All posts in Magazines

Aftermarket magazines for Glocks, Should you deviate from Glock Factory Magazines?

Glock Factory MagazinesFor those of us that are old enough to remember the AWB and how expensive magazines for Glock were, we can appreciate the fact that trying to improve some aftermarket magazine to work in a CCW gun is long over as long as we have a Congress held by Republicans.  Glock magazines were going for close to $100 a mag if you wanted a Glock 17 or a Glock 19 mag.   I remember strolling the gun shows looking for used magazines for a Beretta 92FS and it was one of the few firearms where you could easily find used but in good condition mags.  Many 45acp guns became more popular because it was pretty rare to have a firearm that was chambered in 45acp that held more than 10rds.  I put myself in that same mentality and ended up getting a 1911 for just  that reason.

Many people seem to go overboard with the capacity issue and think they need higher capacity, but often high capacity means less reliability.  The majority of the people that order high capacity magazines need to replace the aftermarket magazine springs and followers to get what they want out of them.  In My opinion 15rds is pretty high for CCW and needing more than that in the gun means discomfort and weight.   Just carry a spare Glock Factory Magazine or leave it in your car as a place to retreat to if you are that concerned.  If you look at the statistics on self defense shootings, it’s rare that it’s more than single digits so why by the cheaper mags.  Rotate your magazines and use the aftermarket stuff as range mags and you’re fine.

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Was their something wrong with Glock Magazines? Stick with Magpul PMAGS for your AR

MAGPUL PMAGSMAGPUL Glock MagazinesI’m getting sales calls from people asking about the Magpul Glock magazines and maybe it’s just me, but I have no idea why Magpul is bothering with this?  We had a lot of issues with the Magpul AK magazines and I can’t say that it’s all the magazines fault, it’s more like… how the heck are you going to make a Spec Magazine for a firearm that has so many manufacturers?  We have enough problems with customers walking in and asking for Glock holsters and finding out some of the Gen 1, Gen2, Gen 3 and Gen 4 Glock handguns don’t all fit in the same holsters.  There are slight trigger guard differences and you never know when there might be a slight variation in production that will affect you in someway, it’s just a reality of manufacturing.

We’ve seen so many recalls in this industry from hammer springs causing failures to fire, trigger bars sliding out of triggers after a certain round count, out of spec AR15 Bolt Carriers and even some bad runs on Magpul PMAGS.   I still highly recommend using PMAGS but all of this venturing into making magazine for Glocks and AKs just doesn’t seem like a good idea.  Now with Kalashnikov USA moving production to the United States, I’ll have to consider doing a review of Magpul AK Magazines working in an American Made AK and see how they run, but there are so many after market magazines out there that Magpul venturing into too many things seems to diminish their image in my opinion.

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Smith & Wesson Factory Magazines and the M&P 9 and 40

Smith & Wesson Factory MagazinesWe see all of the trends in the firearm industry and have enough experience to say NO, to stocking inventory on certain firearms but the sales data just doesn’t justify keeping inventory around for it.   When I think of Smith & Wesson handguns I usually think of the wheel guns because it’s such and established brand with so many firearms that have been in use for a long time.   When Law Enforcement started making the changes from 38 Special or 357 Magnum to Semi-auto handguns, there was a period of time that the handguns out were really not that great.  It was really a machining and engineering starting point.   There were a few S&W guns in the 80’s and 90’s that were OK, but nothing compares to the reliability and durability of what firearm manufacturers are putting out these days.

I’ve got a few wheel guns in my safe that get used very often but the one firearm I’ve been eyeballing for a long time is the Smith & Wesson M&P.   I’m always torn when I see these 9/40 guns because I’m always wishing I had a 45acp.   The capacity on the 9mm is 17rds the 40 is 15rds and and the 45acp holds 10rds.  These have the interchangeable backstraps, there are compact models and it’s up to you have you want to thumb safety.   We stock a lot of the Smith & Wesson Factory Magazines for all of the M&P handguns, from the Shield to the M&P.   There AR15 rifles are always probable in my Top 5 list of AR15s to recommend.

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Pocket Carry Options keep expanding but not everyone considers it

I never tKahr Magazineshought about carrying a pocket gun when I first started carrying a Colt 1991A1 and a Beretta 92FS.   At first I started out with a should holster but when summer came, fanny packs or small of the back were the only good options although I did try IWB with the Colt 1991A1 for a little while.   Most people think of pocket guns as 32acp or 380 but I have to make the Official Announcement that that era is far over.   There are so many durable 9mm pocket guns and Kahr Firearms has been extremely popular for 9mm pocket guns.  The .380 ballistics have come such a long way that it’s not what it once was.

Not enough people consider pocket carry and we hear about it every day in our store.   People are always having trouble picking a holster out but pocket holsters seem to be very generous as far as fit and it’s not that hard to find a good one. The Ruger LC9 was popular but we see more people buying the Smith & Wesson Shield and Kahr is always a given.  We do sell magazine holsters that will work for Kahr Magazines like the Kahr PM9 and I highly recommend carrying them.   There are several pocket holsters from Elite Survival Systems as well as revolver speed loader and single magazine pouches.

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Do your gun magazines work in your firearms?

Gun MagazinesThere are plenty of people out there that stock piled various firearm magazines in the last 2 years, especially after the Connecticut shooting when everyone thought that President Obama would have the Political climate to ban the AR15.  I won’t ask all of you reading this, to raise your hands if you actually thought that would happen. I found it embarrassing to watch people panic.  I had a friend who recently picked up his first AR15 a Colt 6920 and got a pretty good deal but it looked like it was sitting around for awhile from a Y2K panic buy, apparently the seller had large quantities of magazines for sale and he asked if  it was a good deal.

I told him to buy whatever he wanted but if he was buying large quantities of them he better test them out before he thinks they are all going to work in his AR.   Gun magazines are like wine, they need to be store properly, and all are made on different dates.  There is truth to the fact that a Magpul Pmag will not be durable 30yrs from now just based on it’s material break down, and metal magazines won’t if stored properly, but how bad is your outlook on life if you have to worry about that?  If you got a good buy on bulk magazines take atleast a half dozen of them and test them on the range and make sure they drop free, rotate the magazines when you use them, and when they need to be tossed out, open up the packaged ones and test them out again.  Don’t expect the brand spankin newly wrapped magazines to work, I’ve one too many times seen people have issues with magazine dropp

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Wilson Combat Magazines for Competition and magazine rotation

Wilson Combat ETM MagazinesOne thing I learned a long time ago, is magazine rotation and paying attention to round counts in firearms.  You don’t have to be exact but if you keep a reference to how you buy in ammunition, it will be a good way to know how much you put through your firearm.   I’ve been on firing ranges enough to see firearms fall apart, scope reticles spin, magazines dump ammunition and semi-auto firearms go full auto.  Those statistics are there and they will eventually occur at some point.  There are reasons why you need to always point a firearm in a safe direction because there are mechanical things that can occur that caWilson Combat 9mm Magazinesn and do happen.

Magazine and recoil spring replacements are inevitable and it’s best to stay ahead of the game before you find out at the wrong time.  You should consider having range magazines and having carry magazines and always ROTATE your magazines.  Wilson Combat ETM magazines have numbers on the bottom of the magazines that you can use to help you monitor usage.   I’ve never had issues using 8rd 1911 magazines and pretty consider that to be a standard capacity magazine even though 7rds use to be the common standard.

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Metal Magazines still have their place, but consider Chip McCormick Magazines over knock off USGI Magazines

Chip McCormick MagazinesThere is something to be said about having metal magazines around, whether they are USGI AR15 magazines or metal handgun magazines.   If you look at the materials being used in so many modern firearms, like Glocks or even Magpul Pmags, they are extremely durable designs and have a lot of advantages over steel frame, but the one thing they don’t have is longevity.   You won’t find any Glock firearms functioning 100years from now because the material will have broken down.  I even have a few local Police telling me they have Glocks that are over 20years old and they can see the decay.   With plastic Pmags, those are going to become brittle over time and they will loose strength after a few decades have passed.  Kind of strange that this is the case because there is a major flaw, but what is perfect?   What lasts forever?

Operator induced malfunctions cause the majority of firearm malfunctions and the other is lack of maintenance and magazine rotation is one of them.   There are things you can do especially with a 1911 type of magazine where you can pull the springs out and stretch them that can buy you time.  You have to be careful about gun show specials, I’ve got a lot of Korean 1911 magazines that I use as range mags but it’s also because they do jam on me and it’s a great way to do malfunction drills.   They seem to have really short lives and the springs wear out and become weak, so even if the mags drop free, using Wolf gun springs or better quality magazines like Chip McCormick magazines is a much better idea.  Personally I prefer Wilson Combat for My primary magazines, but they are more expensive but Chip McCormick has a very good manufacturer warranty on their products if that isn’t an incentive for a first time buyer.

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Yes, the Glock 42 has already changed and so have the Glock Factory magazines

Glock Factory MagazinesWithout having to steal anyone imagery, I’ll just defer you to Google to see what some of the other bloggers have mentioned and that there have already been changes to the Glock 42 .380 caliber pistol.   It’s not a surprise to us because we see stuff like this all the time, if you’re the first person to buy the gun, you might end up with basically the commercial prototype and the guy that buys the same same gun a year later will have some type of extractor, recoil spring, slide stop change, hammer spring change, take down pin, trigger pin change that your gun was found be fault with.   I learned this less about 15yrs ago when a friend had a Kahr pistol that he had to send back because the trigger pins we’re falling out of them.   Well, Kahr firearms has a pretty well established name in the industry but it doesn’t mean they haven’t made engineering mistakes.   For all of the things that NASA has accomplished in existence, it’s has some  pretty catastrophic mistakes.  Things always seem like they’ll work on the drawing board but when it comes to fielding, there are too many variables that absolute testing is an impossibility.

I’ve seen too many patterns and trends go awry that the advice is to always go slow.   Don’t be one of those guys that goes out and picks up a gun at a gun show and then finds  out there aren’t any holsters for it.   Is you picked up a pile of Magpul Gen 3 PMAGS in the last year and a half, you better go back and check them in your firearms because there were some pretty big batches that are out of spec and they are out there.   You’ll usually always better to stick with Factory Magazines because they tend to get it right or improve on it rather than an aftermarket magazine that won’t know about firearm tweaks and modifications.   Since we have found out there are already changes to Glock 42 Glock Factory Magazines we’ve had to make sure we didn’t have the first run mags here because we know that somebody is going to call  us out on it because of the changes.  We always listen to our customers and learn from them because that’s just the only way you can really stay in the know.   Obviously Glock Inc. got some negative feedback and had to make changes.

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A time and a place for extended magazines, Wilson Combat 10rd Magazines

Wilson Combat 10rd MagazinesI remember back in the day of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban and what it was like to go to Gun Shows and all you saw were after market magazines and many of them being not very reliable, if you wanted standard capacity magazines that were factory made, you had to pay a pretty hefty price for them.   One of the reasons I ended up going with the Beretta 92FS was because that had the most availability for used standard capacity magazines and reliability was what I always wanted.  The Colt 1911 was the first hand gun I owned but the AWB really didn’t impact that firearm, and as a matter of fact, there was actually a trend towards firearms like this because if you were stuck with 10rds and less for a firearm, why not go with 45acp.   For some reason I thought I still needed more than Wilson Combat 7rd or Wilson Combat 7rd magazines but I ended up going with a cheap aftermarket 10rd magazine, and the mags barely lasted more than 3 range sessions before they crapped out on me.

I learned that lesson real fast and just went back to 8rds +1 but on my learning curve, I stopped doing the +1 on my guns because after several training events, started noticing that this was over stressing the springs and if you have cheap springs, they are going to slow down and throw off the timing on your 1911 and it’s either going to stove pipe or fail to feed properly.    I’ve made the decision in the past that any time I change the magazines springs on my handguns, I change the recoil springs because I’ve seen “timing issues” on many occasions and I don’t own unreliable handguns.   There are always tweaks you can do if you have the patience to salvage magazines that don’t work but why waste your time and get Wilson Combat 10rd Magazines that are very popular with our IDPA Competition shooters.  I personally find anything over 8rds for 1911s to throw off the balance of the gun but there is a time and place for extended magazines.

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Grip Pads, Flush fitting and drop free magazines for 1911s experiences with Chip McCormick Magazines

Chip McCormick MagazinesThe term ” love my 1911s” will probable be in every blog post I write whenever I mention them because if you look through all of handgun history, there really are not that many firearms that stay around very long because technology and manufacturing improved so much in the last 200yds that powder, bullet types and mechanics of revolvers and semi-autos evolved quickly.  I’ve held and shot some WWI and WWII 1911s and they really didn’t shoot much differently than my Colt 1991A1 or my Springfield 1911A1 USGI model.   If you take the M1 Garand and Compare that to the error, who wouldn’t take an 8rd bandolier over a bolt action when your life depends on it.   It was only a few years later that we fought in the Korean War and the M1 Garand was so badly out dated, but the M1911 A1 was still highly revered.   I believe in just the last year there have been major technological improvements to the caliber debate that we are arriving at a point where bullet “types” matter more than calibers so just by judging by Police Department Purchases there is a trend back to the 9mm.

The funny thing is so many people are owning AR15 Carbines that handgun capacity isn’t as much of a debate and we see plenty of people using 1911s as secondary firearms.  Even though the 1911 is considered to be a large firearm, it’s actually a very slim frame compared to Glock 45 caliber firearms and I find it very easy to carry IWB.    I’ve always leaned towards flush fitting Chip McCormick Magazines than any extended pads because I found that for CCW that extended magazine pads are more likely to catch on clothing and from my experience the butt of a handgun grip is usually what causes most firearm printing.   The 1911 is easily an 8rd capacity firearm and although for a brief time I carried it +1 to be a 9rd firearm, I’ve learned  you are pushing the compression limits on 7rd, 8rd or 10rd magazine springs and shortening the life.   Always test your magazines out at least once to check functionality because there are always production changes, and being in retail

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