Avoid “American Ammunition”-brand ammo. It carries the headstamp “A-MERC”.
Don’t confuse it with “American Eagle” by Federal Cartridge, which is excellent.
I’ve shot a diverse selection of ammo brands over the years, including Federal, Winchester, Remington, Ultramax, Miwall, PMC, Wolf, CCI, Barnaul, Black Hills, American Ammunition, IMI, domestic and imported military surplus, my own reloads, and so on. Brass and steel cased, it makes no difference to me. Both new and commercial reloads (also my own personal reloads). Basically, I’ve made an effort to shoot just about everything I’ve been able to get my hands on.
The vast majority of what I’ve shot has been excellent, high-quality ammunition…with the exception of American Ammunition.
A-MERC ammo is inconsistently loaded from round to round (velocities are all over the place), has intermittent bright flashes (some rounds flash more than others), and major problems with primer retention (primers push out of the pocket during normal firing and get stuck in the gun’s operating mechanism, jamming it), and some of the absolute worst brass I’ve ever dealt with (huge splits starting at the neck and going down the entire length of the case are common, as are smaller splits confined only to the body of the case).
Splits in cases, particularly on cases that have been reloaded several times, occur occasionally and haven’t really caused many problems for me — I note the split when I inspect my spent brass and toss it into my “scrap brass” bucket. I’ve never once had a case split on a factory-new cartridge from any manufacturer…except A-MERC, which routinely splits in dramatic ways on a regular basis.
It is my opinion that A-MERC ammunition is not only low-quality ammo, but that it is unsafe and dangerous to shoot. I have no qualms with shooting steel-cased, military surplus ammo through any of my guns…but I absolutely forbid American Ammo. No exceptions.
Consider yourself warned.