BANG! BANG! POP! Here's Why You Always Test Your Ammunition

By Bob Owens | 12:32 PM | December 27, 2016

BANG-BANG-pop/rack-pop/rack-BANG! (with a failure to extract)/rack-Bang!-Bang!

That’s not encouraging at all.

Certain companies don’t seem to bother with QC at all, resulting in supposedly premium shotgun shells that either don’t work or tie up the gun. The Winchester SX2 has been 100% reliable with all other ammunition, but OATH slugs caused it to fail.

All ammunition used for this test came directly from OATH, and they were advised about 40% squib rate in the previous batch. I was assured that this ammunition would work better. Let’s take a look at how much “better” it works.

Standard procedure for a squib load is to check the bore for obstruction, but we’ve had so many squibs with this load and were able to observe the slug pushed out of the barrel at low velocity by the primer alone, that we didn’t have to worry about it being stuck.

Bob Owens is the Editor of BearingArms.com. Bob is a graduate of roughly 400 hours of professional firearms training classes, including square range and force-on force work with handguns and carbines. He is a past volunteer instructor with Project Appleseed. He most recently received his Vehicle Close Quarters Combat Instructor certification from Centrifuge Training, and is the author of the short e-book, So You Want to Own a Gun. He can be found on Twitter at bob_owens.