I thought the following would be of interest to the readership. This is an extract from an email sent to me by Richard Carlton, affiliated to the Front Sight Firearms Training Institute in Nevada. They go through an awful lot of ammo out there. Although it applies to the US market, if true we may see some bad ammo ending up here when the pricing bubble bursts and US suppliers try to unload cheap but unreliable ammo stocks here.
Your thoughts.
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With the inflated prices of ammunition and the limited availability, some manufacturers are becoming ever so cheap in their manufacturing processes. Much to my dismay, I have found that it is possible buy factory new training ammunition, only to find out that a stock Glock or XD won’t feed that ammunition correctly. It turns out there is nothing wrong with the Glock or XD or the magazine. It’s just that the ammunition in question is made so far out of specification that various weapon systems will not feed it correctly.
The information below was brought to my attention today by Ron Terrill and verified by Aaron Fencil from Stockpile Defense out at Front Sight.
Ron reported and Aaron confirms that the Winchester White Box ammunition has been historically the lowest grade and poorest quality training ammo available. The quality of this ammo has actually gotten worse recently, and this has been noted by a number of Front Sight Instructors who have had problems with this ammunition feeding properly through stock Glock or XD weapons.
Ron also reports problems with some of the cheap Remington ammo. Several guns from several people had problems with the ammo. See the video here:
http://youtu.be/mjfVAEcSmPI
I talked to Aaron about this in detail and it seems that Walmart is pressuring ammunition manufacturers to make the ammunition more cheaply. However, the process of making the ammunition cheaper by a few pennies is causing the ammo to become unreliable, compromising your training experience and possibly your safety.
For the record, Stockpile Defense prefers NOT to stock Winchester White Box in their store AT ALL due to its historic low quality. Aaron does report that the Federal White Box is a level of quality better than the Winchester. However, for best all-around factory training ammunition, Aaron prefers to sell PMC or Sellier & Bellot. Both PMC and S&B are manufactured overseas and imported into the United States. They are brass-cased ammunition.
Aaron went on to say that it’s important that people remember to run at least a magazine of their primary carry ammunition through their weapons before they actually carry it. You don’t want to find out in a gun fight that your gun does not like its ammunition!
In general, you will find that higher quality defensive ammunition will feed more smoothly and will not have problems that the super inexpensive ammo may have.
I would have been skeptical of a single report from one of my readers, but Aaron Fencil verified this.
About Aaron Fencil: Aaron and Kristen Fencil are the owners of Stockpile Defense in Pahrump, with a store in town and also onsite at Front Sight. Aaron sells about 50 million rounds of ammo per year.
Your thoughts.
-----------------------------------------------------
With the inflated prices of ammunition and the limited availability, some manufacturers are becoming ever so cheap in their manufacturing processes. Much to my dismay, I have found that it is possible buy factory new training ammunition, only to find out that a stock Glock or XD won’t feed that ammunition correctly. It turns out there is nothing wrong with the Glock or XD or the magazine. It’s just that the ammunition in question is made so far out of specification that various weapon systems will not feed it correctly.
The information below was brought to my attention today by Ron Terrill and verified by Aaron Fencil from Stockpile Defense out at Front Sight.
Ron reported and Aaron confirms that the Winchester White Box ammunition has been historically the lowest grade and poorest quality training ammo available. The quality of this ammo has actually gotten worse recently, and this has been noted by a number of Front Sight Instructors who have had problems with this ammunition feeding properly through stock Glock or XD weapons.
Ron also reports problems with some of the cheap Remington ammo. Several guns from several people had problems with the ammo. See the video here:
http://youtu.be/mjfVAEcSmPI
I talked to Aaron about this in detail and it seems that Walmart is pressuring ammunition manufacturers to make the ammunition more cheaply. However, the process of making the ammunition cheaper by a few pennies is causing the ammo to become unreliable, compromising your training experience and possibly your safety.
For the record, Stockpile Defense prefers NOT to stock Winchester White Box in their store AT ALL due to its historic low quality. Aaron does report that the Federal White Box is a level of quality better than the Winchester. However, for best all-around factory training ammunition, Aaron prefers to sell PMC or Sellier & Bellot. Both PMC and S&B are manufactured overseas and imported into the United States. They are brass-cased ammunition.
Aaron went on to say that it’s important that people remember to run at least a magazine of their primary carry ammunition through their weapons before they actually carry it. You don’t want to find out in a gun fight that your gun does not like its ammunition!
In general, you will find that higher quality defensive ammunition will feed more smoothly and will not have problems that the super inexpensive ammo may have.
I would have been skeptical of a single report from one of my readers, but Aaron Fencil verified this.
About Aaron Fencil: Aaron and Kristen Fencil are the owners of Stockpile Defense in Pahrump, with a store in town and also onsite at Front Sight. Aaron sells about 50 million rounds of ammo per year.
