I understand Nick. I thought long and hard before I pulled the trigger on this one. Had it been a known issue with case integrity, round or bullet sizing, possible squib loads, powder charge questions, or primer integrity I would have made a hard pass. Having said that, 'bad primers' with a FTF being the expected outcome in .25% of cases was a risk I was willing to take, especially considering I'll be using them nice and slowly in a bolt gun for 100 yard max varmint shots or simple plinking, not bump firing an AR with 60 round quad stack mags.
It's interesting the risks we take when it comes to deflagrating smokeless powder 3 inches from our face every time we use our 50 year old milsurp firearms considering that we have absolutely zero idea of what any of them have truly gone through. Have they been abused? Are they stress or corrosion crack prone? Have they shot an excessive number of rounds including proof loads? Do they have deficiencies in the original manufacture (such as a poor heat treatment, poor material, poor headspacing, poor quality control)?
The ammo variable of the safety equation is equally as big in my mind with some things that are simply unknowable. Is the ammo factory 'new', or has it passed through several owners and now has a bit of a murky pedigree? Is there an active
recall notice out for it? (This
Winchester 9mm squib ammo from August, 2021 has an ongoing active recall so it's not one of those things that can't happen anymore even with modern processes and quality control). Even if sold at retail and factory 'new', has the wholesaler and retailer properly stored & protected the ammo?
Going with old surplus ammo adds even more variability to each of the above points (there are enough 'kaboom' posts on the net with surplus ammo (off the top of my head, I'm thinking of Garands, bent op rods, and certain Korean headstamped .30-06 ball ammo) to know that it's a small percentage, but it's a real non-zero risk just the same.
A guy could become extremely risk averse in a very short timeframe if every variable were taken into account as you can go a good ways down the rabbit hole on this. The only 100% solution would be to not shoot at all I think since at the end of the day it is impossible to get to zero risk every time you pull that trigger even with a modern firearm with factory new ammo (did you know that some modern firearms have factor of safety at 1.1 or less? As an engineer I was absolutely floored when I read that a long while back). About all we can really do is perform our due diligence, practice good range habits, and take a step back if something makes us uncomfortable.
Finding that 'sweet spot' where one is comfortable is the key I think, and as always where one is comfortable another may not be.
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