Ian Rants About Dumb Ammo Purchasing Decisions

it is like someone goes out and they spend a ton of money on a lamborghini and then they insist on buying like finding an imported rusty barrel of libyan leaded gasoline with little sticks floating in it and then wondering why doesn't their lamborghini run well this is a model 1914 lewis gun the first 10 rounds of this pan are british world war ii uh 303 rounds the second 10 are pof and that's pakistan and then the final are hxp greek 1970. the british is not doing too well so that should be about the end of the bridge that should be about the end of the british bolt's not locking back now it seems to be all right give me the loader i'll uh put some more back in but i'll i've got one two three four i'll put four through because i got that many anyway and then we'll get into the greek and have something that actually runs one two three now we should have something that works well i would say that the greek is definitely the ammunition that you want to have i think i'm empty and that's why you don't deliberately run the crappiest ammo in your machine guns absolutely right you don't run that crap for ammo in your machine gun buy good stuff shoot good stuff that's the way to do it it continues to just be kind of mind-boggling to me sometimes that what in particular machine gun owners will sometimes do with absolute penny pinching on ammunition to the point that the guns don't run like what's the point of going out like why would you spend that much money and a lot of the times especially with the current price insanity on ammunition you're paying like 75 as much for something like that world war ii surplus british 303 that you would for ammo that's actually going to work and there are people who look at it and say yes i will take a 25 savings to have a gun to have ammo that won't even run the gun like what's the point of shooting a machine gun when it performs like that and doesn't even can't even fire more than one round in a row because the ammunition is so poor quality has so many hang fires so many duds deteriorated powder you know the issue is is the same the issue exists for bolt actions and semi-auto and non-machine guns as well but it's particularly baffling that people do this with machine guns you know you spent how much money on that machine gun and you're going to deliberately run the poorest quality ammunition you can manage to find to buy in it i think it's an incredible case of false economy and i would strongly urge people like if you have the financial wherewithal to have bought a machine gun buy ammunition that's going to actually work in it it's not going to endanger the gun and it's going to let you actually have a good time shooting it and spend instead of spending your entire range session clearing malfunctions and then you get to go home and clean the entire gun with water solvent type of cleaning products because you've been using corrosive ammo and not only did you not get to have any fun but you have now filled your gun with corrosive salts that you have to clean out lest you do serious irreparable damage to the gun it applies to bolt actions too you know the stuff's if it's a bolt action you don't have to worry about whether it's got enough power to cycle the action but it's not going to be accurate hang fires suck this is still a case of false economy now i don't want this to become to be seen as as just saying surplus ammo is bad and new production ammo is good because new production ammo is generally pretty much always quite good but surplus ammo can be excellent and that the the case that we had there the example we had there with john and that lewis gun that greek ammo is fantastic ammo and a bunch of it was imported into the u.s you know a number of years ago and if you have it that is absolutely as good as new manufacture ammo but some surplus is good and some is bad and you have to be willing and able to do the research to determine is what you're looking at buying actually going to work well is it going to benefit the gun or is it going to actually hinder your shooting experience as long as you're willing to do that and more importantly willing to not buy the ammo that's not going to work well then great go for it i have a bunch of surplus ammo myself i don't have any problems using it but i avoid the surplus ammo that's going to cause problems actually probably the best example of good surplus would be swiss gp 11 which is in many ways better than any new production 75 swiss you will find out there to buy that gp 11 is basically match quality ammunition it's all in fantastic condition this is probably because it comes out of switzerland and of course they're going to take good care of it and make it really well in the first place but um there are a whole lot of people out there with machine guns in 7.5 swiss anyway um get ammo that's going to be good in it like there's not that much surplus that's actually dangerous like early turkish ammo which will blow up your gun and it will hurt you and i know a guy who lost fingers to that crap don't use torque ammo like my velocity testing on it i broke the stock on a mouser how does that even happen um but there's this huge amount of ammo of surplus ammo that is total garbage and the only valid reason to buy it is to pull the bullets and use them in prop reload them yourself um and at that point don't pay more than you'd pay for projectiles which i guess during today's price insanity is as much as we used to pay for complete ammo but that's a side issue most of the people who are buying this ammo are not buying it to reload most of the people who comment about it below are the people who do buy it to reload because they want to speak up for the fact that they're not making a terrible decision despite the fact that they're buying this garbage and i get that and that's cool if you reload the stuff more power to you it's a significant time investment and i understand why it makes sense for a lot of people to do that but if you're going out there and buying pof 303 the british surplus the british world war ii surplus a lot of the if you're buying eight millimeter lebel with the red primer sealant you are absolutely wasting your money unless you're reloading the projectiles because that ammo will not run reliably uh and there are more examples that could come to mind but do your research learn what the ammo is and for goodness sake buy ammo that's going to work do yourself a favor that's all i got thanks you

Channel: Forgotten Weapons

Views: 655,942

Rating: 4.9592576 out of 5

Keywords: history, development, mccollum, forgotten weapons, design, disassembly, machine gun, surplus, ammo, quality, lewis, lewis gun, 303, pakistani, greek, british, Turkish, gp11, swiss, hxp

Id: 3mDHs4hL5MI

Length: 9min 0sec (540 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 30 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/seanprefect]

He's right. I mean who spends 20 grand + on what is , lets face it, essentially a toy and then penny pinch on the ammo.

[u/LordRedBear]

Off topic question does anyone still make any fully functioning stg models? I want one so bad I don’t care if it’s not original

[u/moviemoocher]

yea i only have one box of 303 if i see anything probably buy it

the best surplus ive ever seen was that australian 308 i have a couple cans left

[u/jenkins1967]

He's absolutely right. I compete in a lot of CMP and NRA rifle matches. I've seen many shooters show up with a $2000 national match quality rifle...and cheap 💩 steel case ammunition. They can't figure why their groups are a foot in diameter and their gun won't cycle.

I've seen a similar problem with reloaders. They show up with some bizarre load that looks like it was done with a mallet and a teaspoon in their backyard.

It makes my head hurt.