Adventures with MagSafe Ammunition.
Written by Randy Mays
I continue to be a big fan of the new .357 SIG caliber. The Glock 31 pistol continues to be accurate and reliable. So far, the best ammunition I've found in this caliber is a toss-up between Hornady and Triton. Hornady has a 147 grain bullet that moves at a good clip. The Triton load has a 115 grain bullet that moves faster. As an experiment last night, I decided to fire one round of MagSafe's .357 SIG "Defender" load to see where it hit in relation to the point of aim. That sounded like a good plan.
The MagSafe load is spec'd for 2,150 fps and uses a 64 grain bullet filled with epoxy and shot pellets. With that kind of velocity, the resulting muzzle energy is very impressive. I loaded one round, aimed at the white space in the corner of a paper target and fired. There was some muzzle flash, but not much. The sound was impressive, but I didn't think the recoil was that bad, and the bullet struck the target about where I had a sight picture when the gun fired. So far, so good.
Since MagSafe costs about $3 a shot, I stopped and saved the other five rounds in the pack. I reloaded the magazine with Speer Lawman .357 SIG TMJ loads to continue practicing. The first round wouldn't feed. Being very careful, as I was trained, I took the Glock apart and checked for obstructions in the barrel. The barrel was clear, but what I did see was about half the case from the MagSafe round still in the chamber. We looked around on the floor and found the rest of the case. It had split all the way around about 3/8" from the rim. I was able to remove the rest of the case from the chamber with a brass tool, and the gun was in fine shape.
What lessons are to be learned from this experience? First, you should always try any ammunition you might carry for personal defense and fire as many rounds as you can to make sure it is reliable in your firearm. If I had loaded up 10 rounds of MagSafe, holstered the gun, and then had to use it, I would have gotten off one shot and the gun would have stopped functioning when the second round failed to chamber. Faced with multiple threats or missing the first shot would have resulted in a situation, the technical name of which is "screwed." The first round would have hit something with several hundred pounds of muzzle energy, penetrated and then done a lot of damage. The second round would have stayed in the gun. The gun would have been useless. Get the picture?
Second lesson. "Trust but verify." Commercial ammunition should work in a well-made modern name brand semi-automatic pistol, but sometimes it doesn't work. Sometimes the pistol is just incompatible with the load. The Kahrs were this way when they first came out. Not all commercial 9 mm ammuntion worked in the Kahr. Now I have another data point: MagSafe .357 SIG does not work in the Glock 31.
Third lesson. Carry a revolver as a back-up gun. I have no reservations whatsoever about carrying MagSafe .357 Magnum SWAT loads in a Smith and Wesson Model 60 revolver.
"And now for the rest of the story..." It had been about a year since I wrote this. Tonight (2-21-99) I received a call from Mr. Joe Zambone. Someone had sent him a copy of this Web page and he called to offer an explanation for what had happened with the .357 SIG round. It turns out there was a problem with some of the initial MagSafe .357 SIG loadings. The company caught the problem right away and recalled as much of the ammunition as they could (at great expense). I wound up with some of the ammunition in this batch and encountered the problem mentioned here.