New member, excited to be a part of this community!

[dr.dro]

Welcome to the Forum dr.dro! I suggest you load your 17 round E-Lander mags to capacity and let them set loaded till you go to the range. The E-L mag springs are very stout when new. The E-L mags will wear in with use but are hard to load an unload when new. I use the edge of a plastic letter opener to push down on the next to top cartridge if I need to unload my new E-Lander mags. You can manually cycle the rounds through the rifle but I won’t do this unless I’m in a safe shooting environment.

Thanks for the tips, VASCAR2! I actually noticed how hard it is to unload them, very good to know! Do you have any recommendations in terms of other mags? Since I'm mostly going to be using it for hunting I don't care if it's lower capacity (even though there are no restrictions in VA in regards to capacity), but quality is definitely important.

If you reload ammo it is recommended to use primers with thick cups because of the AR-15 floating firing pin. Thin cup primers like CCI 400, Winchester and Remington small rifle primers use thinner cups. I use CCI 450, CCI 41, BR4, Remington 7 1/2, or Federal GMM AR primers.

If you ever look at an unfired cartridge from an AR-15 chamber you’ll notice a small dent on the primer from the floating firing pin. If you get a bolt firing pin that have excessive firing pin protrusion there is greater likelihood of a slam fire.

This is also very interesting, I'll certainly keep this in mind! The only problem is actually finding the primers you mentioned, which seems to be impossible these days...