How many mags do you CCW with?

[appraiser]

when I carried ccw, j frames had 5 in the gun, 2 speed strips

the model 13, 6 in the gun, 4 speed strips

Glock 17, one in the pipe, 17 round magazine in it, 2 15 round mags in my pocket

I have at least 3 mags for every gun I own now

 

[MagnumAl]

i keep 3 mags in my car w/ another box of ammo in the trunk. The firearm is usually all i carry, loaded and chambered, unless I am going to a high crime area.

I assume this is a non-zombie situation or I would answer differently

 

[Len-2A Training]

The most common equipment failures when TSHTF are magazine-related. If you're not carrying at least one spare mag, it's quite possible that you'll be out of the fight long before you exhaust the contents of that first mag. Two is one; one is none.

Ken

This is the philosophy I work from.

I found out the hard way when I decided to practice between the Randy Cain and Gabe Suarez courses. I was shooting my P99 with 5 mags (3 of which were brand new), when I heard "ping" and looked down to see a "mag dump" on the bench. Turns out that Walther had a QA problem with the mag bases for the P99 .40 and they were fracturing causing this problem. Subsequently S&W sent me a handful of new bases and every one of them failed. Switching to S&W marked bases solved the problem. It was a valuable lesson learned.

If I need more than 8+1 in my USPc,I am probably going to end up dead no matter how many spare mags I have.

Greg, you are missing the point. See my story above. Once the mag dumped, there were 8 or 9 rounds that I never got to fire with that mag. A mag failure could make you dead very fast in a bad situation. The mag itself is a weak link and thus the redundancy is for that as much as having more ammo to work with.

Thus, if I'm carrying a semi-auto, I have a total of 3 mags on me. If the snubby, then I'll have 24 spare rounds on me in speed-strips and/or ammo wallet.

 

[firecontrol123]

Magazines have been known to fail, it happened to me twice with my M&Pc. Fortunately it was at the range. I always carry an extra mag no matter what pistol I'm carrying.

 

[FalArAk]

Greg, you are missing the point. See my story above. Once the mag dumped, there were 8 or 9 rounds that I never got to fire with that mag. A mag failure could make you dead very fast in a bad situation. The mag itself is a weak link and thus the redundancy is for that as much as having more ammo to work with.

Thus, if I'm carrying a semi-auto, I have a total of 3 mags on me. If the snubby, then I'll have 24 spare rounds on me in speed-strips and/or ammo wallet.

No,you're right..I just don't carry that much and I seriously wouldn't know where to put all the spare mags anyway

If it was socially acceptable,I would just walk around with my FAL across the back with 20 loaded mags in a tac vest.

 

[Jaxon]

In my younger days, I was a mag-festival, (what was I thinking?). I have spares in my bag, but rarely on my person...

"mag-festival"... like two carry mags, three in the EDC bag and 4 more in the car?

Who would do such a thing?

Wait... what?

 

[fencer]

I carry 12+1 in my p226 and one spare 12 round mag. But I often have a range bag in the truck with 3 additional magazines and atleast a couple of hundred rounds, just incase I have a chance to stop at the range in my travels.

 

[Troy]

Walther P99 9mm w/ (2) Mass friendly 10 rounder backups
Glock 30 w/ (1) 13 round backup mag

 

[Jose]

Just what's in the gun for me.

Hope it never malfunctions on you.

 

[Jose]

I carry one extra magazine or speedloader. Always.

 

[MontyTJ02]

With the M&P40c I used to carry a spare mag and flashlight in a holder on my left side. Then I grew up. Now I just carry the 10+1. Like stated before, most situations involve 2 or 3 rounds. Plus Ive been training at the range on 1st shot placement. Now I carry the pistol and OC. OC first then comes another hole to breathe out of.

 

[joehaus]

Hope it never malfunctions on you.

Me too. I'm taking these things into consideration. All points need to be met for a spare mag to make any difference.

-I'll be in a situation requiring me to use deadly force?
-At that specific time I have a catastrophic magazine failure?
-I'll have the time and distance from target to retrieve my spare mag, clear the malfunctioning one, reload, and continue fire.

What are the chances statistically all of these things will be present at once?
To each his own.

 

[zeppelinfromled]

I usually carry one extra magazine. I'm not obsessive about it, and I don't expect any type of a malfunction or anything. But my attitude is basically, why not? I'm not inconvenienced in any significant way by carrying a spare magazine on my belt. Concealing it is barely an issue since probably literally 99% of people I encounter would assume that it's a cell phone in its belt holder.

 

[GSG]

To the OP, I always carry at least one spare mag for each pistol on me, and at least one spare in the vehicle, plus more defense ammo in the vehicle (you never know when you might have to reload away from home). I live in a free state, so post-ban high caps are easy to come by, and I carry the biggest ones that I can.

Many moons ago I was of the mindset that the spare mag was too tactical for my needs, M.O., run to the store for milk....until I got into live fire drills and experienced mag issues or target surprises.

Now I preach it. Carry a spare, even if its to balance out your belt, carry a spare at all times.

People tend to think of ammunition as equal to firepower, which it is, but in the extent of gunplay or self-defense, its fuel.

+1

Ayoob had a good piece on the legal issues associated with carrying spare mags a few years back. Easier to paint you as a psychopath. Same thing with a back up piece. For whatever it's worth.

Most of what Ayoob writes is spot on, I find it enjoyable to read and informative. But some of it is pure sh**, based mostly on his need to sell what he writes.

Carrying a gun makes me seem like a psycho to sheep already. My self defense plans for the court room are secondary to my self defense plans for the real world. Juries can be incredibly stupid and might believe anything, but juries don't win gunfights.

Liability should be considered and needs to be factored into things, but I personally choose to know what can cause liability so that I can avoid it.

The most common equipment failures when TSHTF are magazine-related. If you're not carrying at least one spare mag, it's quite possible that you'll be out of the fight long before you exhaust the contents of that first mag. Two is one; one is none.

+1

I rarely carry a reload, when I do feel the need to carry one, I carry a back up gun.

The Jim Cirillo-style New York reload makes me smile.

Nice. The difference in issues between free states and here is staggering.

Yeah it is.

With the M&P40c I used to carry a spare mag and flashlight in a holder on my left side. Then I grew up. Now I just carry the 10+1. Like stated before, most situations involve 2 or 3 rounds. Plus Ive been training at the range on 1st shot placement. Now I carry the pistol and OC. OC first then comes another hole to breathe out of.

No offense intended, but I certainly hope the person you shoot knows how much you've been practicing your first round placement at the range when it doesn't phase them. Fatal wounds often don't stop people, including head shots.

You need to bring enough gun and ammo to end the fight. Sometimes showing a gun is enough to end a confrontation, sometimes 17 fatal wounds center of mass aren't enough.

You won't know how many rounds are enough until the fight is over. You will know how many rounds aren't enough when you run out in the middle of a gunfight, or when you have a magazine failure/malfunction that renders your M&P (with a magazine disconnect "safety," I might add) useless in your hands.

 

[GSG]

What are the chances statistically all of these things will be present at once?

Outside of a life or death gunfight? Slim to none. In a violent life or death struggle where there's no rules? They get better.

To each his own.

Agreed. A .22 with no spare mag is better than carrying nothing.

 

[ArmyOfficer]

I just carry the loaded mag in the gun...don't know where to keep an extra without it being a pain...

 

[GSG]

I was sitting at the hospital yesterday morning and the lights went out. I'm talking total darkness. Not a sliver of light. I was wishing I had a case of ammo. Then about a minute later the generators kicked in. Really made me think.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I carry a rechargable Liotec Wolf Eyes Champion flashlight too. Great product, great price, and he's right here on NES.

 

[joehaus]

In a violent life or death struggle where there's no rules? They get better.

Do they? Can you find just one published incident where a private citizen had a catastrophic magazine failure that changed the outcome of a violent attack? I'm not saying it can't happen, anything can happen, it's just extremely unlikely. More likely to happen at the range when equipment if being stressed over and over.

Remember the third point I made; Time and Distance. 21 feet right, 7 yards? The distance most defense shootings occur. You'll be lucky to get your firearm out let alone swap mags. And if you don't have that, having 10 mags won't make a difference.

 

[cekim]

Do they? Can you find just one published incident where a private citizen had a catastrophic magazine failure that changed the outcome of a violent attack?

Randomly occurring low-probability events with no causal relationship have no reason to increase in probability as a function of a "life and death struggle"...

Carry a crap gun and that changes, now FTE, FTF, etc... have a causal relationship - crappy gun... Don't do that... Practice, test, don't scrimp.

Remember the third point I made; Time and Distance. 21 feet right, 7 yards? The distance most defense shootings occur. You'll be lucky to get your firearm out let alone swap mags. And if you don't have that, having 10 mags won't make a difference.

Gotta go with Joe here...

If you have a comfortable way to conceal extra mags and want to carry them - go for it... Better to have and not need as they say...

If it weren't for MA absurd laws, frankly, I'd go with Timber's technique and my car would be a virtual munitions dump

But unless you are going to have a truck following you with everything you could possibly need (including backup), you have to accept that life outside your fortress is always a gamble - you can incrementally improve your odds with training, firearms, knife, OC, asp, tazer, body armor, rifle trauma plates, quick-clot, bandages, etc...

The law of diminishing returns will kick in sooner rather than later in most parts of this country that most people with the good sense to be members of NES would spend the majority of their time...

 

[GSG]

Do they? Can you find just one published incident where a private citizen had a catastrophic magazine failure that changed the outcome of a violent attack? I'm not saying it can't happen, anything can happen, it's just extremely unlikely. More likely to happen at the range when equipment if being stressed over and over.

I can't recall reading one description of a citizen having a catasrophic magazine failure anywhere actually. But I think there's a couple of reasons for this. Most news stories generally never mention (non-LEO) good guys with guns, and when they do, it tends to be reported as "an assault rifle" or "his 9mm Glock service revolver".

Even with most police and military shootings, if it's even reported, the most we usually hear about it is the skin color of the suspect related to the skin color of the cop(s), or how many times the cops/soldiers fired, but that only comes out if the reporting news agency feels that more than two bullets fired are too many. Also, with most civilian self-defense shootings that I do hear about, people are so concerned about liability that they keep their mouths shut, or the info just doesn't get out to the general public.

I've read some exhaustive descriptions of the more notable police shootings that resulted in tragedy or a sweeping change in training methods like the FBI's 1987 Miami shootout or the LAPD North Hollywood shootout, but in many cases there's details that go unpublished like the caliber, brand, or grain of ammunition used, magazine capacity, when people were reloading and why, etc. etc. Some of this is because it's not relevant to police reports that can be accessed through FOIA, or because shooting review teams didn't find the information worth discussing, or because in the heat of such a stressful moment, the officer(s) involved don't remember the sequence of events correctly.

So to conclude my long response to your question, no I've never read it, but I don't think that the lack of info means much.

I agree with you that with most quality handguns that are properly maintained and serviced, the odds of a catastrophic magazine faliure are very slim. I've personally fired more thousands of rounds than I can count at the range since I got into pistols, and and I've never had a mag failure like that. The only mag issues I've ever personally had were a weak mag spring in an old S&W magazine that wouldn't lock the slide back on the last round (springs which I replaced later that day) and an old non-fully metal lined Glock magazine that would feed rounds off to the side of the feed ramp when the mag was about half empty (it did this about 50% of the time, I got rid of ASAP after the process of elimination with other mags and careful examination of the problem).

But even with all that said, from everything I've read and heard, a magazine issue with a semi is the most likely issue to run into, so I carry spare mags. Well, for failures and because I've never met someone who survived a gunfight who says "I wish I'd had less ammo with me that day."

Remember the third point I made; Time and Distance. 21 feet right, 7 yards? The distance most defense shootings occur. You'll be lucky to get your firearm out let alone swap mags. And if you don't have that, having 10 mags won't make a difference.

I don't train to reload only from cover. I train to reload from cover whenever possible, but to reload whenever I have to, including under fire (and while wounded, if necessary, although it's difficult to simulate a GSW at the range ), although preferably before I run dry, and ideally not at all.

I've read, seen video of and heard firsthand about shooting situations. In many of those people have had to reload, sometimes under fire, and sometimes while wounded and under fire at the same time.

It's not a great option to have to reload or clear a malfunction in the middle of a wide open parking lot when 6 feet away from your assailant, but it's a better option than taking your gun out of the fight altogether by running out of ammo.

 

[joehaus]

I will concede there are many scenarios that I would prefer ammo and lots of it. I have carried extra mags in the past. Maybe if I had a comfortable set-up instead of a lose mag in my pocket I would be inclined to carry extra. But at this point I don't feel the compelling need to carry over what is in the gun. Of course life being life I'm now jinxing myself.

 

[Mike_Diako]

P3AT in front left pocket or IWB with a spare mag as a BUG and whatever my choice of CCW is for the day w/ a spare mag for that.

 

[GSG]

Randomly occurring low-probability events with no causal relationship have no reason to increase in probability as a function of a "life and death struggle"...

Carry a crap gun and that changes, now FTE, FTF, etc... have a causal relationship - crappy gun... Don't do that... Practice, test, don't scrimp.

No, I don't mean that literally "if it can go wrong it will go wrong in a gunfight." What I'm saying is that at the range, you'll probably go out on a sunny day in good lighting conditions, you won't be tired, sick, or uncomfortable, it's an environment that you know and are familiar with, there's little stress. If you're using Shoot-N-C targets you'll have a visual confirmation that you hit the target when you shot, you'll take care not to scratch your gun or get your pants dirty... I know that many of these are generalizations, but for many people it's true.

In a violent life or death struggle, you may not start from 21 feet away and work your way forward. It might start as a sucker punch to the back of the head or a knife in your stomach, or two guys grabbing you while their friend grabs your wife by the hair. You may very well get hit or hurt before you get your gun into the equation, the gun might get banged around, stepped on, dropped in a puddle or pile of sand before you shoot, or halfway through the mag. Bodily fluids like spit, sweat or blood may interfere with your grip, or smacking that SOB in the forehead with the butt of your pistol might break or damage the magazine floorplate, or give the magazine spring that extra push it needed to not raise the follower correctly.

I was saying that anything can happen in a violent struggle which would increase the odds of a weapon or shooter malfunction, and that when preparing for a violent struggle you should prepare for an unpredictable violent struggle, not the canned scenario where your gun works flawlessly everytime and the bad guys in the mirror don't cash the check that your tough guy talking just wrote.

For example, I saw a dashcam video of a female cop in North Carolina who was shooting it out with a guy in a minutes long moving gunfight, he was fleeing a bank robbery with an AR-15. She took several hits in the fight, including one to the right forearm (her primary shooting or "strong" side) at the start of the gunfight, which made it so she couldn't properly grip her gun. While shooting, the gun jammed due to her injury; I saw another video of her describing what took place, but either she didn't say exactly what it was that caused it or I don't remember, as it's been a few years since I saw the videos.

While moving (to stay behind the engine block of her rolling cruiser which she was using as limited cover) and wounded and still taking fire, she had to clear the malfunction and keep fighting. I believe that she dropped the partially full mag on the ground, then cleared the jam and reloaded. I doubt she or her trainers expected such a situation to occur, but she successfully cleared it and survived the fight. However, she needed that spare mag, and not because she ran out of ammo or broke the other one.

If you have a comfortable way to conceal extra mags and want to carry them - go for it... Better to have and not need as they say...

If it weren't for MA absurd laws, frankly, I'd go with Timber's technique and my car would be a virtual munitions dump

But unless you are going to have a truck following you with everything you could possibly need (including backup), you have to accept that life outside your fortress is always a gamble - you can incrementally improve your odds with training, firearms, knife, OC, asp, tazer, body armor, rifle trauma plates, quick-clot, bandages, etc...

I agree with you that if it's possible to carry spare mags (and if you can comfortably conceal them, a concern for most of us here) then you should. I was in a wedding a couple of weeks ago where my tux only allowed me to hide a small pistol, but no extra ammo. I didn't sweat it (probably because 3 other guys were carrying too ), but I had more nearby in the car, where they were more useful to me than they would've been if they were 1/2 hour away in the safe at home, although still less useful than they would be if they were on me.

I will concede there are many scenarios that I would prefer ammo and lots of it. I have carried extra mags in the past. Maybe if I had a comfortable set-up instead of a lose mag in my pocket I would be inclined to carry extra. But at this point I don't feel the compelling need to carry over what is in the gun. Of course life being life I'm now jinxing myself.

Beware of the ever possible jinx malfunction.

I'd recommend trying a few different mag pouches to see what works for you, but this can be frustrating, expensive and time consuming. You could try a spare mag in a cargo pocket, a pocket holster for the mag (I've never used one, but someone on here sells them), or a belt slide or IWB spare mag pouch. There's a lot of options out there, but depending on your body style and manner of dress, some of them might not work for you. I actually have a friend who carries IWB and uses Thunderwear for extra mags, which also might be worth trying.

I'm also assuming that you live in Mass., which might make spare mags or ammo in the car not practical if you share a car with an unlicensed wife/GF or if your concerned about suitability if you lost it in a vehicle break in (long shot I know, but it wouldn't surprise me in some municipalities).

But ultimately I think more ammo is a good thing, so do with it what you will, and stay safe no matter what you choose to do.

 

[dwarven1]

If it was socially acceptable,I would just walk around with my FAL across the back with 20 loaded mags in a tac vest.

You could move to NH... like Doobie.

 

[Ish]

I’m with Cekin, Timber, Greg and Joehaus.

I believe that it is stressful enough to get into a real gun fight, and I believe that more ammo equals more stress, if we even realize and can find those extra mags while in the fight. Many people will say that training for those things will make you calm and ready, sorry to say but it is not true. If we think about it, we can’t most of the time shoot like we shoot in a range during a normal competition, so imagine about a real gun fight.

Talking about Murphy, if the 1st mag fails, who can tell me that the second one (if I have time enough to reach it and load the gun) will not fail?

 

[Jose]

Maybe if I had a comfortable set-up instead of a lose mag in my pocket I would be inclined to carry extra.

Joe, surely you know these exist, right?

 

[DukeInFlorida]

One mag carried, with one mag in the gun, total of two mags, and the one round in the chamber.

M9 Beretta with 15 round mags, plus one in the chamber, that's 31 rounds carried.

P229 .40 S&W is 12 round mags, plus one in the chamber, that's 25 rounds.

Which gun do I have, punk? Go ahead.... make my day...........

 

[Twigg]

The most common equipment failures when TSHTF are magazine-related. If you're not carrying at least one spare mag, it's quite possible that you'll be out of the fight long before you exhaust the contents of that first mag. Two is one; one is none.

Ken

This is the mindset I carry with (with a quick, silent prayer that I will never need the initial round in the chamber, let alone any others).

This is both what I have learned in classes and observed during live fire exercises. By the time you've cleared your sidearm and the magazine, you're dead.

Always, at least one spare.

Never use cheap mags either. I've been using Wilson's in my 1911's and haven't had any issues.

 

[Realtor MA]

Here's an easy way to carry a second mag.

http://www.lapolicegear.com/desantis-pro-stealth-holster.html

 

[gerrycaruso]

I carry a Kahr P45 and 1 spare factory 7 round magazine.