I skimmed over the thread again, I did not see mention of they types of the malfunctions you were seeing. I understand you can't possibly know what caused everyone's issues, but could you at least cite a couple reasons for the semi-auto malfunction epidemic in your class? like I said, I have always come across some malfunction with "carry-size" semi-auto's, but generally just in the first few months of mating with the weapon and figuring out mainly what kind of ammo is: a- reliable with b- accurate with c- not working with particular pistol d: a combination of a&b with the weight going to A. If these were all new shooters and haven't spent time with their owned/borrowed carry piece, I can see why the number could be so high, of if they had policy to use a certain type of bullets that they don't usually use or could only use what the range stocked. if I went blindly into a class with my pt111 with a new ammo, I very well may have had an issue, but I think most people who take shooting at all seriously, will weed out ammo problems very quickly and definitely before giving the role of EDC to a particular pistol. I learned in the first few weeks of owning a S&W Shield and now my PT111 G2 that both have similarly steep feed ramps to make up for the small grip, this has caused problems with a select few hollow-points that have wide-mouths, anything else is fine. Hornady flex-tip being the preferred choice for both and having issues with GD's in ne and Golden Sabre in both.
Just curious if you were able to see a few of the issues in your class, were these ammo related, like seeing the bullet get stuck between the mag and bolt face with the slide closing in top? were they using the slide stop lever as a release, which some guns are fine with(CZ) and some are not with a few kinds of ammo(glock)?
Just curious, I have found that every new semi-auto pistol I have bought in the last four years could be managed to be 100% reliable except for a couple really cheap guns, which were always problematic out of the box. It's obvious that more problems can and will occur with semi's, but EVERY person in weekend class maybe shooting a few hundreds rounds, that is very suspect....there must be an underlying reason, I am hoping ammo or lot of very inexperienced shooters.