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

ezmiraldo said:
Thanks guys. Perhaps I'm unlucky. Or, perhaps I'm looking for real perfection! (Sorry, glock guys, just pokin a little fun at ya...)

I'm actually wondering if it's the dealer you bought them from; nobody's luck should be that bad.

Alternately, was your house by chance built over an Indian burial ground?
 
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.

Berettas have been heard of losing slides. But i have not heard of glocks or sigs with the same problem.
 
I've never had one malfunction with an HK, in fact they've been more reliable than the revolvers I've owned. That includes feeding, firing, extracting and locking the slide back on empty.

Every time the question comes up 'are they worth the price of 2 Glocks?' my answer is yes, definitely.

Sigs have also been very good for me with a near perfect record in my hands.

Revolvers haven't been that reliable for me, and when there is a problem with a wheel gun, it's usually not a quick fix. Even my beloved Freedom Arms has broken a spring and locked up a time or two. Of all the revolvers I've owned, only the 2 Blackhawks were 100% trouble free.
 
Mine have been reliable. I went from shooting 1000 or more a month, to almost nothing now I must confess.

If I found myself with a gun that required a meticulous cleaning to run, I'd sell it or destroy it
 
Call me picky or unreasonable, but I need my SD/HD/CCW pistol to function 99.99 percent
My SD/HD/CCW SEMI-AUTOS have not been 99.99% reliable. They have, and continue to be 100% reliable. LCP, LENGENDARY in their reliability, and Springfield Armory both approaching if not exceeding the 1K round mark without a single failure of any kind. Kahn CM9 in excess of 500 rounds, and probably closer to 750. Again, without a malfunction of any kind.
With Block, and Sig being the examples here, and being some of the most reliable pistols ever made, something just doesn't seem right with the OP's reported experience.
Then there is this.
All of these problems were when factory mags (in good condition) and factory ammo (FMJs mostly) were used. I'm pretty pedantic and OC about my ammo and examine every single round I feed thru my guns (I always examine primers for damage and proper seating, proper bullet seating depth and orientation, and structural integrity of the case).

Really? Check each and every factory round for seating depth? Examine primers for proper seating?
Maybe you're needlessly messing around with the ammo so much it's becoming contaminated!:D
 
I am stunned that some people in this thread are declaring 100% reliability with relatively low round counts as if it is a predictor of the future.

Every single gun will be 100 % until it is not. The past does not always predict the future.

Seem like the OP has had some bad luck. I have had a fair amount of guns pass through my hands new used young and old. Some with wheels some with mags. In the end all you can do is maintain them keep them lean and lubed and repair them when needed.

I believe that guns today are highly reliable. As reliable if not more reliable than most other consumer goods. Are they perfect? No. I believe that shortcuts have been taken and that the overall quality is not the same as it was in the past but that does not mean the gun does not run.

There is some amount of the Pinto principle working here but people forget that no gun company has never prouduced a dud.

Also everyone needs to remember 1=X is not a proof and that all poodles are dogs but not all dogs are poodles.
 
a hypothesis without any evidence is just a rumor.

even the army accepts failure, as evidenced in their recent modular handgun search, with failures accepted after a certain average round count.

but without some hard evidence of 'this gun on average fails after XX rounds, as determined by the following study', all the above is just idle chatter.

if you screw with the factory setup, if you use sub-standard ammo, if you don't clean and care for your gun per factory recommendations, then your data is worthless.
 
I am stunned that some people in this thread are declaring 100% reliability with relatively low round counts as if it is a predictor of the future.

I'm not sure what you concider a low round count, but to me there's got to be a point of diminishing returns.

I'm quite sure I'd trust a (insert pistol of choice here) that had 500 flawless rounds than the same model with 100,000 rounds, wear is eventually going to get to every gun.
 
I'm not sure what you concider a low round count, but to me there's got to be a point of diminishing returns.

I'm quite sure I'd trust a (insert pistol of choice here) that had 500 flawless rounds than the same model with 100,000 rounds, wear is eventually going to get to every gun.

The number varies from pistol to pistol and the specs associated with the pistol. What I am trying to get at is that it is not about this number or rounds or that number of rounds and I can declare the gun good or the gun a paper weight. There is no magic number and that the rounds that have been fired are in the past and that the past is may or may not be a good predictor of the future in terms of reliability.
 
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.
Mine hasn't jammed yet, but I've only had it since the early 90's so maybe I've not waited long enough.

In fact the only semi's I've had problems with were 22's and it was mainly an ammo issue

I suspect in the OP's case it's operator error
 
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.

Beautifully said. I myself could never understand why some folks have to put a minimum of 1,000 rounds through a gun before they deem it reliable for conceal carry/personal protection as it could very well fail on round 1,001:confused:
 
Mine hasn't jammed yet, but I've only had it since the early 90's so maybe I've not waited long enough.

In fact the only semi's I've had problems with were 22's and it was mainly an ammo issue

I suspect in the OP's case it's operator error

Never had a round not chamber? Never had a slide not lock back? Never had a primer not go off? Never had a parts failure like a thumb safety or a slide lock lever fail? No sights ever come loose? Etc....

Maybe you are not trying hard enough. LOL ;)
 
I can't remember the last time my Raven P-25 jammed.

I assume "jammed" is the general term for failure to feed or failure to eject properly, and does not actually involve anything being jammed that needs to be hammered on or pryed out.
 
The OP's experience is atypical, and therefore forms a poor basis upon which to form his query.

The general experience is that modern semi-auto pistols are extremely reliable. I really have to wonder what weird confluence of events is going on in the case of the OP.
 
What I am trying to get at is that it is not about this number or rounds or that number of rounds and I can declare the gun good or the gun a paper weight. There is no magic number and that the rounds that have been fired are in the past and that the past is may or may not be a good predictor of the future in terms of reliability.
I agree
I don't put a lot of faith in MTBF (mean time between failures) or endurance figures.
I also agree with this.
I'm never gonna shoot 1000 rounds in a SD scenario so what do I care if it'll shoot that many rounds without cleaning, Heck I'd rather have one that's fired 1000 rounds and been cleaned every 100 at least I've tested it 10 times from a clean state.
 
Not knowing how much real experience the OP has with firearms it would be hard to even justify a response to his fears. Perhaps the expectations of the OP is far to great for ANY mechanical firearm.:confused:
I have hundreds of thousands of rounds through hundreds of different handguns and my impression of the modern pistol have been that they are only getting better with every evolution.

(fyi...Over 20 years I have had two different Glocks that needed servicing for simple reliability issues. Glocks reliability are "average" by today's standards. imo)
 
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How many thousands of rounds can you put through a S&W .357 revolver until you start having timing problems?

Most folks don't put nearly the number or rounds through a revolver as they do a semi-auto.
 
My own observations on ranges and I've sat through a few ccw qualifications as well... I noticed that some of the old standbys had reliability issues....

Many incarnations of the 1911 jam up.
Also smaller guns and pocket pistols seemed to suffer from limp wristing.

Just my observations, nothing empirical. I'm thinking many of these are handmedowns... Not sure.
 
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