American Compact - New Gun, First Shooting

Back in the good ol' days of only about 10-15 years ago, ammo availability and price was hardly a consistent worry. Now, it's a different story. It used to be that when talking about garbage pistol ammo that wouldn't ever touch our pistols, we were talking about aluminum-case stuff. There wasn't a lot of reason for it unless you were feeling very cheap. Mass produced reloads were basically non-existent, as were steel-cased commie-bloc ammo. Even reloading was unnecessary in certain calibers because 100 round Winchester white box 9mm was less than $10 at Walmart.

Now it's a different story. Blazer aluminum is not much cheaper than brass and generally considered decent. Steel-cased stuff is all over and there are a lot of places selling reloads of dubious quality. Perhaps the Aguila isn't a bad option in 2017, but there is no way people would have accepted it two decades ago. Imagine where we will be in another 20 years... probably shooting airsoft only at the rate prices are going up.

* * * FOLLOWUP * * *

I finally decided to send my pistol to Ruger. I shipped it off on December 29th and got it back today -- 11 days, not bad. The pistol came back with a lot more oil on it than how it came from the factory. The trigger and slide operate as smoothly as when I sent it to them.

Ruger replaced the guide rod assembly. The original guide rod was blued and this one looks to be stainless steel. If anything else is different about this guide rod assembly it is that the rear retainer might be slightly larger in diameter, which would keep the assembly better aligned within the pistol.

Ruger's gunsmith says that he fired 40 rounds of 124-grain Black Hills ammo with no failures. I have not shot it since it was serviced but I will update this thread if I have any further problems.