By: Greg Chabot
Photos Sasha Steadman
I treat magazines for handguns and rifles as disposable items. They will wear out with use and if you train hard, they get trashed. Depending on the weapon system, extra mags can be expensive. For handguns I keep a minimum of 5 for training and carry purposes. I like the SIG P320 series, and I tend to shoot them more than other makes. I am hard on mags — I drop them on hard surfaces and into snow, sand, and dirt. My main complaint is the $50 USD SIG gets for one magazine and no aftermarket options being offered.
Amend2, a company out of Idaho, has answered the call. Amend2 makes various polymer products for the shooting community. Looking at their site I noticed they offered a polymer 17-round magazine for P320s in 9mm for $16.99 USD. I ordered two using my own funds to test, and to see if they are reliable and able to take abuse like the factory mags.
The magazines are made from polymer with a thicker base pad that provides more grip space and shock resistance when dropped on hard surfaces. The base pad also allows one enough purchase to strip the mag if it does not drop free. The magazines were easy to disassemble with a durable corrosion-resistant spring and red polymer follower.
To test durability, I dropped them on concrete and stepped on them multiple times in various terrain without losing any rounds. Mags getting stepped on is very common and in my opinion the most realistic test. I did not run them over with a vehicle as I train for reality and have never witnessed a mag being run over in training or in combat. As I stated earlier, magazines are a disposable item. If one of mine ever got run over, I would trash it to be safe. I’ll leave the “Vehicle test” to the Tier-1 social media types.
How’d they run?
On the range they performed flawlessly with 500 rounds of various brands of ammo, bullet types and weights. I experienced no failures to feed. The magazines dropped free no matter how banged up or dirty they got. I intend to use the Amend2 as training mags until I get a higher round count through them. I believe in the “test of time” for aftermarket magazines to see how the feed lips and springs hold up to regular use before trusting my life to them. For the price point I can’t complain about their performance and plan to buy more in the future. If you are looking for affordable P320 mags, look no further than Amend2 for your shooting needs.