Magazine Management

Magazines are a consumable wear item and we should treat them as such. In fact, Eugene Stoner’s original vision for the AR15 magazine is that it would be shipped loaded, used once, then discarded. That was not to be the case and for decades, bad magazines were still retained by shooters of all stripes. The Assault Weapons Ban from 94-04 just made this worse. Thankfully, the salad days of cheap, plentiful, reliable magazines and the proliferation of training classes have corrected a lot of the attitudes that kept us hanging onto worn out magazines. All that said – how do we get the most life out of our magazines? I find I get the most benefit by breaking magazines down into three categories – operational, training, and reserve.

My operational magazines get used on qualification days and for daily carry. That is it – I am not training with my operational magazines. They are marked with O (for operational) and then a number. Should I begin having malfunctions, this helps me identify which magazine might be the culprit so that it can be replaced.

My training mags are used for, you guessed it, training. They are dedicated solely to that use. These are the magazines that get stepped on, dropped on their feed lips, bounced off concrete, fall in mud, etc. These magazines are designated with a high visibility color so I don’t lose them on the range and so I don’t mix them up with my operational magazines. They are marked with a T (for training) and then a number, again so that if I begin having malfunctions, I can identify the culprit and replace it. I like having dedicated training magazines for three reasons. First, this way my daily carry magazines do not face unnecessary abuse in the pressure cooker of training. Secondly, because of the nature of training your magazines will get muddy, wet, dusty, etc. And this means they need to be broken down and cleaned. Regardless of what people tell you, at some point even the most disciplined person gets tired or lazy. If you do not maintain your training magazines right away, you may end up with a failure in class. If you do not maintain your operational magazines right away after using them in a training environment, you may end up with a failure you can’t come back from. Finally, due to the nature of my profession, I may have to drop everything while at training and go to an emergency call. Having dedicated training magazines saves me time when this happens. This could happen to you as well – we’ve all had to leave the range in a hurry. Drop your training mags into their respective box, load up with your operational magazines, and leave. It’s an easy system which is hard to screw up – and when you are tired or in a hurry you will make mistakes. Build a system that will catch you when you are not at your best.

Finally, I keep magazines in reserve. These are magazines that just sit in a box, unused and unloaded, until a new training magazine or new operational magazine is needed. If you are training seriously, at some point you are going to wear out or lose a magazine. When this happens, you go to your reserves, get a new magazine, mark it appropriately and move it into the rotation. Having a good reserve of magazines on hand is important in case of shortages. We’ve been very fortunate to have so many fat years, but you should also be planning for the lean years.

One final note – besides marking your magazines to designate them as operational or training, you should also mark them in such a way that you’ll know they are yours. Nobody likes wasting time in class trying to figure out to whom exactly these particular Gen 2, black PMags belong. Some like a sharpie, others like a paint pen. Figure out what works for you, and mark your magazines. It’ll save training time and it’ll help prevent missing magazines.

Stay safe and I hope to see you on the range.

—“Flynn”