Trusting the untested gun

My guns get ruthlessly reliability judged throughout their ownership with me. My LCP needs another hundred rounds of clean shooting even though I've had one malfunction in 600-700 rounds when the gun was filthy.

For carry ammo, since it's expensive, I require one full box (20-50 rounds depending on the JHP) to run flawlessly at high-speed, rapidly-reload firing, AFTER the gun has run at least 200 rounds of FMJ.

I don't sell, and I don't trade. My guns need to earn their keep. I am tolerant of the occasional odd failure out of every few hundred that's attributable to user error (grip, poor maintenance, etc.). That's it.
 
Like buying a new car and driving cross country. You drive around town, get the feel of it, let it break in, etc.
 
Huevos of steel, I mean carrying a Taurus for SD, man.... Lol

Aside from the Taurus bashing I would never carry anything that I hadn't fired. No matter the price and quality of the weapon you just never know.
 
I think that some people develop an unrealistic expectation of their proficiency with a firearm, probably based on what they've seen in films, TV, and video games. They think that it's just a matter of putting the sights on the target and shooting. We'll get these folks at my local range occasionally. They'll come with a gun that they intend for home, or self, defense and take a few shots and then get frustrated with the results. Often they assume that there's something wrong with their firearm. But what's evident is that they don't understand that skill with a gun takes a lot of practice.
 
Huevos of steel, I mean carrying a Taurus for SD, man.... Lol

Aside from the Taurus bashing I would never carry anything that I hadn't fired. No matter the price and quality of the weapon you just never know.
Click to expand...

My little Taurus has had 2k rounds through it now (22lr) I trust it for carry if I wanted to, but I don't see carrying a 22lr for self defence unless it was the last gun on a the table/list/pile..
 
It's really quite troubling that there are people who are confident enough to carry without ever having tried out their guns. There's a lady I work with, she carries everywhere, all the time, and has been for years. The topic of guns came up and I asked her where she goes to shoot, she tells me she's never once fired her gun (or any other for that matter).

She carries a Taurus Ultra-Lite .38 snubbie. I had the same gun... it's not actually a very easy gun to shoot well for the uninitiated. The ultra-light frame makes it quite punishing to shoot even with standard pressure ammo, and the DA trigger is just plain nasty, heavy (actually a worse trigger than even on a Nagant M1895, IMO). It's the sort of gun that would take quite a lot of practice to shoot well. This lady's got carpal tunnel syndrome so bad it affects which tasks at work she is capable of doing.

Unfortunately there is no reasoning with her, she is in fact convinced she'd even be capable of shooting the knife out of an assailants hand should the situation arise. It's a doubly risky situation, since we have an untested gun carried by an "untested" individual.
 
just went to the range today with my taurus pt145 mellenium pro. love that gun. have never had a problem. would not hesitate to carry sd. here are my results. this is at 12 yards.
110311144923.jpg
 
I think it is pretty scary that anyone carries a gun they have never fired. A crusty old guy who taught me a great deal about weapons when I was a pup used to say "if you carry a weapon, you better be ready to use it"

Carrying without knowing how to use it, combined with a state of extreme fear and anxiety, will most likely result in a bad situation, up to and including having your own weapon being used against you. Better to be unarmed.
 
A tested gun, and a person who can at least reliably shoot a torso target at 10-20 feet.
Click to expand...
Hitting a 3x4' stationary target in slow fire is much easier than hitting a moving target under stress. That's not an acceptable benchmark for defensive shooting.

Yet, I've lost count how many people I've spoken with who can barely keep their rounds on paper at ten feet with their "carry gun." The rationale is usually something to do with "most encounters take place within six feet, so..." I worry for bystanders.

As for carrying untested guns, that's pretty common. Heck, about three times a year, I have to literally cut a stuck gun out of a holster. It's usually loaded, even though the person carrying it opines "there's no clip in it." When I suggest that they really need to have it cleaned and function-checked, they balk at paying for the service, claiming they don't want to be separated from their "EDC" or whatever the trendy term is.

It's also common to hear people tell me of unacceptable failure ratios in their carry guns, justifying it by claiming that it's "mostly OK with FMJ" or "fine if you don't limp-wrist it."

The common thread is that these folks aren't taking the gun very seriously at all. The problem is that it's much more common that you'd think.
 
My personal testing is that I give the gun 50-100 rounds straight out of the box and forgive any hiccups. Then I clean and lube, and give it another 100. If all goes well, I do 1 full box of HD ammo. If all goes well there, I clean it and carry it.
Click to expand...

I concur. I have yet to read, hear, and thankfully not been involved in a 60 round SD situation. After initial break in a consistent 50 rounds without a hiccup is good IMO. Anyone needing more than 50 rounds in a SD situation needs to move.
 
just went to the range today with my taurus pt145 mellenium pro. love that gun. have never had a problem. would not hesitate to carry sd. here are my results. this is at 12 yards.
Click to expand...

Taurus, that's amazing! Apparently your gun shoots two different calibers with the same accuracy! :D
 
When I first read this thread my reply was going to be "some people" are stupid. After thinking on it a few minutes I would change it to "some people are naive".

I can kind of see what they must be thinking. When people make a big purchase (remember even a cheap pistol is a big purchase to the majority of people) he tend to trust that it's going to be quality and work well. Of course with something like a gun, that's pretty damn naive IMO.
 
While it is good to run hundreds of rounds through a gun to test reliability, a better test is to shoot under pressure. Timed competition will often find problems in even the most reliable firearm. Our club has an action pistol league that shoots once a week.

There is always some one that will have an other wise reliable gun malfunction. Under stress revolvers will get short stroked, autos will be griped wrong (coming from the holster), grip safety not get fully depressed, hand rides up on slide or just plain lose grip causes malfunction. The amount of problems we have just being on a time constraint shows that your performance will be more likely to fail if you are being shot at.

The majority of people who buy guns are not gun enthusiast and will seldom, if ever shoot them.
 
Considering that the vast, VAST majority of people carry no gun at all, carrying an untested gun doesn't seem like such a big deal.

I certainly shoot my guns but the idea of putting over 1000 rounds through them before they're trustworthy would make my gun still untrustworthy. My Glock is over 2 1/2 years old and I've probably fired 800 rounds. FMJ, HP, multiple brands of factory ammo, handloads, light loads, heavy loads, varying OAL, multiple barrels and recoil springs.... never a single failure. I don't know why I'd need another 400 rounds to trust it.

Besides which, I could make the argument that every trigger pull invariably puts you one round closer to a failure that WILL eventually happen. Maybe at 500 rounds, maybe 5000 or 50,000, but it WILL happen.
Why push it?;)
 
If you carry you should practice with the carry gun every at least quarter… once a month is preferable.
It is hard to believe someone would carry a gun they have never fired.
 
Considering that the vast, VAST majority of people carry no gun at all, carrying an untested gun doesn't seem like such a big deal.
Click to expand...
There is a world of difference between being part of the 95% who are oblivious to the world, and being someone who has made a conscious decision to go armed into the world, with the attending responsibility and liabilty.

Someone who gets on a commercial airliner as a passenger is equivalent to the former. Perhaps the guy piloting that airliner is a fair equivalent to the latter.

An imperfect analogy, for certain, but I believe it serves the purpose.
 
Considering that the vast, VAST majority of people carry no gun at all, carrying an untested gun doesn't seem like such a big deal.
Click to expand...
I also have to disagree. There's a big difference between not having a gun at all and presenting one that fails to work. The latter case escalates the encounter quite a bit.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top