No, that isn't a .45 Auto Rim on the left. It's a malformed factory .45 ACP that would bring your pistol to an immediate halt if you hadn't checked it before loading.

In the course of teaching shooting, I have been on hand while the other students or the police officers in the classes have fired an ungodly amount of ammo. I figure I've shot over a million rounds, and others in classes I've been in or taught have fired a couple million more. Let's not even get into the mountains of ammo consumed by other competitors at IPSC, bowling-pin and steel matches I've been at, nor the gargantuan amounts of belt-fed and other full-auto ammo gone downrange while I helped or watched.

That's a lot of ammo, but none of it is as important as the few rounds on your belt or in the magazine of your carry gun. In all that shooting and watching/teaching/competing, I've seen a lot of bad ammo. We're seeing more of it now. Some blame it on increased production due to wartime demands.

Me, I mark it up at least in part to higher volumes of shooting. When I started shooting, only we few (we happy few) crazies shooting IPSC shot as much as 5,000 rounds a year. Now you're a slacker if you don't shoot that much. I know guys who shoot that much just in various classes they attend each year. Others do multiples of that in practice and competition. More ammo means more chances of running into bad ammo.

When it comes to the ammo I carry for personal defense, I do what an old Detroit cop taught me. He had been on the force since before Kennedy had been elected, and he lasted over 30 years on the force. He'd shot a lot of people. (Detroit was famous for that, perhaps you've heard?) His routine was anything but casual. He'd slide the cardboard off of the tray in a box of ammo and closely inspect all the primers.

Any that looked odd, he'd pull out and set aside. He'd run a fingertip over each row of primers. If any felt odd, out they went. Then he'd dump the box onto an old towel on the table and then individually roll each one across the tabletop. Any that didn't roll smoothly, he set aside. Then he'd inspect each bullet for imperfections. All the rounds that passed his inspections would go back into the original box, while the rejects got sent to the "practice" pile. Sometimes all 50 would pass, and sometimes he'd have set aside four or five out of a box.

Next he'd drop each of them in the chambers of his revolver, close and rotate the cylinder. Again, if they passed, they'd stay; if they failed, they'd get sent to "practice." Later, when manufacturers started making cylindrical "check chamber" gauges he used one of those. Finally, he'd weigh the rounds (I kid you not).