Don't baby those mags, bro.

We spend a lot of time discussing how magazines are consumable items. The feed lips bend, the springs lose tension, and eventually, they just need to be thrown away. Because factory magazines cost anywhere from thirty to fifty dollars a piece, a lot of shooters treat them like precious heirlooms. They are terrified of letting an empty mag hit the ground during a reload, opting instead to carefully catch it and stow it in a pocket before drawing a fresh one. If you are standing on a static indoor range, that’s fine. But if you take a serious defensive pistol class or run dry-fire drills in your garage, your magazines are going to hit the concrete. Hard.

The absolute weakest point of a factory magazine is the flush-fit plastic baseplate at the bottom. When you hit the mag release and a fully loaded or even empty magazine drops six feet onto solid concrete, that thin plastic takes the entire brunt of the impact. It doesn't take many drops for that plastic to crack. When it cracks, the baseplate slides off, and your magazine spring and follower launch themselves violently into the gravel. Your magazine is instantly dead, and your drill is over.

The easiest way to bulletproof your magazines for serious training is to pry off those cheap factory plastic plates and upgrade to machined aluminum or brass basepads. A solid chunk of metal completely changes the durability of the magazine. You can drop an aluminum basepad onto concrete, asphalt, or rocks all day long. It will get scuffed, scratched, and gouged, but it will not crack, and it will keep the spring exactly where it belongs.

Beyond just raw durability, a heavy metal basepad offers a massive mechanical advantage during a speed reload. Factory plastic magazines are incredibly light when they are empty. If your gun is dirty, or if the grip is squeezing the magwell slightly, an empty factory magazine will often hang up inside the gun when you press the release button, forcing you to shake the pistol or physically rip the mag out. When you add a heavy brass or aluminum basepad, you are adding significant weight to the very bottom of the magazine. That weight acts like an anchor. The second you hit the button, gravity takes over and rips the empty magazine cleanly out of the gun, drastically speeding up your reload times.

Furthermore, extended basepads give you actual real estate to grab onto during a malfunction. If you get a dreaded double feed, the slide puts intense pressure on the top round in the magazine, locking it tightly into the gun. You have to lock the slide back and violently rip the magazine out of the grip. A flush-fit factory baseplate gives your fingers absolutely nothing to hold onto, and your hand will just slip off. An extended aluminum pad gives your fingers a solid lip to hook onto, allowing you to forcefully strip the mag and clear the gun. I grab all my extended magazine basepads, enhanced springs, and followers from [Brownells] so I can train on concrete without wincing every time I hit the mag release. Stop babying your plastic gear and upgrade the contact points that actually matter.