How Many 5.56 Mags Do You Have And Why?

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peeplwtchr

peeplwtchr

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Hi-

I have been wondering if I have enough Pmags, and I can't really decide. Ive got 7, but I constantly see 10+ bulk deals for mags., do I need that many? If so, why?

I only have one AR15.

Thanks
 
On another forum when this came up, and I said I had 40, that was highly unsat.

I think 4 is minimum for fun gun. Around 12 is minimum for going to classes, etc.

More if you want to keep loaded for defense, so some are not available for plinking/training use, are in go bags, and so on.
 
Those of us who lived through the 94 ban and multiple obamascares buy them when they’re cheap. If nothing else, you can sell them for double or triple if you come on hard times and feel like you have “enough.”

if you shoot regularly you understand that magazines are consumables. They wear out, get broken, some don’t work right, etc.
 
shoobe01 said:
On another forum when this came up, and I said I had 40, that was highly unsat.

I think 4 is minimum for fun gun. Around 12 is minimum for going to classes, etc.

More if you want to keep loaded for defense, so some are not available for plinking/training use, are in go bags, and so on.
Click to expand...
Good points.
 
Uhm, mostly as I'm under keen to sight inventory them all, more than 40 and less than a hundred. A couple of tens, the rest twenties and thrirties.

Why is much simpler. Largely because they were a great price at the time. Some of those were cool (now) collectables like Okay and Colt and the like (largely 20 round). Unlike some (or nearly everyone on arfcom) I do not get hung up on what color the followers are (or were).
The current version P-mags are just too cool, so, if I see them at a good price, I'll nab a couple-three.
Keep up a habit of snagging a couple mags 2-3 times a year for 30+ years, and you wind up with a few.
There's extras in the rifle range bag, each of the soft rifle cases, and in all the LBE I own.
 
I have an ammo can full... however many that may be. I’m guessing a dozen. Decent mix of metal/pmag and 10/20/30 rd. I keep saying I’m going to buy some 5s but I haven’t done it yet. Not relevant by more since I’m not in a state limiting rifle magazines to an odd and arbitrary number.
 
peeplwtchr said:
I have been wondering if I have enough Pmags, and I can't really decide.
Click to expand...

If you're wondering the answer is "NO."

Excellent blog post from 2018 by Tamara Keel


https://www.shootingillustrated.com/articles/2018/6/11/magazine-hoarding-always-be-prepared/



From the article

My maternal grandparents were of the generation that lived through the Great Depression. One thing I remember about their house was all the rubber bands.

See, every morning the newspaper would get delivered, wrapped in a rubber band. They would take the rubber band off the paper and save it by putting it on the axle of a doorknob. Their house had some beautiful cut-glass, Edwardian-era doorknobs and nearly all of them were festooned with dozens of rubber bands, because living through the Depression meant you were conditioned to never throw useful things away. Never mind that you could buy a whole bag of new rubber bands at the corner drug store for 49 cents; waste not, want not.

Similarly, I had barely started working in gun stores when the 1994 Clinton-promoted ban on scary-looking guns hit. Living through the ban years made me look at standard-capacity magazines the way my grandparents looked at rubber bands.

I got caught short by the Colorado ban. Whatever I have is what I'm going to have until the law is repealed (unlikely) or I move out of state.

That affected the way I look at magazines. The legal limit in Colorado is a 15-round magazine and I put money aside and I buy as many as I can reasonably afford at any given time.


 
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How many is enough is an individual question we can't answer for you.

How many my wife and I have is based on multiples of boxes of ammo to be loaded, simply because it's convenient and I don't like loose rounds.

And I don't like to spend a lot of range time reloading magazines.

A typical box of ammo is 20 rounds. We have 30 round magazines. Therefore the minimum number of magazines for us is two, because we can load three full boxes of ammo with none left over. We have more... but range trips are always loaded in terms of full boxes of ammo.
 
RetiredUSNChief said:
How many is enough is an individual question we can't answer for you.

How many my wife and I have is based on multiples of boxes of ammo to be loaded, simply because it's convenient and I don't like loose rounds.

And I don't like to spend a lot of range time reloading magazines.

A typical box of ammo is 20 rounds. We have 30 round magazines. Therefore the minimum number of magazines for us is two, because we can load three full boxes of ammo with none left over. We have more... but range trips are always loaded in terms of full boxes of ammo.
Click to expand...

Actually the answer is simple. There is an exact number. And I’m sure Gunny will back me up on this.

The number is ONE MORE
 
Thinking about this subject ...

About once every 6 months, or so, I will see a special sale price on a 10-pack of Brownell straight-20s or Magpul 20s (my preference has always been the 20s over the 30s ... but I have a crapload[technical term, dontchaknow] of 30s) and will quickly head downstairs to do a quick inventory of AR mags before finalizing the online purchase ...

... the result is usually me ending up saying to myself something like, "Good Grief! I forgot that I have so many of these bloody things. I don't need any more." and then returning to my computer to cancel the sale ...

... usually. :)
 
They don't go rancid and they do wear out. Buy what you can, as even if they never get banned or a shortage again, they won't go down in price I don't believe and certainly not much from the current 7-10 bucks. I see no reason to have hundreds for individual use but if you compete, shoot a ton, or are planning on selling them, then there really isn't a too much unless your buying on credit. I buy them when I see a deal. I probably had bought 50 P-mags that I had not paid over 7 each for. I actually sold some last panic when people started inexplicably paying 30 bucks or more for a 7 dollar plastic mag. I replaced many with even more 7.50-9 dollar mags (9 for gen 3). If you shoot thousands of rounds they do get chewed up. I've had some last years and some get stepped on or screwed up in another way in the first use. I keep 10 ready for competition or range use and wouldn't get below 10 to replace those. But I may shoot a lot more than you. Who knows.

It's not like the goofballs around here buying 8 gallons of milk and 6 loafs of bread to spoil and mold when a foot of snow is predicted one night with 55 degree weather the next. How many milk and bread sandwiches do people need. And why no non-perishable food. Not even Peter pan for the bread. Lol

Or the folks at the coast who whine about a plywood/generator shortage every hurricane. When my family lived down there we couldn't figure out why the hell they kept selling off the ones they bought the last hurricane. (Or why no one used real shutters instead of fake plastic ones on their homes....) Pawn shops and classifieds would be full of great deals on generators and plywood as if another NC coastal hurricane was not going to happen. Lol

Sometimes it not so much hoarding as just not being an idiot.
 
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