Too many rounds down range?

Truthfully... those 2 friends have more guns than just 2 9mils. Every year there is a Gun Weekend at an undisclosed cabin in the mountains. A small, invited group of enthusiasts meet to shoot anything that's brought, within reason. I've had a standing invite for a while. I haven't gone because I was "unequipped". No longer.
 
Then I guess all these people taking day or two-day long technical courses shooting over 300-500 rounds a day are throwing away their now ruined pistols and buying new ones each time. :rolleyes:
 
Isn't every brother in law an expert in something? snicker.
Like Jim Watson says, that's not enough to do anything. And ballistics isn't about how hot the firearm gets. Hot will expand groups, but nothing else.
"...30 rounds...in about 30/45 secs..." Slow fire. snicker. Used to get the wood forestock of our FN's smoking with 2 20 round mags on rapid.
 
I usually average 150-200 rounds an hour when firing my autos and 100 an hour in a revolver. Unless you're competition shooting you have nothing to worry about.
 
That's not a ton of ammo. A good shooting session for sure, but not anything outlandish.

What's your BIL's experience with firearms?
 
Sounds like you enjoy blasting...if so and if you like what you're doing, have at it, the gun can handle it up to a point. Rod
 
Last edited:
my 357's heat up a lot quicker than my Glock 19.Fired 6 magazines in 40 minutes and the Glock was just warm. Field stripped it later and was barely dirty and the lube was fairly intact. Fired 5 mags of Speer Lawman 124 gr. FMJ and one mag of 124 grain HST hollow points.
 
MY BiL grew up shooting and hunting. Mostly rifles. But that is why my wife doesn't like guns, she and her sister had to go to the range with him and their father... and didn't enjoy it. Yet he didn't have to do what they wanted to do. Typical spoiled middle son. But he made some bad decisions that made him sell them off his guns, and hasn't had one in a long time. He wants another rifle, but my wife will not let him while he lives with us. And the way he acts... maybe she is right.
 
MY BiL grew up shooting and hunting. Mostly rifles. But that is why my wife doesn't like guns, she and her sister had to go to the range with him and their father... and didn't enjoy it. Yet he didn't have to do what they wanted to do. Typical spoiled middle son. But he made some bad decisions that made him sell them off his guns, and hasn't had one in a long time. He wants another rifle, but my wife will not let him while he lives with us. And the way he acts... maybe she is right.

So your saying your BIL is a knucklehead..........correct?
The world is full of gun experts.........and knuckleheads...............so don't worry about how much you shoot! Just do it and have FUN! :cool:
 
I may have read that quickly shooting a box of ammo through a rifle with a long thin barrel may temporarily change its POI a bit. Maybe I was reading an old-timey gun writer criticizing Weatherby or some other manufacturer for that reason.

I have also read a lot of memoirs where firing an air-cooled machine gun for long burst after long burst without changing the barrel or letting it cool off made the barrel literally glowing hot and eventually harmed it.

None of that sounds like what the OP was describing. He was talking about shooting something like one round every 30 seconds. I would be willing to do that with any of my service pistols for many hours with no fear at all of harming them. I would expect them to keep chugging away until they finally starting jamming due to being dirty. That would take a long time and they wouldn't be harmed by it, they would just need cleaning.
 
Last edited:
Okay, so for context shooting a high volume of ammo out of a rifle in a short period of time will create accuracy issues when the barrel heats up; this is common knowledge in rifle shooting. When I say rifle shooting, I'm not talking about blasting at the 100 yard line with your AR, I'm talking about precision rifle shooting out of bolt guns. Some of it is barrel fouling as well.

With that said, it's not an issue with handguns in terms of what you're doing. Yes, if your barrel heats up with a rifle it may cause your groups to expand from 1/2 MOA to 1 MOA (example). Don't worry about that with handguns, not really an issue. You can't apply that same thought process from rifle shooting to casual handgun shooting, it doesn't work that way.
 
It sounds like you have a "training plan" when you go to the range, so no, its not too many rounds if you're sticking to your plan.

But adapt your plan ...mix it up with some reload drills, some malfunction drills, etc..../ introduce a timer if you have one ..to put some pressure on your performance.
 
200 rounds in 9 minutes and the gun will get hot but not damage it. At a rate of 200 rounds in 90 minutes you could shoot the gun for days on end and not see any problems other than needing intermittent cleaning and lubing.
 
I used to load up mags to the max. For a 15 rounder for example, I'd load them all up.

Nowadays I do 2 to 6 rounds depending upon what I'm practicing. Transition of one to another, or controlled pairs from one target to another. Or controlled pairs to three targets, different distances. If I load too many at once, I tend to get sloppy, as you say.

It's not just that you get sloppy -- you also can't tell much about what has happened!

Too many holes in a target makes it difficult for you to evaluate what you're doing right or wrong. I print up a lot of targets from my computer printer, and keep the rounds shot on each target down to 5-6, etc.

When I see targets with a big mass of holes that looks like several shotgun blasts, I know that the person doing the shooting isn't really paying attention to much except the sensation of pulling the trigger.
 
Hot barrels must be more accurate!

I'll usually go thru 200 rounds in ~1/2 hour. 10 small targets at 20 rounds per target. The groups get pretty tight by the last round.

Since the only measurable difference in the gun is the barrel temperature, it is therefore intuitively obvious that a hot barrel will shoot much smaller groups than a stone cold barrel. ;)

(Even if I only get to the range once a month or two)
 
Last edited:
Back
Top