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When storing your firearms is it bad to leave the magazine full?

No.

What weakens springs is cycling them, not compressing them and leaving them that way.

Let me think this through.....

One gun in the house, do you keep the magazine loaded or hope that the BG waits while you load one for him?

GOT IT! Leave it loaded!

oh no I have my night stand gun thats always loaded, I was more asking about some of the guns that are in my safe.

Bonc_CHL wrote:oh no I have my night stand gun thats always loaded, I was more asking about some of the guns that are in my safe.

Aha I see now.

I still keep all of my mags loaded just in case of zombie attacks

Them damn Zombies do just pop up at random, may have to go load everything right now!

My experience with loaded mags is that if you leave them loaded all the time for a long time, they will start to "bulge" out at the top of the mag. You can't see it bulging out but what happens is when you press the mag release to drop the magazine, it only pops out about a half inch. You then half to finish taking it out with the other hand. It is minute but it affects the function of the magazine.

You can "squeeze" them and try to make them narrower. I got one squeezed back into shape and it works like it did when it was new, the other, well we will just say it was salvaged for parts. Anyway, I thought I was having an issue with springs but new mags fixed it right up. My gunsmith related the bulging story to me and he has seen many mags that stop functioning because of expanding outside of the original shape.

So, to make a long story even longer, let mags that you keep loaded have a rest. Unload them and load up one of the replacements. Supposedly it lets the metal rest and will prevent the miniscule bulge that will stop your mags from dropping out when you most need it!!

And please, you must remember that I am no expert. I just speak from personal experience.

The Military has done numerous studies on that very issue. What I got out of it was that a cheap magazine was more likely to have problems. But we knew that, didn't we?

I keep my night stand pistol loaded, the HD shotgun loaded, and around 30 AR mags loaded.

Factory mag should be fine. Each 5-10 years buy new mags, sell the rest or dedicate them to the range duty.

I have one mag for my PX4 full size that just holds my personal protection rounds when on nightstand duty. It has been of late about 4 rounds shy of being a full clip, have been using the same one for a year and I use both clips at the range...no problems actually has made it easier to load.


Nick

Actually, Kimber recommends that you load their 1911 mags overnight before using them. I'm guessing it adds that first bit of compression into the metals' system or perhaps just gets rid of some of the break-away friction between the follower and the mag sides. From what I know, it's better to leave them loaded rather than empty. Every single mag I have is loaded (1911, M1A, wife's XD9) because of this. Mechanical engineers please chime in on this one!

markthenewf wrote:Actually, Kimber recommends that you load their 1911 mags overnight before using them. I'm guessing it adds that first bit of compression into the metals' system or perhaps just gets rid of some of the break-away friction between the follower and the mag sides. From what I know, it's better to leave them loaded rather than empty. Every single mag I have is loaded (1911, M1A, wife's XD9) because of this. Mechanical engineers please chime in on this one!

I have to sit down and read the owners manual at some point. I have two Kimbers and have only glanced through the manual. Interesting information. I have never worried about leaving my magazines loaded and have a magazine I used with my Glock 17 that I kept loaded full for 20 years. I only replaced it because it was old. In thousands of rounds, it never malfunctioned.

I don't believe this is in the manuals, but is what I've taken from the folks at M-nineteen-eleven-dot-org. I did have FTF with the original Kimber pro-tac mags, but not since I've started "pre-loading" the mags. Anyways, can't hurt just to leave them overnight!