Posted: 10/10/2006 6:38:43 PM EDT
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Ok. I bought a new Kel-tec P32, black with a wallet holster, and a few magazines, n some ammo. The guy I buy it from is the owner, and my CCW instructor. Ive known him for a long time, and he gave me a few pointers, said something about shooting around 150rds to break it in. Something about tight guns, so I figured I would shoot it alot if I liked it. I was all excited and had to rush to the range to try it out. First mag was with some Speer defense ammo. Did great, no jams very accurate (7 yards...) - I was happy. So I loaded up some ball ammo I purchased at the range, Mag-Tech 71Gr, standard stuff. Mag-Tech is what I use in my 9MM and seems to work well. Same held true for the .32 Auto I bought at the range. Well that box went quick with no jams, and I switched to the PMC ball 71Gr that I bought with the gun. Same general accuracy (7 yards....) but quite often it would jam, which is kinda new to me, NONE of my guns jam (knock on wood, this is surely the first one) but I figured it was the giant magazines I was using or maybe the wallet holster... Then as I was clearing another round out of the gun I happened to have the light on overhead (indoor range) I noticed a odd disformation on the spent casing. When I popped out the magazine, the slide shot forward, swallowing the questionable casing, and when I racked the slide the damn thing shot out on the range. They have a no people on the range thing there, even though there was no-one there. I looked at it, and realized there were hundreds more out there, and by the time I went out and got someone to get it for me I would probably have forgotten where it was. So I continued, thinking it was just a bad casing. Then it jammed again, a few rounds later. This time I made sure to grab the casing, and sure enough it was bulged on the side as well. I decided to stop, as I was about 10 rounds short of finishing 4 50rd boxes plus the 7 defense rounds. As I was looking around cleaning up the empty boxes of ammo, I noticed that quite a few of the shells were bulged in this same way. Half the cartridge is fine, the other half, from about 2 CM from the rim all the way to the top were bulged. At this point I figured, broken gun. Brand new broken gun. So I packed it up, and shot my other guns (which made me very happy, my new ones and a few old favorites brought my mood up quite a few notches) and saved a few of the molested cases along with the rest of the PMC rounds. Fast forward, I stopped by the gun shop to have it checked out, showed the guy the rounds. This was a different guy, the one I trust the most (bought most of my guns from this guy, and hes talked me out of quite a few in my best interests!) and he picked it up as the ammo was like +P without meaning to be, and faults it on the ammo. He gave me a box to replace what I shot and another box for my troubles, and just said it was just not meant to be. Soooo should I seek a gunsmith? Send it back to Kel-tec? Or go shoot again with Mag-Tech and never EVER use PMC again?? I really dont want a Kabboooooom out of anything. I dont know any pistolsmiths either. I really really like this gun, I mean its as accurate as it needs to be and I can conceal it better than my .45 (or have it as backup to the .45). I was really surprised with the accuracy - I could have shot it at like 15 yds I believe. |
| I understand your well-placed concern about this. I would not fire the weapon any more until you can have a gunsmith look it over. There are a dozen things here than could be going on and only one of them is the ammo. It is worth getting checked out even in the unlikely event that the weapon is defective or was damaged by the +P ammunition. |
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I have never heard of a kaBoom with .32ACP, even with the guy who handloads his P-32 to nearly 2x normal pressure. There is no +P in .32ACP AFAIK - some may use the appelation for marketing purposes. If it only has this problem with PMC I would put it down to bad ammo and forget it. If you have similar problems with other brands, or if you notice spent brass with a sooty appearance on one side, then I would send it back to Kel-Tec and let them look at it. Why go pay a gunsmith to work on it when you have free warranty work available and a 4 week turn around time? HERE is how to save about $22 on shipping to KT. I strongly suspect bad ammo here. |