With the increased popularity of shooting sports like USPSA, IDPA, and other high-octane shooting sports, extended magazines and magazine base pads have found new life as more than just a way to extend your magazine dumping capabilities. Extended Magazine base pads in particular are quite useful as they more accurately conform to the shape, and style of your handgun while still providing the same benefits that the extended magazines do. But what other sort of benefits do extended base pads offer other than just a capacity boost?
Most magazine base pads will offer the user a handful of extra rounds, usually one to three, but not all of them do. For example, the Tyrant Designs metal magazine base pads are CNC machine-made and anodized which makes them much more durable than their polymer counterparts. Factory magazine baseplates are no different than other plastics in that they’ll eventually wear out and break from constantly being dropped on the ground during hasty reloads. Aftermarket metal magazine base pads are much more durable and also have the added benefit of identifying your magazines as distinct from other people. Metal magazine base pads will wear away eventually after repeated use but they’ll last much longer than plastic ones.
Outside of competition pistols, extended base pads have a lot of good uses too. For one, they provide you with a much surface area to grip onto. This is important for handguns with shorter grips. One great example is the old first-generation Smith & Wesson M&P9 series which is still carried by some (myself included) to this day. The extended magazine base pads that Tyrant Designs makes for this particular handgun gives you an extra inch or so for you to place your pinky on and this has the benefit of giving you more control over the firearm for faster follow-up shots. As mentioned before, these magazine base pads usually also add capacity and this means you’ll have more rounds on tap to either neutralize the threat or otherwise get yourself out of the threat and away to safety.
Extended magazine base pads aren’t perfect for every situation and in some cases, they really are just there for looks and for increasing the time between reloads. We’d obviously like to hear what your preferred use for extended magazine base pads is. Let us know down in the comments what you use yours for and also let us know if we missed any of the many benefits that these awesome firearm accessories have!
