USGI mags. tossed away?

Mike1911

Mike1911

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My cousin has a friend who's son is in the National Guard. He claims that after they use their weapons on the range they just throw away the empty mags.from the M16's.

Anyone know if there's any truth to this? I find that it's kind of hard to believe.

Thank in advance
 
M16 mags are meant to be somewhat disposable (compared to all-steel, expensive magazines like M14 mags). Still, I'd find it hard to believe they'd throw away perfectly good mags after one use.
 
I've read that the USGI mags were made to be disposable.

I'm sure one of the Military guys will be along with the 411.
 
I bought a bunch of magazines from a person who told me that is how he acquired his magazines back in the day.
 
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I make sure that any magazine I buy is pre-ban! Colt magazines marked .223 are going to be pre-69. If they have alloy followers and are marked Colt they are going to be pre-89. After 89, Colt started to switch over to a black plastic follower.

vellnueve said:
I hope you bought them a while ago...
Click to expand...
 
News Shooter said:
I've heard from people who trained at Devens that is exactly what they did.
Click to expand...

this was the exact opposite as what my unit did. we had mags that were so damaged, a few times we had difficultly finding ones that worked properly so we could do rifle training. my unit never had a supply of mags until it started seeing deployments.

i never saw a single new 30 round mag as long as i as in the national guard. it was only till i was deployed when i was issued new mags.
 
Dench said:
this was the exact opposite as what my unit did. we had mags that were so damaged, a few times we had difficultly finding ones that worked properly so we could do rifle training. my unit never had a supply of mags until it started seeing deployments.

i never saw a single new 30 round mag as long as i as in the national guard. it was only till i was deployed when i was issued new mags.
Click to expand...

Just repeating what I was told[grin]
 
Hey!
I'm watching the Military Channel -- Navy Seals Training BUD/s is the name of the show.

I watched the squad training. It was daylight practice. They were going full auto on some buildings, equipment and silhouettes. The camera pans back as the guys get up and move toward the building -- leaving behind in the sand a WHOLE PILE of empty mags.

Now maybe they went back later to pick'em up, clean the sand out and reuse them...maybe.
 
Well, when you're doing exercises or while in combat, I would expect nothing less than for everyone to leave their mags where they fall...
 
i remember reporting to my units when I was Reg. Army and Supply issued you 7 magazines, a cleaning kit, sling and blank adapter.

however, when we went to the field / range, there would be boxes of magazines laying around (i.e. take one / leave one - help yourself).

I never got new magazines outside of deployments... even then, i'd always see boxes of magazines laying around.

We would turn in broken or defective magazines to the Armor who would throw them in a pile, subsequently would turn them into "the warehouse" to be coded out.

from my experience, it's false.
 
In the 9 years I spent in the USMC, I have NEVER heard of such a thing. It may be acceptable (meaning you won't get yelled at) to drop and forget the mags if you're getting shot at and in full retreat, but otherwise, you take care of the equipment you've been issued.
 
Many years ago I was given a few 20 rd. M16 mags by a friend who told me he got them from a friend in the service. My friend was told that the mags were left all over the range after practice, they didn't have to be accounted for, so he took some.
 
I was in the Guard at Devens from 99-06 With an overseas deployment in the middle. We never tossed out any mags.
 
4 years active duty, 4 years National Guard, never threw a magazine away. We counted them when they were issued and counted them when we were done. Smells like....
 
WILDCATT said:
the mags belong to the gov,and and you can get charged with possesion of gov property.
Click to expand...

Being that the U.S. government has sold a ton of Mags at surplus auctions over the years and mags are not serial numbered. Coupled with the fact that most government contractors don't mark their Gov contract mags any different then their civilian market ones, prosecution is highly unlikely unless you are caught in the act of stealing them. Of course Vellnueve is also right in that they would at this point most likely be post ban.
 
Of course, the #1 reason to not do it is the fact that you'd be breaking and entering onto a military base...
 
I can certainly understand variation from branch to branch, but this practice would be completely unthinkable in the USMC. One of my issued mags had a large dent in the side and would jam with every shot fired. I took it to the armory to get it swapped out and was told to disassemble it and try and tap out the dent. It got to the point that I was trying to find mags online from places that would ship to Hawaii (where I was stationed). Eventually the mag deteriorated so much that the spring actually burst out the right side of the magazine during an annual qual. I got an alibi for that course of fire and a brand new (to me) magazine. During my enlistment I saw only 3 new mags still sealed in the plastic.
 
In twenty plus years of military service including a stint as a range officer for qualification on the M16, I never heard of discarding magazines after use. A lot of mags are in poor condition from being treated roughly, but I never saw any simply thrown away.

This sounds like a story to me.

Mark L.
 
I work with a guy in the National Guard, he recently came back from Bosnia and said they were tossing a bunch of mags so he grabbed some. He gave me a box of 30 there were 4 pre-bans in there and I gave the rest to LEO's and free-stater's. I don't see any reason why he would lie to me about it so I guess its possible
 

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