Autism And Sports: What Every Parent Needs To Know

Posted on: 18 July 2018

When you're a new gun owner, you've likely gone through training to learn not only how to safely handle a firearm, but also how to store it. While the storage laws differ by state, keeping your firearms locked in a gun safe in your home is always a smart idea. You may have less of an idea of how to proceed with storing your ammunition, however, other than knowing that it, too, should be kept locked up. You don't want to have any oversights when you're storing your ammo that could affect how it operates. Here are some oversights to avoid.

Storage In A High-Humidity Environment

Ammunition and humidity don't go together well, as just humidity can affect other things in your home. Even if you keep the ammo in a gun safe, the reality is that the air inside the room is what's inside the safe, so you need to be mindful of how moist it is. Excess moisture in the air can cause corrosion on the exterior of your ammunition. Small amounts won't be an issue, but if the corrosion becomes extreme, you'll need to discard the ammo. A trick that many experienced gun owners use is to place a handful of silica packs with your ammunition to absorb any humidity in the air.

Storage In Its Magazines

While you'll often buy ammo in boxes and store it in this manner, you may sometimes decide to fill some extra magazine with the ammo so that it's ready to go when you wish to go to the shooting range. This idea is a good one for time management, but a bad one for your magazines. Gun magazines aren't generally designed to remain full indefinitely. When a magazine is loaded, its spring is pushed down all the way. Over time, this can wear out the spring and affect the magazine's functionality.

Storage Without Rotation

When you visit the supermarket and browse products on the shelves, you'll commonly notice that the goods closest to the front are those with the shortest best-before dates — in other words, they're older than the products behind them. You shouldn't make the oversight of failing to store your ammunition in a similar manner. When you buy a new box, don't put it in front of an older box. You'll reach for the newer box and the older rounds will sit, where their powder may lose potency over time. It's always a good move to store newer boxes at the back and make sure that you're using up your older ammo first.

For more help, reach out to a business like Wilcox Bait & Tackle.