Mr. Frazier. Very dependable.
Mr. Eisenberg. Can you think of any reason why someone might think this is an undependable type of ammunition?
Mr. Frazier. No, sir; The Western Cartridge Co. has always manufactured, in my experience, very dependable ammunition. There is other ammunition on the market available for this particular rifle in this caliber, which in my opinion is undependable or would be a very poor quality of ammunition. It may have been a confusion between that other ammunition of the same caliber and this Western ammunition.
Mr. Eisenberg. Can you elaborate as to what that other ammunition consists of?
Mr. Frazier. Certain companies have imported into the United States cartridges of foreign manufacture. Those I have seen for this rifle were of Italian manufacture. They have pulled the military bullets from those cartridges and reloading hunting type or soft-point bullets into the cartridges. In doing that, they did not, apparently, take any great pains in loading them. Occasionally, the mouth of the case would be bent over and the bullet driven in right on top of the bent case.
I have seen split cartridge cases, even before they were fired, badly corroded cartridge cases. All in all, the ammunition is of generally poor overall appearance, and it has been reported to me that it was of poor firing quality.
I have not fired any of it, personally.
Mr. Eisenberg. Have you heard anything about the dependability of the Italian-made ammunition, unreloaded?
Mr. Frazier. No, sir; not as such.
However, I have experienced the examination of Italian ammunition of various years of manufacture and, of course, various makes. And I think it is rather poor quality in this particular caliber, primarily due to the very short seating depth to which bullets of this type are seated in the cartridge, which causes the bullets to loosen very readily in the cartridge case even before they are loaded into a clip or fired.