Clearance Drills and using ALL your equipment

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I spent alot of time at the range yesterday doing holster work and clearance drills. Besides being fun, it was educational.

For the clearance drills, I was loading my magazines with alot of randomly placed snap caps and mixing up the mags so I didn't know what to expect. I'd draw, front sight on target, bang, bang to the "chest", decock and reholster. (trying to also pay attention to my unholstering/holstering which I don't practice at home enough...).

The snap caps of course caused FTF and I'd clear the round (tap, roll, rack)and continue the drill. Something about either the snap caps or the way I was clearing the round caused several double feeds. Well, since this was training, I thought "cool, I get to do the drill without having to set it up".

What I found was that my mecgar magazines are subtley different than my SIG factory mags. In clearing the double feed I was "ripping" the magazine out (as it will not drop free in this condition). The mecgar mag bases are sculpted to the frame and I can't grip them to rip out the mag where the SIG factory mags have a (very) small lip that I can grab.

Now, I always put my defensive loads in the factory mags just because it makes me feel better. But I think this underscores that you need to test ALL your equipment. If it had been a different pistol, maybe the replacement mags would have ripped out and the factory ones wouldn't have. Point is you don't know unless you try!

Now a question: The double feed happened both with the factory and macgar mags. Do you think it was the way I was racking the slide or the dummy rounds causing the issue? I've never had a double feed in this pistol in 2000+ rounds, or any other malfunction for that matter.

(When I rack the slide, I do it pretty aggressively and try to make sure my weak had hits my strong shoulder, so I know I'm not ridding it back into battery.)

Matt
 
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