Dangers of an Oversized Magazine Well

An oversized magazine well is an aftermarket accessory that Rob Pincus thinks does not belong on a defensive pistol in most cases. The reason it can potentially be dangerous is that, if you have a magazine that does not extend significantly outside of, and in many cases even beyond at all, the oversized well, it can be very difficult to pull the magazine out if you have a double feed or other type of malfunction and, in an emergency situation, need to get the magazine out quickly.

INERTIAL STRIP

You can’t press the magazine against something, it’s difficult to get a grip on, and you’re going to end up with a very bad situation. Can you do an inertial strip? Yes. What’s an inertial strip? It’s when you push the magazine release in, drive the gun down and hit it against your leg or other surface to let the magazine fall out. But you don’t want that to be your only option.

EXTENDED MAGAZINE WELL

The good news is, most manufacturers are aware of this and most people who can really benefit from having an oversized magazine well on a pistol intended as one of their self-defense weapons understand that the trick to getting around the danger is to also have an extended magazine. That way you do have something to grip on to if you have that situation and you need to manually forcefully extract the magazine that’s stuck in the gun during some sort of emergency malfunction situation in the middle of a fight.

So the danger of the oversized well is that, while it may make it a little easier to insert the magazine, it makes it much tougher to extract the magazine.

IS IT WORTH IT?

Reloads aren’t very common in defensive shooting situations. So chasing a couple hundredths of a second improvement during handgun training via an oversized well that makes a gun harder to conceal, harder to carry, and could result in a catastrophic failure as a result of a relatively simple-to-fix malfunction is probably not worth it