How many shots is an average handgun good for before the barrel is excessively worn out? Enough that one should limit how much target practice is done with it?
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- It depends a lot on the type of gun, overall quality level and what material it’s made of. And really, the barrel is usually not the problem, the problem is some other part that wears out, that concerns the frame. Because everything else you can get fixed, but legally, the “frame” is the gun. …With revolvers, the danger is when the hinge that the cylinder swings out on gets loose, and the gun starts spitting lead sideways out of the cylinder gap (the small gap between the front of the ylinder and the barrel). With automatic-loading pistols, the danger is when the frame rails wear to the point that the slide doesn’t fully lock up on the barrel (for locking-link guns, like 1911’s) and then it is possible that when the gun is fired the slide can fly right off the gun backwards, knocking the shooter squarely in the face (the slide stop has to break off for this to happen as well).
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- I would expect to get at leat 50,000 shots out of any gun that’s half-decent quality, but that is the lifetime of the frame, wnen used with normal-pressure ammo, and the gun will likely have other things break along the way. You can blow up most any gun by using hot or incorrectly-loaded handloads.
… - If you want a gun that will shoot the longest without breaking anything, then I would bet on a heavy “target”-style Smith & Wesson revolver in 22LR. It’s probably the best-made, heaviest gun available in the smallest caliber.
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I’ve owned a couple of Colt Pythons for many years. My wife and I like to target shoot and I figure there has been many thousands rounds shot through each pistol. I reload and cast our bullets (light loads with wad-cutters ) so we think nothing of shooting over a 1000 rounds in one afternoon. Both Pythons show no wear.
Also I fail to mention, I own a Smith & Wesson Break-Open “Double Action”. .38 S&W Cal. Using the serial number shows this gun was manufactured during 1895-1909. It is in excellent condition…
I have a 7.62 mm Tokarev TT33 Pistol that has a build date of 1942. It’s reasonably accurate at 20 yards, after that look out! The bullet tends to drop down and to the left in a hurry.
Fedor Tokarev
Semi-auto pistols are pretty modular so wear components can be replaced easily. Barrel to slide fit is critial but when the slide is sloppy on the frame it’s time to retire. This is pretty rare outside military use. By the time the Beretta began replacing the 1911 most of those pistols were at least forty years old and had seen lots of use. Revolvers are a little different as most components are matched and have to be fitted by hand if replaced.
The barrel is the least of your worries in most cases. For most semi-autos it can be trivial to replace and a simple gunsmith job with most revolvers.
Chuck Taylor has been trying to wear out a Glock 17 for years. Last count over 175,000 rounds. Looking for a better cite. http://www.packing.org/talk/thread.jsp/23461/
Article by Mr. Taylor from 1995. http://www.volny.cz/glock/html/tested.htm
I would say on average a good quality handgun would be good for hundreds of thousands of rounds. I know many people with the gun I have (a Kimber 1911) and they have shot thousands of rounds a week for years, and their guns are just as good as ever. Not to mention my father has several civil war-era handguns that are still plenty fireable if we wanted to use them.
cheap hand guns, for example those made by intratec, wear out much faster. springs come loose and frames may crack, and other things. a good quality gun though, should outlast his/her owner with little repair and decent maintenance.
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- And some not-so-cheap. One of the recent “bombs” is the ~$300 22LR Walther P22, and that’s about twice what a TEC-9 costs. The design is a “tactical”-style polymer-frame/zinc slide pistol, but it is a converted blank-firing gun originally sold as such in Germany. Other early problems have been fixed but the slide/frame connection is still the same–still very weak, and owners in the US have had them replaced within the 1-year warranty, with less than 3000 shots through them. --Which is a bummer, because there’s really not much else out there like it. It would be a cool little gun if it were only made better.
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- And some not-so-cheap. One of the recent “bombs” is the ~$300 22LR Walther P22, and that’s about twice what a TEC-9 costs. The design is a “tactical”-style polymer-frame/zinc slide pistol, but it is a converted blank-firing gun originally sold as such in Germany. Other early problems have been fixed but the slide/frame connection is still the same–still very weak, and owners in the US have had them replaced within the 1-year warranty, with less than 3000 shots through them. --Which is a bummer, because there’s really not much else out there like it. It would be a cool little gun if it were only made better.
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