How many rounds do you normally put through a pistol before you consider it reliable enough to carry? How many rounds of your chosen carry ammo do you then run to ensure reliability in that particular round?

200 rounds of practice ammo and 100 rounds of carry ammo. with no issues would be my choice.


I am also not a proponent of the very high dollar carry ammo , I think decent carry ammo that you practice with is better than some sort of ammo you buy at such a high price you never practice or rotate it out.

Two or three magazines of your chosen carry round. Shooting from various stances and from weak side as well as strong. Most name brand handguns are pretty reliable. And get a case of cheap practice ammo and shoot it up on good practice. And frequent dry fire sessions are good for trigger control.

I had numerous officers I gave dry fire homework to when I was an instructor. After a couple times of failing quals I would put them on a week of dry firing a half hour every day. Made a huge difference the next time they qualified.

No idea depending on circumstances i have several to choose from as stated above handling proficiency is a must Don't know what model or make you have but pistol usually indicates semi-auto if so check out 22 conversion kits i have a ceiner 22 conversion for my 1911 45 acp and its a hoot takes less then a minute to swap out barrels

Kimber told a buddy of mine, 500 rounds for break in. Lol the 10 mm 1911 i got from him has not had but maybe 150 rounds and it doesn't fail to go bang.

No pistol in particular. Just wondering what people have I mind. As an example, my LCP Max ran perfectly until one day it didn't. I had it repaired by Ruger and have put about 150rds FMJ thru it since then. It is back to running. I need to run some more carry rounds through it, but I have shot about 30 with no trouble so far.

The toughest one for me was my Kahr P380 pocket rocket....Took about 750 rds to get broke in and dependable.

Most accurate micro pistol I've ever shot.

I have 2 pm 380s. One functions great my wife liked it so I gave it to her. I bought a 2nd one and it wouldn’t run reliability in the 3 or 4 mags of fmj I shot through it. I put it back in the box to mess with later. That was at least 12 years ago. I need to check it to see if it was a mag issue and try running more ammo to break it in. I have enough components to load 1100 rounds for them. Maybe I will get around to it someday.

Kahr says 200 rounds for break in if I'm rembering correctly?

When I was instructing we often pulled new Glock 22s out of the box and took new officers through a week long training course, firing over a thousand rounds with no gun issues. Plenty of shooter induced problems but never saw a failure that I could point to the gun as the cause.

I did the same with a Glock 48. I had just got it and the next day had to conduct an annual qual with another instructor. After we were done I ran a qual with the 48 fresh out of the box, never having fired it and shot the best score I ever shot and never had a malfunction. And never had a malfunction with it all these years later.

I just buy a glock and trust it. I do shoot it some, has not failed me yet.

I have had my gen 3 23 since I was 19 im 46 now . Its not very nice to look at anymore and the night sights need replaced but its never not functioned. I have killed everything from mice to horse with it. I have taking a lot of critters with it.

I would still not carry any gun without puting a few hundred rounds through it first.. Would really suck to have packed a gun all these years to finally need it and the thing not function properly when I do.

Until you confident.

What worked for me was far higher on round count, and hand cycling the slide thousands of times.....Those Kahr P380's are built with very tight tolerences, and run best wet.

Periodic break down and cleaning of the slide & components is a must too.

The only ammo I trust for carry is the Hornady Critical Defense, pointed polymer tipped HP rounds.

Quite a laborious break in for some of these pistols, but once they loosen up you get a dependable high quality build, that's very concealable, and suprisingly accurate for such a small pistol.

Yea i get that. I dont break em in like a guy should. My taurus was a great ccw gun and never failed me either. Tbe 43x carries better for me. I need to shoot it more.

One round for a revolver. Then however many you need to be able to hit a paper plate at 10 yards.

Same thing as Ky_coyote_hunter posted. My Kahr P380 is nice. I asked my son in law, who is a deputy sheriff about a small carry pistol and he said that a lot of his friends carry them as back up pistols. I did have some troubles at first because I have big hands but once I figured gripping it right and shooting it a lot it's almost my everyday carry. It does like those Hornady Critical Defense rounds also.

really I am the only person who ever found a revolver that had issues?

it's bugger when you find out she doesn't set of some primers. but she will set off most of the time and yet not everyone not even every one in the cylinder every time.

Most manufacturers have a deal that tell you when you need to start replacing parts per number of rounds