[Double Naught Spy]

A buddy purchased a Colt/Umarex AR15 in .22 lr and it did not perform well at all and so he purchased the S&W version and it ran great, so I had to have one.

I purchased it along with 600 rounds of Remington Shurshot 36 gr. high velocity ammo. I removed the aluminum "iron" sights and replaced them with Magpul BUIS sights that are virtually all plastic (like the M&P 15-22). The Magpul sights just seemed a better match for the little rifle.

Went to the range and after the first partial mag of ammo, had continuous problems with the Rem ammo I purchased and two other brands I brought with me. I had failures to feed and stovepipes every 2-5 rounds. I figured I had the wrong ammo for what the gun liked. So picked up two addition types of different brands, weights, velocities, and still had the same problems. CRAP!

Before breaking the rifle over a tree stump out of frustration, I thought I would see how loading one round in the magazine would do. The nice thing about the M&P 15-22 is that it DOES lock back on empty...and it did after I fired the one shot. Much to my surprise, the shell had not ejected. It was still firmly held in the extractor. So I repeated the test and got the same result two more times. While hand cycling didn't reproduce the problem, I guessed that the spent cases were being pulled back past the ejector. So I tweaked the ejector inward a tad bit and loaded a magazine with 5 rounds. All 5 fired without a single problem. So I tried different brands, weights, velocities of ammo and they all worked very well!! I was hugely pleased and got the gun sighted in at about 20 yards.

That isn't to say that I did not have problems after tweaking the ejector. I had two rounds that did not perform properly, both of the Rem Shurshot stuff mentioned above ($11 for 300 rounds at Academy, so fairly inexpensive). One round didn't feed. Okay, that happens sometimes. Then, I had a round with a case failure and near total separation of the base from the rest of the case. The firing pin struck the case and then the case failed about 90% around to the opposition side where it remained attached directly opposite of the firing pin strike. It appears that virtually all of the case remained attached. The shot resulted in the slug going down range and debris ejecting from the ejection port and also out of the left side of the gun, but I have no idea where it came out, but what came out on the left side was minimal compared to what came out the ejection port. Both hands and my face where sprayed with hot gasses, but with no resulting burns or shrapnel. It was just a small, but rather exciting event.

No harm was done to the gun. The barrel was clear. So I put another 100 rounds down range without any problems (using Federal ammo instead) and packed up for the day. I have shot the gun in two additional sessions and it has worked great.