Sunday, February 7, 2010

Problem With Jamming!

I spent Saturday at the range with my youngest son Jake, for that story click here. What I want to discuss today is what happened while shooting my AR for the first time this weekend. Being that I had never shot this firearm before I wanted to take it slow and easy to make sure that I was thinking about everything I was doing before going off willy nilly and throwing lead down range.

After pre-reading the manual before I went to the range just so I would understand everything, I settled down on the shooting bench to get ready for my first round of shooting. I only loaded up three rounds of ammo in the magazine and then inserted the mag into the AR. I shot probably three or four rounds this way, then after loading up the mag again I shot the first round off and the firearm jammed! The spent case was drawn out about half way and the second cartridge was being pushed towards the chamber opening as you can see by the photo.

The AR Jammed!

I pulled the magazine out which luckily pulled the second round free. I grabbed the charging handle on the bolt while removing the magazine from the firearm and mistakenly I let it move forward to the closed position on the spent case. I couldn’t pull the bolt back again, so I made sure the firearm was pointed in a safe direction and dry fired it against the spent case. I was still unable to pull the bolt back to remove the spent case. I had to break down the firearm to remove the case from the chamber.

The firearm jammed two more times on me, but I managed to hold the bolt back to remove the spent case. I then began to play over in my head how I was loading this firearm. I was inserting the cartridges onto the top of the magazine just before the hook that holds the rounds in the magazine and then used my thumb to slide them back into position while depressing the rounds. I was also only loading three rounds at a time, I’m not sure if this made a difference or not. I then began to load the magazine from the top by placing the rounds directly on top of the magazine and pressing downward until the hook held them in place, I also loaded five rounds instead of just three. The firearm performed flawlessly after that.

Out At The Range

I’m not really sure what to make of it other than a friend of mine told me I needed to slap the bottom of the magazine to settle the rounds in place after inserting it into the firearm. I did notice in the manual that they recommend this procedure also. I will have to make sure to perform this technique when I head to the range for the next round of target practice.
Mike Adams
Up North Journal

2 comments:

  1. one other thing that you will need to do with the AR is to keep it well lubricated with CLP when you are doing a lot of firing. That is a technique that we use in the Army.

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  2. Mike,

    A couple of things:

    1) It is darn near impossible to get to this new blog. The link on the UNJ site from the blog won't let you click in. Searching for it didn't work either.

    2) Are you using the forward assist button on the Bushmaster for the first round loaded?

    3) After loading up the mag we always whacked it, primer side down against our opposite palms to seat all the rounds against the back of the mag.

    4) Why I really stopped by - I want to see video footage of you whackin' ground hogs from your upstairs bathroom window with that Bushmaster....

    happy hunting, dv

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