Range time today

[Graybeard]

Well of late I have been just totally and completely lazy, too dang lazy even to go out and shoot. Well today I corrected that situation.

This is gonna be long so make sure you are sitting down and comfortable.

The real impetus for this range session was my EDC pistol, a S&W Shield 9mm. This gun has been going into stores with me for quite some while now but has gotten darn little range time.

I've been carrying it with an 8 round S&W brand mag in it and toting a spare 7 round S&W mag in a clip on leather pouch actually made for the Ruger LCP but it fits the Shield mags better.

I decided to upgrade it a bit so I ordered a MagGuts +2 kit which is advertised to turn a 7 round mag into a 9 round and an 8 round mag into a 10 round mag https://magguts.com/. I also ordered an ArachniGRIP for it https://www.arachnigrip.com/store. This is a little spider shaped thing that goes over the top of slide to make it easier to pull the slide back.

I installed the MagGuts kit consisting of spring, follower and base plate. I then tried to load 10 rounds and was at best barely able to ram the 9th one in. But even more concerning to me was when I unloaded the mag prior to installing the kit. The first round couldn't be removed with my thumb. I had to use a tool to push it out. The next round came out OK with thumb but the next two rounds went nose down in the mag and would not have fired had I needed that gun to save my life.

So since I now had serious reservations about the Shield I retired it temporarily until I could get it to the range. I didn't install the arachigrip. Today was range day for it.

I first unloaded my carry ammo (Speer Gold Dot 115 JHP) and again that first round would NOT come out using my thumb. At least the other rounds stayed nose up not down and did push out OK.

So I loaded it up with CCI Blazer aluminum case ammo and proceeded to fire. Well after a fashion I did anyway. I was only able to get 8 rounds to load into the now supposedly 10 round magazine. It did all feed and function the gun properly.

I had two other mags for it with me both 8 round mags, one a S&W brand and the other a ProMag. The ProMag was a replacement for one that had previously failed to work. The S&W was seriously rough feeling trying to load it and I was only able to load a single round into the mag. The ProMag allowed me to load 8 with difficulty and it did fire and function.

Overall the entire experience was quite exasperating and the gun is now on the trade list. I will never again load or fire it. It is HISTORY for me. This is the gun I got from Ron aka Bugeye in trade for my Walther P22.

Next up is the S&W M&P .40 S&W which for years was my EDC gun until I changed to the Shield due to the lighter weight of the Shield. It has CTC laser grips and night sights. I carry this gun in a Fobus paddle holster with the locking finger tab for retention. This gun has been carried and shot a lot. It has always been 100% reliable.

I unloaded my carry ammo from the only mag I had taken to the range with me which was the mag that has been in it for who knows how long. Carry ammo for this one is Speer Gold Dot 165 grain JHP. Unloading went smooth using only my thumb to push the rounds out and all ejected from mag properly as expected giving me confidence it would have gone bang 16 times had it been needed.

I loaded up with CCI Blazer aluminum case ammo with 165 JFN bullets. It fed and functioned fine thru two or three mags I fired with it.

All shooting was done today from the bench at 25 yards with my wrists resting on a pair of sandbags made from 25 pound lead shot bags. I was shooting at 8" steel falling plates. Hits came less often than I'd have likely mostly due to it shooting a bit high at 25 yards. I have complete confidence in this gun for everyday carry and self defense but it isn't a 25 yard target gun. For most any self defense situation the laser would be used for aiming other than outside in bright sunlight. Red lasers don't show well in broad daylight tho I was able to see it on the white steel plates most of the time.

Next up was the S&W M&P .45acp. Again I unloaded the carry ammo from the magazine and did so using thumb only. This mag loads and unloads easier than the .40 mags tho the difference is slight. I can get all 10 rounds it holds in using my fingers with no loading device pretty easily tho #10 lets me know I have to push harder. First 10 in the .40 are equally easy but by #15 I could use a loading helper.

I wound up shooting up the Gold Dot ammo it had loaded in addition to some hardball and reloads with 200 grain HPs. These were plated HPs from Berry's I think but wouldn't swear to it.

Making hits on the 8" falling plates was fairly easy at 25 yards and when I cleaned all six of them I have I finished up whatever ammo was left over hitting the 12" steel plate. I don't think I missed the 12" at all tho I did miss the 8" plates maybe 20% of the time.

All in all this is a good dependable gun and also has both CTC laser and night sights. I picked this one up as an LEO trade in. If it had ever been fired before I got it I sure couldn't tell it. Over all I'd say I hit the 8" and 12" steel plates at 25 yards around 80% of the time.

Last up was the pride and joy of the day. While I'm writing this one up as last it was actually the first one I shot today. It was my Walther .45acp. This thing is just a super nice piston. I think I missed only one 8" plate with it out of several magazines. I again shot whatever ammo was left in the mag on the 12" plate once I had knocked the 8" plates off the rack. it is a swinger and doesn't have to be reset like the 8" falling plates.

I used two or I think maybe three different loads in this pistol today and all of them were hitting steel at almost 100% of the time. The trigger on this gun is what all pistols want to be when they grow up. It is smooth and light and honestly feels as good as a S&W revolver fired single action. No it isn't quite that light but it is just SO SWEET. By comparison the two S&W M&P guns triggers are long and hard and gritty and feel like double the effort is needed. This gun makes hitting so easy due to that trigger.

I didn't do any standing free hand shooting today and didn't shoot closer than 25 yards. Chalk that up to me being lazy. I already had to walk out to reset the falling plates and just didn't want to also walk up closer. I shake something awful these days. Honestly I can hit a higher percentage at 25 yards from the bench than from 10 yards standing free hand.

So that's my range report for today. I shot four of my self defense pistols and reaffirmed my confidence in the 3 full size guns and made a decision the Shield is to be gone the next time I go to a gun shop. I'm thinking on trading it for a Shield EZ in 9mm. I'll make another post about that.

[Lloyd Smale]

bill it sounds to me like 90 percent of your problems are from modifying it. I use factory mags in all my carry guns be they glocks, M&Ps or my sigs. I leave the knock off mags for plinking. Ill grant you one thing though shield mags are a bitch to load but at the range i can use a maglula and that makes it easy. You dont reload mags in a self defense situation or even carry loose ammo so a mag thats hard to load doesnt bother me. Want hard? Load some 22 round 40 or 30 round 9 glock mags with your fingers. By the time your done you about wish someone would shoot you and put you out of your missory. My 7 round shields are all a bitch to get that 7th round in them. At the range i just load 6 and call it good. For defense i use the maglula and get that last one in and it allways feeds even though it makes you doubt it will. Heck even if you just load it with 5 in the mag and one in the chamber you have as many rounds as a revolver with the added advantage of having another mag to slap in.


Ive got 3 9mm shields two of the older ones and one 2.0 and i cant remember even once having a failure to feed or go bang and i dont use fancy factory ammo. 90 percent of what mine see are cast bullet loads. Like i said in that other post mine have been every bit as reliable as my 43 glock. Heck ill even throw my wifes lc9 in because it never misses a beat and runs more odd ball cast bullets then the glock does. Ive ran into only one bullet that chokes the shield and 43 and i dont even count that. Its the 105 lee pointy semi wad cutter tumble lube bullet. But the lc9 even eats those. But like i said this is all with factory mags. You learn those lessons fast when you start buying those 20-30 round mags. Go cheap and use them for self defense and you deserve what you get. Between my 3 shield 40s ive probably put 20k through them over the years. I like the 2.0 much better but bang for the buck theres NOTHING on the market that compares to a plain old shield. Before this madness hit you could buy two of them for the price of a glock and three for the price of a sig and the only thing you lost was the glock or sig name on it.

I trust them so much theres one in all three of my vehicles in iwb holsters that are my main carry guns. At home i carry a lcp or a 22 Naa mini in my pocket. I have no doubt, not even the tiniest that my shield is going to go bang and bang again if it ever needs to be used. By the way i have a shield 40 a compact 45 and a full sized m&p 9mm too and they all run like a glock. What better compliment can i give them. I can understand the ez. But im leary of the light recoil spring shooting dirty cast always going back into battery and its bigger. If i want bigger ill go with a 45 shield.

I shoot the snot out of all of those guns not just a couple boxes of factory ammo a year like some judge a gun with. I wont even carry a gun without my first torchure test. I must run 300 rounds of lube sized (dirty) cast bullets without a bobble and without cleaning. I just take them out of the box pull the slide off and oil them up and start pounding steel. Gun doesnt pass that test it gets traded. I even had problems with one glock 20 i had and sold it. Only gun brands (im talking just black handguns) that i can honestly say have failed that test are M&Ps and sigs. throw out that 20 and i could add glock to the list too and even that would have probably ran perfect with factory ammo or even with some jacketed bullets. Now magazines. Ive tossed dozens of the in the trash can. 99 percent of those were aftermarket mags and probably 90 percent of the problems ive had with all semi autos have been mag problems. Mag pulls and pro mags are pretty safe bets but i still dont use them for serious work. Those korean mags? they dont even burn good. but if you want mags that are easy to load buy those clear import mags. They sure are great for loading but not always so great at unloading in an actual gun.

[Dee]

Well Bill, I've had two S&W Shields in 40S&W and had the same problem with both. I carried them both in IWB holsters, and kept both maintained, BUT!
BOTH of them the magazine release springs rusted so badly that the release button would not work.
Quite a surprise when they all of a sudden you find out the magazine won't come out.  I'm sure it was due to sweat, but after the first one I was pretty careful, but the second one did the same thing. 
That's when I went back to Glocks for a while.
Now, I'm back to a dependable Model 688, or a 38 Airweight. Weight doesn't bother me cause I wear suspenders.
And the sights are always great.

[Graybeard]

Lloyd, the issues that now have caused me to finally decide to no longer use this gun are magazine issues not really a gun issue. But three magazines of the 4 I own for it all bad at one time? That's too much of a coincidence for me to continue to trust this gun for self defense.

The magazine into which I put the new MagGuts kit don't forget held round one so tightly I wasn't able to push it out with finger/thumb pressure. I had to use a metal tool to do so. Then two rounds in a row behind that went nose down and would not have fed and chambered if I had been firing the gun. That was a bone stock mag that did that.

The other mag that refused to even take a second round was also a bone stock brand new S&W brand magazine. I also have a 7 round mag that I have been carrying as a back up I need to check also but just to unload it and put it all back in the box. It will all go to a gun shop next time I go and it won't come home with me. I have no idea what I'll get for it and at this point don't really care. I don't trust the gun any longer and so will never again load it to take a chance on needing to use it.

Right now I don't have any immediate plans for a replacement for it. It's not like it's the only carry gun I have or even the only carry gun of comparable size and capacity. Taking it out of my self/home defense rotation is not a biggie and will leave no holes.

[Lloyd Smale]

I will concede the mags are a bitch to load. even worse then a glock. You do about need a mag loader to load them. thats for sure. Ill also say that if you dont trust them sit them in the safe or sell them. Personaly id never use a gun that i didnt trust and ive lost trusts in many guns including even high end 1911s. Had one les baer that would only run with wilson mags a 100 percent when i used reloads so i sold it. It ran a 100 percent with factory ammo but was tight chambered and any thing less the a perfect mag would have the bullets hit the chamber just enough off to cause them to slow down and not chamber. Buddy asked me why id sell a beautiful gun like that that hed never put dirty cast reloads in anyway and i told him ALL my guns must shoot any ammo i have in the shop in that caliber. Id hate for shtf and grab some ammo or mags and find they didnt run in that gun.

Now magazines actually rusting. Thats neglect. Unless your hunting gators in the LA salt water swamps a rusted mag should never happen. I keep shields in all three of my vehicles 24/7 365 days a year. they sit in the glove box of all three. Once i pounded on them for a while to make sure they were reliable they got stuck in those vehicles. I take them out about twice a year shoot a few mags through them and clean and oil them. I pull the mag apart (takes all of about 5 minutes) clean them and put a light coat of silicone on a rag and pull it through. I do the same with all my mags for any gun that takes a mag and have never once had a mag rust on the inside. Those guns sit in those vehicles and temps swing from -30 to probably a 120 on a hot summer day sitting with the windows up. The air here isnt dry either its usally very humid. Ive done this with the first one i bought for about 8 years now and the other two a bit less because ive owned them a shorter period of time. But unless your dipping your gun in salt water the only way a mag will rust is neglect. Yup you can get a bad mag. You can get one from any manufacture. Ive never had a bad glock mag but have heard of guys getting them with a bur or something else wrong. There not hand crafted custom articles. If one is bad send it back and get a replacement.

For a mag to rust so bad it wont come out is gross neglect. Sorry dee im not trying to pick a fight here but thats just fact. No way im putting a gun on my person and waiting so long to clean it that it the mag rust solid. That sure doesn't happen overnight or even in a couple weeks.  If conditions are so bad that that would happen then a revolver would be a rusted hunk of junk on the inside because not to many pull apart there DA guns and clean them on the inside and even stainless guns have carbon steel parts inside. Id also like to see what the ammo looked like because it will usually corrode before a magazine. But Bill before i gave up on them id load even 5 in the mag and one in the chamber and see if they run a 100 percent like that. You still have probably a quicker 6 shots then a da gun and a faster reload and its easier to carry spare mags then speed loaders. But like i said before. I force that last round in with a mag loader and at first it made me nervous thinking they would never strip out of the mag but ive never had it happen. Another thing with a shield as you know is they have a beefy recoil spring. Even more so then a glock and i think that little extra push makes that round strip off with ease.

 Im not a cheerleader for smith. I tell it like i see it. Heck i dont even like ruger semi autos but will concede that a lc9 like a shield is just as reliable as a glock 43 at half the price. Same can be said for a lcp. Mine run like a watch. But if im going to trust my life to a gun im going to maintain it. I also am going to run the crap out of it before i trust it. Id bet i put more rounds though  gun just doing that then most put through theres in a lifetime. I own 4 shields and have put many thousands of rounds through them and they just run and ive yet to see rust on my mags. Not even a tiny speck. Ive got steel 1911 mags that are probably 50 years old and ar mags near that old and they dont have rust on them either. By the way smith contracts to meg-car to make there mags and meg-car sure doesnt have a rep of making junk. But like i said ive had bad mags from about all of them. Its why i take the time to wring out and maintain anything thats going to be counted on to protect my family and that said i hate cleaning guns. My range guns get put away road hard and put away wet. Sometimes a thousand or more rounds shot before there cleaned. My poor ars probably cry for attention as do a few glocks sitting in the safe one 22 in particular thats being torcher tested in one of those micro ronis that probably has more soot on it then the chimney on my wood stove. If youve seen one of them the glock sits inside it and some of the gases coming out of the barrel stay inside because the barrel of your glock ends inside of it. I know theres at least 5k though that gun now of mostly cast loads and it hasnt been even wiped off or oiled. Thing still runs perfect using GLOCK mags. But put one of those chinese pos mags in it even clean and you wont run a 27 rounder without jams. As to the shields i have 15 mags total for my 3 9s and 5 for my 40 and i havent had single issue with them. Maybe im just lucky.

[Ranger99]

Well Bill, I've had two S&W Shields in 40S&W and had the same problem with both. I carried them both in IWB holsters, and kept both maintained, BUT!
BOTH of them the magazine release springs rusted so badly that the release button would not work.
Quite a surprise when they all of a sudden you find out the magazine won't come out.  I'm sure it was due to sweat, but after the first one I was pretty careful, but the second one did the same thing.  .  . 

Dang that sucks in the worst way.
I can't imagine what they might have made
the spring out of that it would rust so badly.
I've had 70 year old 1911's with all the blue
gone that still functioned full of sweat and
river water
Good piece of info to know

[Lloyd Smale]

I appologize dee i read the post wrong. I thought it was the mag that was rusted on your gun not the mag release. I looked at all 4 of mine this morning and none had a lick of rust on the mag release or spring and ive never had them out before this.

[Dee]

Well Bill, I've had two S&W Shields in 40S&W and had the same problem with both. I carried them both in IWB holsters, and kept both maintained, BUT!
BOTH of them the magazine release springs rusted so badly that the release button would not work.
Quite a surprise when they all of a sudden you find out the magazine won't come out.  I'm sure it was due to sweat, but after the first one I was pretty careful, but the second one did the same thing.  .  . 

Dang that sucks in the worst way.
I can't imagine what they might have made
the spring out of that it would rust so badly.
I've had 70 year old 1911's with all the blue
gone that still functioned full of sweat and
river water
Good piece of info to know

Never had a gun do that either. It was the only spring in the gun to rust. But they are very small springs, and when the rust, it freezes the mag release button.