It isn’t necessary but it’s nice to tap it to get the heads of the cases back towards the rear of the magazine a bit and jiggle the spring. Chances are you could omit this ritual a zillion times and it would make no difference, but in case number zillion and one, that smooth feed instead of a jam could save your life.

Some people do this because they are under the mistaken belief that by knocking it on your k-pot, that somehow the rounds will magically be properly alligned. This was because the orignal follwers caused rounds to nosedive a bit. With the new generation of followers, the only thing that knocking the magazine on your pot will do is to possibly misalign a round, which is exactly the opposite of what you are trying to accomplish. Misfeeds are the number reason for failure to fire in your weapon..

edit: AF Officer: Sir, if they are teaching that at your CATM, then they are teaching you incorrectly, unless they are using the old black followers or the metal ones. The new greens don’t need a tap, and will only help aid a possible jam..

Having just gone through some training on M16 I can tell you that it IS official policy to tap the magazine on a hard surface before loading. Most use their kevlar helmet because it’s handy. I wasn’t wearing kevlar at the time, so used the bottom of my boot.

As has been said, this seats the bullets properly to prevent a jam (misfire) which can be lethal in combat action. Another aspect, which has not yet been mentioned, is that the magazine is not fully loaded… placing one less bullet in the magazine goes a long way to also preventing a jam (and is good practice on increasing the lifespan of springs in the magazine.

Since there is some obvious confusion, the tap of the magazine to the helmet is done BEFORE inserting the magazine into the carbine/rifle, the magazine is then inserted by hand.

Edit: Good to know, Shawn M. We were using the (i guess, old) black ones, and it was an army SF guy matrixed out to us to do our training. I’ll keep that in mind about the new green magazines however. Thanks for the info. Do you happen to know if the new green ones still need to be left one cartridge shy of full?

1st time I heard of that!!!!!!!!!

They don’t.

To be sure that the rounds are properly seated in the magazine.
Normally this is done BEFORE going on patrol .

Its bad for Soldiers to do that. They should rather use the **** of their hand so they don’t dent the magazine and it’ll lock right.

They hit the magazine so the rounds will seat correctly in the magazine. Sometimes when you load rounds the rounds aren’t seated right, or are pushed forward or stuck together or something. Banging them pushes them back into place and loosens them up.

Its a technique to make sure the rounds are seated properly in the magazine. If they aren’t seated properly you could have a misfire.

They pop in the Magazine with the palm of their hand, not their helmet. You been watching Gomer Pyle or something?

because they don’t need to