When Someone Tells You The Ammo Is Loaded Staggered...

...within the magazine, they don't mean that you should load your ammo into the mag like this:

 

 

That though is exactly how someone I once knew loaded the mags for a AR15 or Mini 14 (it was one of the other) way back when I was a Customs Patrol Officer with collateral duties as a firearms instructor. Another range officer and I could not figure out why the magazine kept falling out of the shooter's rifle and when it did stay inserted, why she could not get another shot off after the first one did fire. She would do something like: insert the mag, yank the trigger really hard once or twice, twiddle with this or that, try to push the mag in more, yank the trigger again (and I mean mightily), try to operate the bolt and sooner or later while doing some or all of those - the mag would fall out. She even removed a round from the mag that did not seem seated properly. Then she tried all over again with pretty similar results.

 

We put a stop to it and found the cause. While the above is not a photo of the actual mag in question, it does show exactly how she had loaded the rounds into the mag and she had several rounds in it just like that. It was just another "I wouldn't have believed it unless I had seen it" moment at the range.

 

All the best,

Glenn B