New shooters at the range

cmdc

New member
I was at my local shooting range the other day giving a few pistols a workout, and in the station next to me was an elderly couple trying out their new pistols. His was a PPS m1, hers an XDs 3.3" 9mm.

Shortly, the gentleman tapped me on the shoulder and said he'd been watching me, and I seemed to know what I was doing and could I give him some help? I said sure, what's up? He said, I was shooting this thing and all of a sudden it just went 'click'. Hmm. Let me see that thing. It was the XDs. I removed the magazine, which still had ammunition in it, and retracted the slide and out came a spent casing. I was puzzled for a second before I realized that he was limp-wristing the pistol so severely that it wouldn't eject the spent casing before it went into battery, hence the 'click'. I've actually never seen that happen before.

Turns out that he is an old revolver guy, 78 years old, who's never owned a semi-automatic pistol. I gave him a few pointers, and suggested that he and his wife take some lessons along with the concealed carry class before they use their guns for protection.
 
Yeah these modern lightweight automatics really do need a strong wrist/grip to work properly. Not really strong but fairly tensioned. I think that is one of the reasons elders prefer revolvers, and also maybe because it may be hard for them to charge the slide. I know a lot of small pocket pistols like in 9mm can have fairly hefty recoil springs.

Good of you to help them out. That's what separates decent people from not so decent people. A helping hand can make a world of difference. They have good taste though, the pps and xds 3.3 are both very good compact auto pistols.
 
Good on you for helping out. Just the understanding of giving the gun a stable platform on which to function is enough for most folks. Some just don't think enough about how a pistol functions until they get a malfunction.
 
Thanks for helping that couple out. Very nice of you.

I'm 74 and love to shoot my XDs45 although it is currently back at the mother ship to see if they can fix the problem of not returning to battery 4 times in 50 rounds. No limp wristing involved.
 
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