What is the oldest you would consider self defense ammo still reliable?

What is the oldest you would consider self defense ammo if stored in cool and dry conditions?

  • Less than 10 years

    Votes: 18 17.8%

  • From 10 years to 20 years

    Votes: 12 11.9%

  • From 20 years to 30 years

    Votes: 13 12.9%

  • More than 30 years

    Votes: 58 57.4%
  • Total voters
    101
I'd found a case of old ammo from '89 (I write the purchase year on the boxes) stored in a closet at my mom's condo. It contained 22LR Stingers, WWB 45ACP's WWB 9mm's, and Remington +P 9mm's. Every single round fired. They were stored in a large pistol case with the padding taken out. BTW, it was really a treat to find "free" ammo. :D
 
dahermit said:
If a person does any shooting at all, they should have rotated through all their ammo in a short time, making the question of how long "self-defence ammo should last", a moot question.
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That's a very true statement. However, through the Obama years it was kinda tough to find certain ammo and reloading components because of "panic" buying as you know. My LGS actually began rationing primers at 100 per customer trying to be fair to everybody.

Then when the political status changes, guys like me take advantage and hoard a lot of stuff that was not that available a while ago. So I wind up with a lot of ammo, etc. I am in the process of using it all up now :) But probably will have some for a long time to come.
 
If a person does any shooting at all, they should have rotated through all their ammo in a short time, making the question of how long "self-defence ammo should last", a moot question.
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To some extent, that's what I do. I've shot ammunition manufactured prior to WWI without issue, but when it comes to ammunition I carry for self-defense, I want to hedge my bets as much as possible.

But to be honest, that's probably just subtle superstition on my part.
 
For defensive ammo... I rotate my stock about once a year. My typical cycle is to buy 6-8 boxes of carry ammos, and every 3 months or so cycle all my magazines out at the range and reload with new. I don't take chances with defensive ammo, I would not willingly buy a 10-year old box of HP ammo for my carry pieces.

If you are talking about other ammos, then, sure. I have surplus ammo that is 20+ years old that is 100% ...and some that isn't quite, which is why I wouldn't use it as defensive ammo. For that matter, I have handloaded ammo (mine, not mystery meat reloads...) that are 20+ years old... but, again, I don't use handloaded ammo for carry ammo.
 
Maybe not a direct comparison, but I've shot plenty of Greek HXP 30-06 M2 Ball through my Garand that was well over 40 years old, and it has never failed to go bang.

Who knows what kind of climate it was stored in? Some ammo cans have shown quite a bit of corrosion, but the ammo still works great. I would speculate than any quality defensive pistol ammo produced in the last 40 years would hold up just as well.
 
I tend to rotate the things out routinely as I clean or work on my various guns. I know that at least one of my glock magazines has 30 years old silvertips in it. I've used up all of the handloaded ammo that I had created for SD purposes and only use factory now.

Maybe I'm the crazy one here, but I test the guns with the chosen product and then buy a box or two. I don't need 300 top quality hollow points sitting in the cabinet. I need enough to fill three speed loaders and my revolvers. Also enough to hold three magazines and a few leftovers for my semiautos.

Anything that is sitting in the cabinet is useless. I'll replace the stuff someday by selling all of my forty year old ammo to some sucker at a gun show. Or maybe not.
 
I am comfortable in the single digits. Yes, most ammo will keep longer but a safety margin on safety equipment is safer.

I shot a lot of .38s rotated out of service at the Atlanta federal prison after only three years.
 
I've got several boxes of WWII military surplus ammo . 45 acp and 9 mm Luger . I bought the 45 acp ammo in early 1970's , dated 1943 . My Dad bought the 9mm in 1961 along with a WWII Walther P 38 , mail ordered it all from Klein's . Ammo was repackaged from Klein's but is German mfg, not sure of year but must be WWII era .

It had been kept inside a climate controlled house , Dad and I have shot some of the ammo over the years. I reload so we have kept several boxes for "historical " reasons.

At Dad's house I found an opened half boxes of each , so being already opened I took them to the range . Using dad's P38 and my AMT Hardballer (1911) I shot up every round...100% functioning , hit the target , no squibs or weak loads.

That's 75 years of proper storage... I keep the AMT 45 acp close at hand in the house ,
and I just noticed , it's loaded with those 1943 hardball rounds ... I'm not worried .
Gary
 
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But the question is...

How long would you store the ammunition that you plan on using to save your life?
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I don't plan on any ammunition saving my life.

I live my life to the fullest while trying to avoid unnecessarily dangerous situations, but try to be prepared if one interjects.

Quality ammo doesn't know if it is supposed to save your life or not, and physics and entropy treat it the same regardless. The take away is that it lasts a long time with good storage (and sometimes with not-so-good storage).

If you carry it in your carry firearm for a long time and it's exposed to harsh conditions, climates, or corrosive elements, I can understand replacing it at some point.

If it's just sitting in a box in your house for years... well, it's probably just fine and may outlive you.


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Best ammo I've ever fired was CF Issue, DA .303 Ball that was 44 years old at the time. Age is irrelevant if it's stored properly.
The quality of the ammunition has nothing to do with it either. It's only about how it's been stored.
 
Tom Servo said this:
But to be honest, that's probably just subtle superstition on my part.
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That is the most solid thing that has been said in my presence in decades. People haven't a clue about 99.999999% of what goes on around them, yet still will readily make up an opinion based on what is basically a hunch. A person who doesn't like technology will fear the supercollider with no actual reason to. Some people will hate the .270 but worship at the altar of the 30-06. Maybe just because their granddaddy shot a big bull elk with one.

What Tom said was that we all make uninformed decisions on trivial issues every day just based on extremely limited information or experience, maybe on nothing but a factoid written on the internet. Lots of times that won't matter, maybe a person thinks that coffee has to be dumped after an hour.

If a person can accept and admit that they really have no basis for a belief other than a personal feeling, that's great. And in his case, he pointed out that his unnecessarily strict policy is based on a concern that may be unnecessary.
 
I know deep down inside that well made ammo will still go boom after a long time. I've never carried anything ammo over a year old.
 
briandg said:
Tom Servo said this:


That is the most solid thing that has been said in my presence in decades. People haven't a clue about 99.999999% of what goes on around them, yet still will readily make up an opinion based on what is basically a hunch. A person who doesn't like technology will fear the supercollider with no actual reason to. Some people will hate the .270 but worship at the altar of the 30-06. Maybe just because their granddaddy shot a big bull elk with one.

What Tom said was that we all make uninformed decisions on trivial issues every day just based on extremely limited information or experience, maybe on nothing but a factoid written on the internet. Lots of times that won't matter, maybe a person thinks that coffee has to be dumped after an hour.

If a person can accept and admit that they really have no basis for a belief other than a personal feeling, that's great. And in his case, he pointed out that his unnecessarily strict policy is based on a concern that may be unnecessary.
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Some good points but most of the time people believe what they want to believe....politicians are well aware of this phenomenon....however it is difficult to fault a person if his beliefs are based on his real life experiences.
 
In 1984 we shot powder bags manufactured for ww1. It was so bad we were duct taping the bags together because they were falling apart. Every bag ignited but we were endlessly adjusting and couldn't hit anythin accurately.

We were shooting M110's at the time.
 
I just found a bandoleer and open box full of leftovers from a case of 303 imported from some country that writes a lot of Arabic crap on the outside of the case. Ammo was 45 years old when it hit the shed that sees sub freezing weather in the winter and 100 degrees a few days in the summer, that was 15 years ago. A sampling of the open box found each made a big boom when asked to do so.
 
I voted 30 + years. I have shot 45 acp from WWII and it shot just fine. I found some 12ga I left in the garage for 10-15 years summer 100+, winter in the teens. It shot fine.
 
I have no doubt that 30+ year old ammo will fire being stored under unknown conditions, and have proven it with a couple rounds that were purchased around 1983 or so in my grandpa's Winchester lever action. I still have more in the box, and will try it in a few years to see what happens. However....

...when it comes to self-defense ammo, I'm not going to go with anything older than 6 months in my carry gun. Six months covers a minimum of 2 season changes, and depending on where you live, can have widely varying levels of humidity.

Plus, carrying SD ammo in your gun on your hip subjects the it to even more temperature and humidity changes, particularly if you live in a cold winter climate. You go from your home, to your car, to the store or whatever, and then reverse the process on the way home. In one trip, you have potentially subjected your ammo to several rapid environmental changes in fairly short span of time.

Would quality SD ammo survive this process repeatedly? Almost certainly. I would wager that even cheap range rounds would be fine, too.

I'm probably being a little anal about it, but I swap out my SD ammo every few months. In the grand scheme of things, a box or two of primo fresh SD ammo twice a year is worth the peace of mind to me.
 
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