Is factory ammo really this bad?

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Have been reading themes in a few threads where one dude says something like "Brand X ammo had 3 duds in a box" the the next poster says he only shoots the same brand and it is 100%.

I can't think I have ever had any issue with factory ammo, sans rim fire, that was directly the fault of the ammo and at that I still feel the gun was just being picky.

I did have some 7.62x39 that wouldn't fire but if I recharged, it would go bang on the second hit. I put blame on the rifle for light strikes and did not fault the ammo.

I had a .380 once that would have issues feeding certain shaped bullets, but again, I fault the gun and not the ammo.

I just find it difficult to believe that factories, many of them with military contracts, would put out a 1% failure rate much less some of the posts I read here.

Been shooting for 30 some years, just haven't seen it.

What are your views?
 
The only ammo I've had trouble with is Winchester White Box, but it seemed to only be a few rounds and box specific. Other boxes would be 100%.
 
I've found much the same thing. Even the cheapest factory ammo has been really good, at least for going "bang". Accuracy has been more variable.

I have had some issues with rimfire, and it's usually been just that the priming compound doesn't seem to go all the way around the rim. A little rotation of the cartridge makes them usually fire.
 
I am either the luckiest shooter in the world or I don't shoot enough to notice but I've only ran into maybe one or two issues with any factory ammo, and they were with TulAmmo.
 
I've shot factory ammo(30-30 and .243) for 50 years.Winchester and Remington,about 80 to 100 rounds per year.Never had a problem.
 
In tens of thousands of centerfire rounds fired over 25+ years, I've had one fail to fire. It was a reloaded .38 Special round, sourced from a commercial reloader that sold to law enforcement agencies. The gun was a Charter Arms Undercover. The round fired the second time the hammer was dropped on it.

In even more rimfire rounds fired, I've never had a misfire.
 
I mean, in reality factory ammo is probably pretty reliable. But you factor in our tendencies as humans for cognitive distortion, and you get "oh, I'll never shoot that brand again". I'm guilty of it myself. I had a bad 2 boxes of Fiocchi .45LC and probably won't shoot their ammo in that caliber again, despite the fact that if I tried another 4 boxes it'd shoot fine. Anecdotal experience overrides actual data in a big way.
 
The only ammo I ever had issues with was a box of Remington Core-Lokt .308. I pulled the trigger on a deer and nothing happened (other than the loudest sound in a gunfight, "click"). I cycled the action and pressed the trigger on a second round with the expected results. Inspection of the cartridge showed a light primer strike. I further noted that the primer was more deeply seated than other cartridges in the box. Also found a second deeply seated primer in another cartridge. Never had a problem with Core-Lokts before, but this pushed me into reloading my own.

I doubt that the failure rate of most mainstream factory ammo is anywhere near 1%.
 
I'm thinking the ammo companies use different standards depending on the price point.

Winchester White Box has been mentioned,here and on other sites, as being prone to misfires. I've had personal experience with Remington Thunderbolt .22 ammo having problems. Others have complained about other .22 bulk ammo.

I've had no problems with the higher priced ammo, and heard little of others having problems with it.

So perhaps they have lower standards for the cheap stuff.

Some foreign companies also load military ammo, so perhaps they're using primers that require more force to detonate.
 
I think in the time I've been shooting, I've only had one factory centerfire cartridge fail to fire.
The cause appeared to be a deeply seated and possibly hard primer.

As is said, accuracy is more variable.

Right now, any issues a company has with its ammo are likely to crop up, what with them running production hard and fast.
 
When I first started reloading 30 years ago factory ammo wasn't this bad. Now it's absolutely horrible whether it was made in the U.S. or in Russia. If your ammo positively absolutely MUST work 100% then you really need to start reloading. There is no comparison between what you can make and what you can buy. U.S. ammo factories have been running 24/7 since the beginning of the Persian Excursion and the quality control has gone straight down the drain. Our military has buying small arms ammo from South Korea and Israel for years now to keep up with the demand. The U.S. factories cannot make it fast enough. I have seen big brand U.S. ammo with primers inserted upside down and sideways and cases with no flash hole. I witnessed a factory sponsored shooter at a National match who had one round with no flash hole in the case. It blew the last stage of the match for him. Needless to say he will never use that brand again. In today's market products only have to sell, they don't have to actually work. I would never trust mass produced ammo for self defense use.
 
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When I get a 22LR dud many times I pull the bullet and check for priming. I have three small bottles full of 22 cases, mostly Remington, that had no primer.

I do a lot of shooting (home range). Yesterday evening is a typical example. I had four dud rounds out of 200 rounds of Remington 22LR.
Sometime the dud has a little priming and will fire when the rim is hit in a different place.

Off hand I can think of almost a whole box of Federal 9x18 rounds that were duds.

The first round from a box of MagTech 380 Guardian Gold was a squib load that barely made it out of the barrel.

Remington .223 that was all over the target. You could hear the difference in the powder charge from shot to shot.

Local fellow bought a new 1911 and a box of high dollar defense loads. The first shot was a squib and the bullet stuck in the barrel. The shooter didn't understand what had happened and fired the second shot, which wrecked the gun.

And on and on.


Now days it isn't unusual to have a factory case split down the side when fired, even a 22 Mag.
22magcasecrack.gif

30.06 cases cracked during the forming process. The hot gas burns through the case like a blow torch. The crack is so small you can't see it unless you know what you are looking for (like the bottom case).
casecrack.gif
 
I have seen many a factory round with inverted bullets, inverted primers, 49 rounds in the box, and the best one I have seen is a 9mm case with a 230 FMJ .45 seated into it, it was shaped like an ice cream cone. That one was factory Remington UMC back when it came in a yellow box.

Just my .02,
LeonCarr
 
Tul ammo .45acp and some various .22lrs.... those are my only duds, in the past 9 or so years....
 
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A year or so ago, a friend and I were shooting on his property. He pulled the trigger, and said "that was weird!" He had racked the slide to chamber another by the time I called "cease fire!" Luckily he didn't pull the trigger, because a squib load of WWB had lodged a bullet in the barrel of his new Kahr.
 
One time shooting factory it made the gun go boom and look like a black powder. Luckily held together and after repairs was fine.

Another time was on rim fire where cases where dented.
 
WWB 9mm; had a couple that were very suspect and they hit the trash.
Sellior and Bellot .380 that had very hard primers.

A couple duds with rimfire Remington but i always seem to find at least one oversize bullet in every box too.
 
I must be lucky. In over 25 years of shooting centerfire I can only recall 2 FTF and they were both 9mm. Rimfire... that's a whole different story (Remington Golden Bullet)!!
 
In the 50 years I've been shooting, I've only had problems one time with factory ammunition, and I've put thousands of rounds down range.

About eight years ago, I had a four boxes of W-W chambered in .45-70, and the first three rounds were complete FTF's. I called Olin, and they told me to send in the remaining rounds. I had four boxes, all with the same lot number. I returned it to Olin, and they sent me four certificates to pay for new ammo.

Like others, I've had a couple of .22 LR's that I had to re-position, but no complete duds.
 
The reason I dislike Remington Golden Bullet so much is I had a 550 round bulk pack that seemed to have one dud out of every six rounds. I have disliked it ever since.
 
Over the decades I have been shooting, it was not until after the turn of the century that I began to hear so many complaints about poorly made US cartridges.

I don't know if it is the internet, or whether it is the trend to run companies into the ground for profit. The idea that profit in the short term is the only thing that counts really started in the 80’s and American made goods just got shoddier and shoddier as the bean counters let the factories fall apart rather than put money into maintaining them.

It used to be that American ammunition was something you could trust your life on. Now, heck if I know. :(
 
My club were experimenting with our own loads of .38 rounds. We had three of our own loads, which varied in terms of bullet type (semi wadcutters, full wadcutters), propellant type and load. We tested them alongside various factory .38, using a bench rested Marlin. At 25yds, our loads could hold a sub-inch group. The factory ammo didn't fair so well. However, Magtech was surprisingly good and Remington was absolutely dire. It was like we took a shotgun to the target.
 
Excluding rimfire, I've had 5-10 light primer strikes. Mostly from foreign 7.62x39 (Wolf) I had 1 that was Federal 55 gr. fmj plinking ammo. It was from a 1k box and I've shot about ~600 rounds out of that box. I've never had a problem with any 308 I've shot (Winchester, federal wolf)
 
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