Get The Lead Out

By James Rummel

I was at the shooting range with two students just the other day. We were having a big problem with constant jams when they were trying to fire their handguns chambered for the .22 Long Rifle cartridge.

The problems were always the same, either failure to feed or failure to extract. What does that mean, anyway?

Failure to feed is that the cartridge would only go into the chamber a short distance before getting hung up, half in and half out. The gun wouldn’t go into battery, and so couldn’t be fired.

(Not the actual gun discussed above.)

Failure to extract is the same thing, but it is when the gun is trying to get a cartridge out of the chamber instead of putting one into the chamber. It pretty much looks the same, with a cartridge stuck half in/half out.

So what caused this annoying and recurring problem? My students were both long time shooters themselves, and had brought along their own ammunition. It turns out that the .22 ammo they were using was so old, the exposed lead bullets had started to oxidize.

Okay, so what do I mean by that? The …Read the Rest

Source:: Hell In a Handbasket