An interesting product was suggested by Amazon recently. All brass snap caps produced by KP Tactical. There is little doubt that snap caps are an invaluable training tool for practicing reloading and clearing malfunctions. Previous to buying the KP Tactical brass snap caps I used the A-zoom snap caps (deep red / purple colored snap caps we know and love) which have held up for a considerable amount of time. The KP Tactical brass snap caps intrigued me however. They claimed excellent durability and at 13 dollars for 10 of them I didn’t feel I could go wrong. I was concerned on how closely they resembled actual rounds but felt this could be remedied.
The KP Tactical snap caps arrived and the first thing I noticed was the weight. They felt substantial in my hands. The all brass construction made them look very similar to live rounds. Because of this I took a red sharpie to the nose of most of my KP Tactical snap caps to differentiate them from live rounds. These snap caps feature a silicone insert where the firing pin impacts. In practice these seem to hold up well after repeated dry firings through a Glock 19, Glock 17, Glock 26, M&P Shield, and Browning Hi Power. The rounds fed and ejected without fail. The KP Tactical snap caps feature an unusual sharp-pointed nose compared to most snap caps. However this seems to aid in feeding into a variety of weapons flawlessly.
What I was most interested in was the wear on the brass itself. The KP Tactical brass snap caps boast an all brass construction sans the silicone primer. While the extractors certainly scratch and somewhat dimple the KP Tactical brass snap caps, it is nowhere near the damage that the A-zoom snap caps receive from extractors. I’ve perhaps to this point cycled one of the brass snap caps through my Glock 19 around 300 times and there is some chewing up of the brass where the extractor grabs it, however it looks significantly better than a couple of the A-zoom snap caps that I have which have around the same number of cycles through the same weapon.
This isn’t to say that the A-zoom snap caps are bad, because they aren’t. And they last a good amount of time. However I think that KP Tactical’s brass snap caps deserve a hard look from a shooter looking to replace his old snap caps or looking to get into the snap cap game. The all brass construction is good and bad. Good because it aids in durability but bad because it looks like a live round. Take it upon yourself to carefully mark your snap caps and ensure you are checking and double checking yourself regardless of the snap cap brand that you are using. Stay safe out there.
