Stockpiling Low Quality AR-15 Range Magazines
Kevin Felts 08.22.18
Question to the reader, do you purchase low quality (cheap) AR-15 magazines for the gun range?
Awhile back some of my buddies and I were talking about stockpiling AR-15 magazines. My opinion is preppers / survivalist / sportsmen should only stockpile the highest quality AR-15 magazines, with the Pmag being the gold standard.
Before President Trump was elected in November of 2016, gun companies were in a production frenzy. This was in anticipation of Hillary Clinton becoming president and Democrats ramrodding some type of gun control legislation through congress.
After Trump won the election the bottom dropped out of the gun market and prices plummeted. With great prices why stockpile anything less than the quality of a Pmag? That is besides the occasional purchase to test various products.
Several years ago a buddy of mine caught a great sale on a certain AR-15 Magazine brand name magazine. If I remember right the price was around $6.99 each, so he bought a bunch of them. When he took a carbine class several of the magazines malfunctioned, and one even had the base plate come off during a firing exercise.
My buddy said he went back to his truck, swapped out all of the cheap magazines for Pmags and finished the class.
During the conversation he stated, “The cheap magazines will be range magazines.”
Would the reader like to know what I do with AR-15 magazines that malfunction? They are tossed in a box that has “Retired” written on the side. Maybe when the next so called “assault rifle ban” comes around I may pass the magazines off on GunBroker, or take them to a gun show and sell them at some ridiculous price.
Besides practicing how to clear a malfunction, why purchase anything besides a proven product?
There are probably still people out there who refuse to use Pmags because they are made out of “plastic”, and still use aluminum AR-15 magazines, which is great.
Even with aluminum magazines, why purchase anything besides top of the line, such as NHMTG?
Some of the worst AR-15 magazines I had unfortunate experience of using were military surplus bought in the 1990s at various gun shows. Just about all of those magazines ended up in the retired box because they simply would not function. However, a lot has changed since the 1990s.
So reader, do you have low cost questionable reliability AR-15 magazines you use at the gun range, or anywhere else? What do you do with magazines that start to malfunction?
It’s not like there is that much of a price difference between the poor and good quality magazines. If magazine A has questionable reliability and cost $8, and a Pmag cost $11, why not get the Pmag?
Then again, some will repeat the old adage, “Buy cheap and stack deep.”
