Owners of semi-automatic weapons may consider keeping a strategically-placed magazine loaded at all times. It makes sense. You hope you never need it, but in a critical situation where seconds matter it could save your life.
Share this logic in public or with friends, and you will come across this alarming tidbit of firearm folklore: “Don’t keep a magazine loaded. Over time the spring will wear out, and your weapon could malfunction, which is the last thing you need in an emergency.”
What to do? Is this advice grounded in myth or cold hard fact?
Storing a Loaded Magazine Is Fine…Most Likely..
There are many that disagree to the loaded-magazine conundrum. In theory, the spring should not wear out while being compressed if the spring material does not pass its yield point. A compressed spring holds more potential energy than a relaxed one, but with no other forces acting on it, the potential energy should never diminish. The spring should discharge equally well tomorrow as ten years from now.
Some of the data bears this out. Magazines that have been loaded for decades have then discharged without a hitch.
The problem lies in unpredictable factors. Different manufacturers use different materials and processes to make springs. The loaded magazine could be exposed to contaminates, moisture, corrosion, or bad ammunition. A spring doesn’t have to wear out for a neglected magazine to become a liability.
What Does Wear Out a Magazine Spring?
There is a faster way to wear out your magazine’s spring than keeping it perpetually loaded — load and unload frequently which is what we enjoy doing. Stress-strain cycles play a major role in spring wear, however, parts designed with ferrous metals like most steels generally have lifetimes in the millions of cycles and fail by different modes long before the lifetime is reached.
So obviously, the life of the spring depends on proper design and the choice of materials. The spring steel gun magazines typically use is a moderately-high carbon steel with alloying agents in small quantities. Properly designed, a magazine spring would last far longer than the other components of the gun that are regularly undergoing thermal stress, diffusion, and much larger fatigue cycles.
This is no reason to be stingy at the range. A high-quality magazine should function perfectly through tens of thousands of cycles. If you haven’t already, consider getting a Maglula Loader to save your thumbs and speed up the loading process.
Is it Better to Not Store at Full Capacity?
Some “forum experts” recommend down-loading the magazine — that is, loading fewer bullets than the maximum capacity.
No evidence exists to support this suggestion. Your spring will be less compressed over time, but there’s no reason why this should lengthen the life of the spring.
By doing this you’re also reducing the amount of rounds you have to defend yourself if the magazine is being used for home defense. You don’t want to be without those last one or two rounds should you suddenly need them especially when leaving them out provides no benefit.
Better Safe Than Sorry
If you don’t want to take the chance of a magazine failing in a pinch, most manufacturers recommend rotating your stored magazines. Take your strategic magazine to the range for a change, and put a different pre-loaded magazine in its place.
How often this should be done depends on who you ask. Some say as often as two weeks, others as much as six months. The average answer falls around every ninety days.
The Real Reason You Should Rotate Your Magazines
Rotating your magazines gives you a chance to strip, clean, and inspect the magazine for faults and imperfections. A lot more can go wrong with a neglected magazine than the spring spontaneously quitting on you.
Buying a firearm or firearm accessory, storing it, and forgetting about it is never a good idea. Responsible gun owners make sure their firearm is in good working order and that they know how to use it. This involves practice and maintenance.
Every few months on your practice day, pop your range magazine out, load it, and put it in the place of your home-defense magazine. Take the pre-loaded magazine to the range, practice with it, and see how it fires. When it is empty, clean it and inspect it for defects. Do the same thing with all the parts of your firearm while you’re at it.
Conclusion
Cycling magazines can become a part of the regular maintenance routine that keeps your firearm in tip-top condition. That way, you always have a loaded magazine where you need it, confident that the spring is ready for action — and so are you.
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