Anyone else get rid of a CCW after 1 malf?

nat, 12/22/08

Nothing wrong with a Glock- as reliable or more so than most other quality brands. More important is that you now have confidence in your carry piece, something you had lost with your prior pistol. Now go out and shoot it and have fun. Merry Christmas.

oldandslow
 
natjohnb,

Okay, that I understand. It makes a lot more sense than a quest for non-existent perfection.

Just make sure you practice your malf drills with the Glock, too. :cool:
 
Has anybody even brought up the fact that this happened during the break in period? 200 rounds through a pistol is too low a number to be saying that it is unreliable. Most people recommend 300-500 rounds for proper break in.
 
normal said:
Has anybody even brought up the fact that this happened during the break in period? 200 rounds through a pistol is too low a number to be saying that it is unreliable. Most people recommend 300-500 rounds for proper break in.
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True, but most handgun owners just really aren't shooters. Three to five hundred rounds is probably about as much as your average handgun owner shoots through a centerfire pistol in the entire time they own it.

Competition shooters or gun school junkies put much higher round counts through weapons and (surprise!) report a lot more breakage and malfunctions.

(Think about it: Range trip every other month, 50-rd box of FMJ per visit, it would take two years to shoot 600 rounds. For a serious IPSC or IDPA competitor, that's a heavy weekend before a big match.)
 
I own a glock 26 and I have to say that it has been very reliable. However, I don't carry it anymore in favor of a model 60 revolver.

I've heard of and witnessed malfunctions with the Kel Tec. I saw an officer shoot a qual course with his back up pistol, a Kel Tec .32. It jammed multiple times during the 50 round course. There is absolutely no way I would have carried that pistol on or off duty.

I think it's all about confidence in your defensive pistol. I agree that there is no "majic sword" but I also believe that not all pistols are created equal. Some are more reliable than others.

However, the reality is that all pistols can jam up. And, they seem susceptible to jam up in the dynamic conditions of a gunfight. There are a number of documented cases (just perusing the web) of police officer's pistols malfunctioning in a gunfight (one would assume police pistols and ammo are of high quality). Luckily, most of the time, the officer is able to clear the jam before being killed or injured. There are even more examples of bad guy's semi auto's jamming up, probably because of poor quality, poor maintenance and poor ammo. And, it's a blessing that most of the bad guy's never get their gun back into action because they don't practice clearing malfunctions.

Practice clearing those jams until it becomes second nature. This is one of the best free videos I've seen teaching this important skill: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfyULpEhmug
 
I've heard of and witnessed malfunctions with the Kel Tec. I saw an officer shoot a qual course with his back up pistol, a Kel Tec .32. It jammed multiple times during the 50 round course. There is absolutely no way I would have carried that pistol on or off duty.
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No, I wouldn't go that far. Just saying that it jammed multiple times during a 50 round course doesn't mean that the gun itself is irrevocably unreliable. There are more than 1 reasons why this could happen, any of which are quick fixes and could result in a reliable arm.

Was it a user error? Bad technique? Small guns are prone to this, and you can't blame the gun for that.

Was it due to a critically cruddy gun? What kind of maintainence was done on it?

Was it an ammo related issue? That is easy to fix, just try other brands of ammo.

Was it related to a bad magazine, or a bad mag spring? Both of those are trivial to fix.

Being a KelTec P32, did he take into account the tendency of that platform towards rim lock? There is an easy fix for that problem.

Is this something that could be fixed with a F&B? That costs essentially nothing, just a little effort.

Did this officer just buy the gun, load it up, and try qualifying with it without going through the 100 to 200 rounds of break-in that KTs usually require?

Failing that, did the officer think to send it back to KT? They've got a lifetime warranty and a reputation of making things right for the user.

My KT PF-9 was absolutely horrible during its first 100 rounds of break-in and I didn't really expect that it wouldn't be, knowing beforehand that KTs usually are that way when NIB. After that 100 round break-in and a good cleaning, it hasn't missed a lick since (with good maintainence). And yes, I'm carrying it, right now. It is my EDC. Good thing for me that I'm not one of those "1 bad session and it's gotta go" types, I've got realistic expectations.
 
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if the gun can go 200-250 MRBF, it is probably good enough to carry


I've been shooting nigh on to fifty years now. I had to google MRBF.

Is that a military term? Mean Rounds Before Failure?

Are you saying that you would carry a gun that failed every 250 rounds?

Possibly I am misinterpreting your statement, and what you mean is that 200-250 failure free rounds in a new gun are enough to prove reliability sufficiently for a carry gun. I agree, although I think 500-1000 rounds would be better. In any case, I am not trying to pick a fight. Just trying to learn.

I don't have a whole lot of experience with semi-autos. I have owned a WWII era 1911A1 for about 35 years, and have probably fired a couple of thousand rounds in that time, all factory and all hardball. No failures. My Norinco failed to fire once because I had not slapped home the magazine hard enough. It was practically new when that happened, and after everything "wore in," I have had no more problems. Incidentally, I have used cheap, gun show purchased mags in these two and never had any problems.

I owned, and carried on duty, a S&W Model 39-2 in the early 70's. I probably fired 2500 rounds through it in a couple of years. I had one stovepipe jam, for no apparent reason. Again, all factory ammo, and mostly hardball, although I fired several boxes of a couple of different hollow-point rounds. I always carried hardball on duty.

It sounds like many of you are expecting your semi-automatics to fail. I wouldn't be really shocked if the next time I shot one of my 1911s that I had a failure. I don't expect it every 200-250 rounds, though, and certainly wouldn't trust my life to a gun that failed that often.

With my S&W revolvers, I realize that a failure is theoretically going to eventually happen, but I will be surprised if it does. I have had one gun related failure in a j-frame that locked up the cylinder and called for gunsmithing. Another time, I had a factory hollow-point 125 gr bullet jump the crimp and tie up the cylinder in a Model 36. It seems like it might have been a Super-Vel round that was the culprit.

I would bet you a month's salary that you could select any center-fire S&W revolver from my safe, and that I could fire a thousand rounds of factory .38 sp +p rounds without a failure. I would be extremely surprised if I had a failure. These guns are all box-stock with no polishing or "reliability packages" or anything. My Chief's Special does have a bobbed hammer. A thousand rounds of +p would probably loosen up a j-frame a lot, but I wouldn't expect it to fail.

As you can tell, I am a revolver man, specifically S&W. I have carried my 1911s concealed, but won't any more for several reasons. Reliability is a small part of it. Ease of concealment is next, but most of all, the older I get, the more I have come to appreciate the simplicity of a double action revolver.
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I'm sorry yes MRBF is mean rounds between failure.

Well, I stuck my neck out and said that one failure every 250 rounds is probably OK for a CCW. Now would I like my CCW to go 1000 MRBF or more? Sure, I would, and as a matter of fact my carry weapons, a USPc, a 638 and a G17 can probably go much more than that before having a failure. The most I've ever shot at any one time was around 550 rounds at a pistol course. This was with a USP on a very hot day, with a straight out of the box pistol, and had zero malfunctions. Usually I'll shoot 100-250 rounds, occasionally 350, during a practice session, per gun.

So my point is that if a gun can consistently give you 250 rounds before failure, that is probably good enough. I mean shoot, if you carry on the average of say, 10 rounds, in your CCW, that is 25 carry loads you'd have to go through before approaching a potential malfunction.

Now if you are some high speed low drag type crawling through quick sand and eating snakes, than a gun that can only go 250 MRBF under clean civilian CCW conditions might not be the best, especially if it is your primary weapon! But for CCW, I'll stick my foot out and say that 250 MRBF is probably good enough. Again though, my particular choices can probably go at least 5 times that and still be running, but I think that sometimes we might get a little too mall ninja about expected reliability in our CCW, although, all things considered, it is better to have and not need, than to need and not have a gun that can go 2000 MRBF. :)
 
I've had the occasional frain bart, that doesn't stop me from (now, what was the rest of my thought). Most annoying when you stop to think, and forget to restart.
 
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