Why aren't today's semi-auto pistols more reliable?

I have several semi-autos / admittedly mostly higher end guns...but virtually no issues thru them....and some have over 25,000 rds thru them...

Wilson Combat 1911..5" gun/9mm...84,000 rds and counting ( its 7 yrs old )...at around 40,000 rds I did break an extractor...but that did not shock me / it has run 100% since ( my primary range gun )

Wilson Combat 1911..5" gun/.45 acp...25,000 rds and not a single issue. This is my primary carry gun.

Sig 226's ...in 9mm ( 12,000 rds no issues ) about 10 yrs old
Sig 226 ...in .40 S&W...( about 5,000 rds and no issues)
Sig X-Five ..in .40 S&W...about 10,000 rds and no issues...
Sig 239's ...in 9mm and .40 S&W...only 2,500 rds each ..but no issues.

( I cannot say the same about my Kimber 1911's - even out of their custom shop, or an Ed Brown Kobra carry 1911, or a Les Baer 1911 Monolith...all of those guns had a number of issues...)...but the Ed Brown only had a few..the Kimbers and the Les Baer were nightmares../ and all 4 of those guns are gone now, happily replaced by the Wilsons).

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I keep them clean and well lubed...
I replace the recoil springs at about 3,000 rds..
I replace the main spring / hammer strut spring at about 20,000 rds...
I strip and clean the mags about once a month ...or every 6th range trip...
I strip the gun to a bare frame about every 6 months or 6,000 rds.../whichever comes first..

and I think all that does make a difference...
 
May I be the first to offer you a weapon that is up to your reliability standards. It's called a rock. It seems that you have experienced all of the misfortune that we have avoided. Thousand of semi autos across a full spectrum of brands & models proving reliable for hundreds of thousands of rounds from plinkers to competitors. I would suggest that you also avoid buying lottery tickets cuz you seem to just have all the bad luck. I hope the revolvers will keep working for you but they too have weaknesses.
 
I don't put a lot of faith in MTBF (mean time between failures) or endurance figures. If I need a gun to stop an attacker, it needs to work for enough rounds to do that. I don't really care whether it will run for a thousand more rounds or ten thousand more rounds, as long as it works when I need it to work. If it fails on the first round, and I die, I won't care how many rounds it might have fired before the next failure.

Jim
 
Glenn nails it:
I've seen most common brands of semis and ARs jam at times. Or break.
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Anything man made either has broken or will break. Just a matter of time. (Even Chevy pickups :) )
 
May I be the first to offer you a weapon that is up to your reliability standards. It's called a rock.
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Rocks break, too.

Although they seldom jam.

Range is pretty limited.

And the power is limited by the arm wielding it.

Statistics are comforting, and sometimes, even useful. But in the real world, something either happens, or it doesn't. IF it does happen to you, the fact that it might be 99.9999% against the odds offers no help.
 
Because ultimately corporate greed has replaced QA with CS, they don't need to make sure the guns run because people have bought into the game. The customer does the QA and will even pay to do so.
 
I have to admit to having a totally different experience than you. I have a 3rd gen G27 with about 2k rounds on it. 1 failure while using the 9mm conversion barrel and 9mm mag.

Sig P239 about 500 rounds on it and occasional failure to lock on last round due to magazine.

Numerous used guns cz, Berettas, Rugers, SA, with many rounds without failures of any kind.

The only gun I had with the kind of problems you describe was a Kahr PM9. Got rid of it in favor of the Sig.
 
There does seem to be a tendency for manufacturers to use early purchasers as beta testers, and for a that reason a lot of folks are reluctant to buy newly introduced models.

Overall, though, I have found pistols to be pretty reliable instruments, far more so than the cell phones and computers and such that were earlier cited as paragons of reliability. My luck with pistols is way better.
 
Semiauto pistols (the well-made ones) have been reliable for over a hundred years. If they weren't reliable, we would all be shooting revolvers today.
The US military adopted them in 1911....
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The fact that the military had committed to a semiauto platform 70 years earlier played an important role in me deciding to ignore the gun writers. It was only decades later due to the convenience of the internet that I found how reliable the 1911 proved to be during Army trials.
 
They's 2 kinds of semi auto pistols. Them's that jammed and them that's gonna jam. Like it or not this is the facts. Even perfect guns like Glocks will jam.
 
I ve got a lot of semi autos in 50 years of owning . I had problems with 2 . Both long gone Para Ord ,pig pistol and a PT-22 . Both company's on my never buy again list. For the problems and poor customer service.


Some people just can't shoot a semi auto. My daughter had a boy friend who could make any auto. I put in his had malfunction . But he was a bit of a wimp :rolleyes: She replaced him with a pistol shooter and deer hunter . I totally approved of the change .:D
 
They's 2 kinds of semi auto pistols. Them's that jammed and them that's gonna jam. Like it or not this is the facts. Even perfect guns like Glocks will jam.
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The same can be said of any firearm. I have had malfunctions with revolvers and single shot pistols, broken firing pins in shotguns, etc.

If you shoot a gun a lot, something will break. If you shoot enough different brands of ammunition you'll find one batch that makes the gun unhappy - and it doesn't matter if it's a semi-auto or a revolver.
 
I was taking a class in Dallas. About 20 guys in line. Almost all had Glocks. One guy had a Beretta 92. In the middle of an exercise, his safety lever flew off horizontally from the slide. Disappeared into the dirt.

You just never know.
 
@ OP, sounds like you have terrible luck!

From my thousands upon thousands of rounds through all my autoloaders I've had exactly one issue that caused jams and wasn't either a) magazine related (bad mag, bent feed lips, old springs or in one case dirty springs) or b) ammunition caused.

It was a tight extractor on a 1911 that caused a stovepipe on the 2nd to last round on 8-round magazines. Fixing it took all of 30 seconds, and it has run flawless since.

I have, however, had a S&W revolver that had the little screw on the cylinder work loose under recoil, and therefore could not be reloaded without annoying thumb screwing.

Far more tedious than racking a jammed slide.
 
I think the most problem prone semi-automatics are the little micro guns (LCP, TCP, etc) that were only available recently.
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I think you have proven your thought incorrect by mentioning the LCP. Everything I have either experienced or read or heard about the LCP is that it has legendary reliability. In fact, I have been having trouble with my S&W BG380, and use the example of the LCP as an argument that the pocket 380 concept can in fact work perfectly.

David
 
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