AR9s tend to not be as reliable as 5.56 and .300 blackout ARs. If you are going to run suppressed, you might consider one of those. Especially since you would get a major boost in terminal performance.
But you have to decide what reliability means to you. For a handgun I want at least 500 malfunction free rounds with no cleaning or lube (after initial clean and lube) with my defense ammo before I consider it good enough to to carry. I haven’t been able to achieve that with my AR9.
Having said that, my experience with AR9 reliability has been mixed but I’ve also been trying to tune mine to run with ammo it wasn’t designed for. I have a Foxtrot Mike and they are built to run with standard pressure 115 grain or 124 grain cartridges. I’ve been trying to get mine to run reliably with 147 grain defense ammo and it has been a challenge. I’ve changed the recoil spring, buffer weight, magazine and polished the feed cone a few different times. l would say I’ve got it running where it will fail to feed about once every 50 to 100 rounds of SD 147s.
I’m currently trying the Hornady Critical Duty 135 grain because it has a smaller frontal section and seems like it might feed better. I the standard pressure variation it is closer to the performance enevelooe the FM9 was designed around too.
Stinks about your AR… but that is not my experience at all (and 100% suppressed with that).
I’ve seen most people happy with FM stuff, but I do see some issues from time to time. I personally went with Stern, and completely happy with it (minus the barrel thread pitch and non-functional forward assist). I trust that AR as I do with any other of my defensive firearms.
For reliability… there is a YouTube video with a Stern setup (upper, bolt, and magazine adapter) on a M16 lower, shooting over 6,000 rounds before a hard failure (the non-functional forward assist was the cause… why I opted to remove it completely).
I don’t keep that much with my gun (one 24 rounder, with three 33 rounders in a pouch; 123 rounds total… but I do have a Glock 19 with three spare magazines on my duty belt), so I feel fine with it.
Screwball,
I don’t put the blame on FM because I am trying to run bullet weights outside of what they recommend.
What defensive ammo are you running in your AR9?
Winchester Ranger 147 grain…
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