Magazines and reliability

By Tim

Handguns are machines made up of a number of individual parts all working in harmony to achieve a particular goal. If we use these machines with any frequency, sooner or later some of those parts are going to wear or break to the point where they stop working in harmony with the rest of the parts and the gun ceases to function. The magazine of a semi-automatic firearm is also a machine and is the component of your semi-automatic firearm that is most likely to fail.

They can fail in many ways…some blatantly obvious, and some not quite so obvious. A magazine with a visible crack or severe dent is pretty easy to see. A magazine with feed lips that have been spread due to wear and tear or just shoddy materials and construction is not quite as easy to see…at least not until you actually try to use the firearm. Then suddenly you get this:

There are multiple problems at play in this picture. Firstly, the follower of the magazine has apparently become stuck in the magazine tube. This happens occasionally if the magazine gets dirty or …read more

Source:: Gun Nuts Media