Had a little range time with my stepdad today.  He had two boxes of this stuff that he picked up at a local FFL a few weeks ago.  Had a manufacture date of June 3.

Out of 100 rounds, about 40 didn't fire out of his m&p9c primer was struck, but no ignition. Of those 40, he ran about half through a second time, and maybe 3-4 worked.  I then tried a mag full of what was left in my glock 17, and another 8 in in my pf9, and maybe another 3-4 fired of those.

All told, we ended up with about 30 rounds out of 100 that wouldn't detonate after 2 attempts.  I've never seen such terrible performance in my life.  He has not contacted the company yet, but I will tomorrow morning.  Unless they offer a full refund, I won't be satisfied, as there is no way in hell that I could accept any of their ammo as a replacement.

These are some of the rounds that didn't detonate, all were tried at least twice.

Edit: Oops not GD.  Thanks for the heads up on that brand, I have never heard of it and will probably avoid it.

How exactly do you find primers that don't ignite? Hard primers, soft etc etc. I've read a lot being new to reloading but that just blows my mind. Thanks for the heads up.

Box says "In God We Trust."    Maybe they do;   but maybe we sholdn't trust their ammo?

A-MERC sets the standard for bad ammo.   I actually tried to reload some A-MERC .45 cases.    They wouldn't fit properly into the shellholder;  they felt weird going through the sizing die;  and some of the flash holes were off-center.    


There are a number of reasons primers don't ignite, that are not the fault of the gun:

1.  Set too shallow.
2.  Set too deep.
3.  Primer cup too hard.
4.  Contamination.
5.   Primer overall length too short;  firing pin doesn't ignite but merely pushes primer deeper into the primer pocket.
6.  Improper seating crushes pellet too much;   pin won't ignite it.
7.  Allah wills that the primer doesn't ignite.

Out of curiosity, how much did you pay for the ammo?  As cheap as you can find brass cased factory ammo these days, it often times doesn't seem to be worth the risk to use an unknown reloader.  Even decent steel cased would have let you have a better day at the range.

Those are piss-weak firing pin indentations...

1DD

I believe that he overpaid at about $12-$13 per box.  I was not with him, so he went ahead and bought it.  Were I there, I would have never let him buy it. I tell him all the time to not waste time on crap like that, and give him good advice on basic practice ammo and prices.

I really don't think so.  They may appear that way as when you are used to seeing a spent/struck primer, it has been ignited and fireformed.

This.

I disagree that those look like they have been ignited and fireformed. OP stated that these are the un-fired rounds.

Did the OP fire any of this ammunition In either of the other two handguns initially, or just second-attempts? Did the M&P fire any other ammunition successfully that same range trip?

I've reloaded a ton of 9mm, to include all of the brands of brass in the picture, and have found primer pockets that are shallow, deep, tight and loose. I've had primers so deep I was surprised they ignited and some that would not seat flush without using so much force that the cup was distorted. Never had any primer related issues through four different Glocks...

Other than the manufacturer getting a bad lot of primers, which is unlikely, or somehow the primers got wet or oil contaminated during the loading process, which is highly unlikely, and the fact that there is a mix of brass there, so that rules out uniformly deep or shallow primer pockets, it leaves the pistol as suspect.

A light firing pin hit could have fractured the primer mix pellet so that subsequent attempts were unlikely to fire either, even in a different pistol...

A 40% failure rate is unheard of, unless you are talking about surplus ammunition.

I'd wager the manufacturer will tell you it's not their ammo that it's your pistol...

1DD

Never heard of them.

Looks like a fly-by-night reloading operation.

Chalk that up to "avoid this stuff".

Thanks for the heads up.

I have never seen that kind of failure rate on commercial primers either. Not even with ones that were stored under questionable conditions, or in rounds with corrupted powder charges. Even among surplus, only the very worst I have seen had that high of an instance of primer failure.

A few thoughts:

Bad primers or otherwise wet or damaged
Small rifle primers (harder than small pistol)
Issues with the guns (low likelihood)

No issues with any of the 3 pistols.  All 3 have fired a crapload of ammo without hiccups.  Only one that has ever had any issues is the keltec with some failure to feeds in its first 200 rounds, 5 years ago.  

I figured that it was a given that these were fired out of proven guns.  No way I'd make a thread like this if it were my equipment at fault.  All 3 guns were also re-verified with a couple mags each after trying the garbage ammo.

Also, it's been a week since I contacted the company, and I've gotten no response.

It seems likely then that they used small rifle primers instead of small pistol primers, either on purpose or inadvertently. It seems quite unlikely that that many primers would fail production QC, but we don't know what brand of primers they are using.

1DD