’s just no way i’m gonna rotate these almost $1-per-round loads to the training bin every time they’re chambered… i’d be shooting nothing but gold-dots at the range, and spending 4 times as much as i do on ammo.
i know a lot of guys will freak out, but i’ve taken to loading the top round into the chamber, closing the slide, and then wacking the back of the slide to get the extractor over the rim. this prevents any chance of setback and otherwise beating the shit out of the rounds. rim grab can be verified by a simple press-check. the argument against hand-chambering is that it beats up your extractor… and i there’s probably some merit to this, which is why i lower the slide on the round, then whack it, instead of just dropping the slide on the round full-force. i’ve been meaning to start marking rounds that have been chambered, and limiting it to 3ish per round, but i’ve pretty much just been guestimating how many times the top 4-5 rounds have been chambered, and then rotating them to the bottom of the mag when i think it’s appropriate.
I’m gonna have to disagree with you. The manual may say that, but at least on my rifle/ammo, it definitely marks the chambered round and chews up the actual bullet. I’m never re-chambering ammo. YMMV.
if it STILL says that, it’s incorrect. i know the Army issued memos a couple years ago to stop re-chambering rounds more than twice, IIRC, as they’d been having a lot of guys get failures after going from 1 to 4 and back again, crossing the wire. and this is with NATO hard-primered ammo- which makes a big difference.
chamber a round, rotate back into the magazine, shoot the magazine- there’s your two chamberings. since we know the primer is being damaged on each and every chambering, i see no point not to take that extra step to ensure reliability.
There can be. If there’s enough setback the powder no longer burns after the primer is struck…it explodes.
Speaking personally:
When I eject a round out of the chamber of my carry gun I cycle it down to the bottom of one of my spare mags. The goal is to prevent rechambering the same couple of rounds over and over again which can cause setback and otherwise damage the round hindering reliability. On most quality duty-grade JHP’s I’ve used a couple of rechamberings does no real harm to the cartridge. FMJ ammo with weaker crimps is a different story. My golden rule is never rechamber more than twice. After the second time it is ejected it goes into the range ammo pile. I mark rounds with a sharpie to keep track.
Having an identical backup gun to your carry gun means not having to clear your primary to practice or do dryfire…something to think about.
On AR’s repeatedly chambering the same round can lead to rendering the primer inert, so I wouldn’t reccomend rechambering more than twice on an AR either.
A Hornady TAP round went click on its third time in the chamber for me. I read an account of this happening to someone, so I tried it myself. It’s possible. Now, a round goes in the chamber once and then it’s into the range box.
I’ve never seen a problem with re-chambering in my Glock. OAL stays the same, and there are no marks on the primer.
I USED TO drop the round in the chamber and snap the extractor over the rim to keep from having to replace the top round. But the guys here advised me against that years ago… too much stress on the extractor.
I get around this now by mag loading the chamber round and riding the slide to get the round into the chamber. I only unload my carry ammo once a month or so, but pussy footing the round into the chamber BOTH saves the extractor and prevents bullet setback. I’m sure this will be appauling to some, but it’s worked good for me for a few years now on my Glock and M&P.
I love this one. Since first beginning to CCW in '81 I could not even guess how many rounds of premium carry ammo I have repeatedly re-chambered in 1911s, BHPs, P7, 92FS and Glocks. Mostly 1911s and Glock 9mms. I check the round unloaded and to be re-chambered religously and have never seen a single case of damage or setback.
I think its a canard on the level with no adjustable sights on combat guns.
If I used a .40 or .357 Sig, esp the Sig round, I’d be more leery.
i used to get bad setback with my 1911. i also didn’t pay any attention to how many time i re-chambered a round… i’d always been told a chambered round was likely to go dud after a while from oil in the barrel, so i’d cycle down when i got the feeling a round had been IN the chamber too long, but i chambered and re-chambered a single round probably 10 times before cycling. i observed a lot of the rounds in my magazine were shorter than others, and didn’t know why, and didn’t care.
I started out carrying the 1911. I could watch the bullet set back with every chambering. This was ball ammo, and this is the reason I’m somewhat anal about chambering good ammo.
"A large SWAT team in this area had a failure to fire from an M4 with Hornady TAP ammo during an entry–fortunately no officers were hurt and the suspect immediately threw down his weapon when the carbine went click instead of bang. After the incident was concluded, the team went to the range and expended the rest of their carbine ammo and had one additional failure to fire. This same team had 3 Hornady TAP rounds fail to fire in training a couple of years ago. When Pat Rogers was teaching a class at a nearby agency, there were 5 failures to fire using Hornady TAP ammo. In all 10 cases, there appeared to be good primer strikes, but no rounds fired. On analysis, the ammunition had powder and checked out otherwise.
However, despite what appeared to be good primer strikes, two problems were discovered. First, when accurately measured, some of the primer strikes had insufficient firing pin indentations. The failed round from the potential OIS incident had a primer strike of only .013"—the minimum firing pin indent for ignition is .017". In addition, the primers on the other rounds were discovered to have been damaged from repeated chambering. When the same cartridge is repeatedly chambered in the AR15, the floating firing pin lightly taps the primer; with repeated taps, the primer compound gets crushed, resulting in inadequate ignition characteristics–despite what appears to be a normal firing pin impression. Once a round has been chambered, DO NOT RE-CHAMBER IT for duty use. Do NOT re-chamber it again, except for training. This is CRITICAL!!!"
