kinda an off-the-cuff observation looking at various threads / online articles / conversations etc

there seems to be a school of thought that if a gun can't shoot - insert x,xxx number of rounds - trouble free it's trash

'carry it at your own risk' or 'it's your funeral, bud'.

I'm middle-aged. I don't recall reading articles about shooting S&W Model 36s / 60s 1,000 rds to make sure they didn't break. Or PPKs. Or P230s or Beretta 85s...

When did this become a requirement?

Kinda goes for the whole 'torture test' phenomenon. Pro-tip - if you get a gun filthy and abuse it : it will break / malfunction. Maybe soone - maybe later but it will happen.

I love watching gun videos - but I feel like these videos / articles have created an unrealistic expectation of what the capabilities should be.

If your wife made you 576 good meals and screwed up the 577th meal ... would you divorce her?

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Last I heard it, the "requirement", if only by conventional wisdom, was 500 rounds.

Of course there's no law saying you can't bring home an gun (and, presumably a holster for it), strap it on, and be carrying it. It' whatever floats your boat.

My is experience is that if a gun is going to choke it will do so in the first 100 rounds.

Realistically, if your carry piece gets through 3 magazines on every single range trip, it's GTG.

Well even the manufacturers contribute to this, even Sig started saying everything needs a few hundred rounds as a "break in" period.

I figure if it does 100 rounds of my carry ammo its probably good to go.

quote:

Originally posted by clayflingythingy:
My is experience is that if a gun is going to choke it will do so in the first 100 rounds.

Some years ago I conducted a survey of Classic line SIG owners here asking about malfunctions/problems with new guns. The vast majority occurred or were discovered within the first 100 rounds. After that the occurrences became irregular and spread out so much that no meaningful pattern was apparent. To add a cushion my current standard is to double that and ensure that the test includes all the carry magazines at least once each with carry ammunition.

It would be interesting to see someone gather similar information with other guns and perhaps with a large sample, but I’ve never even run across a report like what I did.

My response to, “It’s your funeral,” is, “It’s your time, money, and trouble.”

Most folks I know gauge it @ 500 rounds. I set my bar @ 250

I don't think 1000 rounds is necessary, or even 500, to establish reliability. More like 200. Every new gun I have purchased that was unreliable exhibited problems well before that. Of those, two went literally one shot (the one in the chamber) before choking, in one case failing to extract, the second misfeeding the top round in the magazine.

I can pick up a Glock and expect it will run.

If frequent reports are occurring of breakdowns, malfunctions, failures, returns to factory, etc, and these reports are happening at round counts up to 1,000, then it's really a no-brainer that one would want to see his or her pistol past that point before giving it much credence.

Some firearms don't function well or reliably until they're "broken in," and some manufacturers suggest several hundred rounds to do that.

A thousand trouble free rounds isn't much to ensure that the pistol is reliable and to get to know the pistol.

"Requirement"? It's up to you, and no one else, to decide your comfort level.

I personally put 250-300 rounds through any gun i plan to carry. I also number my mags.

a handgun is a man-made machine and can fail. Ammunition can also fail. For those reasons, my Instructor drives home the importance of malfunction drills as part of your training.

I think it started with YouTube one-up-manship. Someone starts with 500 rounds in row. That gets a lot of views. So someone does 1000. And torture tests. And surprise, they manage to create a malfunction (while garnering views and getting paid). And top shooters that win prizes and sponsorships all state what their practice is. So knuckle draggers get it in their head that if they shoot 1000 rounds, they're as good as the top shooters just because they did it.

I just roll my eyes and move on to the next (meaningful) discussion.

ETA: I forgot to mention the new desire to impress people online (hint, rarely is anyone actually impressed) and seek validation.

I go about my “break ins” as a combo of the gun and all the magazines i have for it so break in varies depending on the guns capacity. For example, a glock 19 w/3 mags ill shoot 15 rounds of training ammo out of each mag then fully load all 3 mags with carry ammo and shoot again. Then ill do all 3 mags again with carry ammo just to be sure. So in this case a total of 135 rounds. If i buy a nee mag i do training ammo then carry ammo only once and i consider it gtg. So for me it varies by capacity because magazines can fail and not be the guns fault.

What happens of the gun goes 999 rounds and malfunctions on the thousandth; do you start over with with a new "carry gun"?

I typically run a box of SD ammo through after atleast 100 rounds of practice. If there's no hints of trouble I'm fine personally. It's your life and your family. Make sure it's right for you.

There is no requirement of 1K IMO. It's all personal choice.

For semiautos, I prefer 500rds before carrying (50-100 of those being the self defense ammo through the 2-3 carry magazines), but will make due with 250 (50 self defense) total if need be (assuming 100% function in the 250).

For revolvers, I'll do 100rds.

Anything can (and eventually WILL) fail.

“And ev’ryone will say,
“As you walk your mystic way,
“‘If that’s not good enough for him which is good enough for me,
“‘Why, what a very cultivated kind of youth this kind of youth must be!’”

— W. S. Gilbert

My SD guns I've always run 200 rounds of premium self-defense ammo (e.g. Speer Gold Dots) through them before I considered them GTG.

I don't use cheap training ammo (e.g. WWB) for this as I want the pistols action to be experiencing everything like it would in a SD situation.

I chose 200 for two reasons:

I'd always heard 100 rounds for quality guns like Sig's classic line and wanted to be more conservative

when I bought my Kahr their manual said 200 rounds break-in.

I always find it humorous that people will insist their pistols go "(x) rounds," before being considered reliable, but don't hold that same round count to mags, when most malfunctions in semi-auto guns are mag induced.

I’ve carried quality pistols with virtually no rounds down the pipe in my younger days. I remember buying a 229 when the 357 came out, loading it up and carrying it out of the gun store upon purchase.

I think the whole “flawless” 500 round thing is silly.

When I used to read gun magazines in the 70s and 80s, the rule of thumb was always 200 or 250 rounds through a semi auto pistol.