Can you get the slide to close by slamming in a mag?

[dcarch]

My Kimber does not do this, which is probably a good thing. I could see something like this eventually damaging the slide stop on a 1911 type pistol.

 

[The-Reaver]

Just tested it with my Sig P226 and it dropped the slide as well.

 

[Feanaro]

saying it's consistent when "you jam it in hard enough" does not mean it's consistent, and is therefore not a feature.

If firearms designers are anything like software designers, I'll bet they would disagree. They would dub it an "unintended feature". That comes out much nicer than "cool bug that we didn't fix but ended up being sorta-kinda useful sometimes maybe".

 

[Whiskey11]

Some pistols are designed to do this. From memory, I believe the Beretta 92 will do this, but only if you send the magazine home at an angle. If you send it home at a direct 90 degree angle, the slide will stay put.

My XD does not do this.

It could speed up a reload, but isn't completely necessary. Just one of those things.

The XD will do it, but I've not been able to get it to do it nearly as reliably as my Beretta will so I don't practice it, but a couple times while out at the range I've had it happen.

In the Magpul Dynamic handgun course they spend a brief minute or two talking about this. They didn't really encourage it, but they did mention that if you can get it to do it every time and be reliable at it, then practice it and get it to do it every time and use it to your advantage.

To be honest, I'm not sure of the physics of what causes this to happen. The forces are in kind of a strange direction to have the slide stop drop far enough to cause this to happen, but I can't imagine it is any worse than dropping the slide with the slide stop repeatedly.

Yes I do practice this on my M92A1 because it will do it reliably.

 

[bigfatdave]

the gun will rotate around center-mass when you bonk it, and the slide can lag a bit, so the frame goes up/forward and the slide, lagging a bit, goes back just enough to disengage the slide latch and then goes forward on spring power.

Smack those mags in hard at the rear edge while not holding the pistol too firmly, most guns will do it once in a while, not many are really designed to do it.

If it was a design thing, there would be a linkage at the grip base or near the mag latch lever to make it happen ... there isn't in any modern autoloading pistol I know of, they just do it on mechanical agitation.

 

[kwelz]

This has also been discussed in a couple handgun classes I have attended. The instructors without fail have demonstrated it and then told us it should NEVER be done.

 

[Sig88]

I haven't attempted it with any of my current firearms. I don't really spam the mag up but maybe I'll give it a try. Only time it ever happened was with a 1911 I rented at the range, but it was an extremely filthy gun to begin with and did not happen every time.

 

[SwampWolf]

I'm not aware of any pistol actually designed to drop the slide upon the vigorous insertion of the magazine. If there were, (1) the manual that comes with the pistol would address the procedure and (2), it would happen every time, not just randomly at the whim of the pistol.

 

[JayPee]

Swampwolf, the feature is incorporated into certain production runs of the Bersa Thunder 9 Pro but not others. I owned one such Bersa that would automatically close the slide upon even firm insertion of the magazine. It startled me, so, thinking the gun was defective, I contacted a factory warranty center, and they told me that this type of slide stop appears in some Thunder 9 Pro's but not others. They could not elucidate. I sold the gun to a relative who likes the feature. I don't. It's the old dog/new tricks thing. I want the slide to close when I say so, not when the gun says so.

So there is at least one gun that is sometimes made to do this.

JayPee

 

[JohnKSa]

With one or two exceptions I can make the slide close on any of my semi-auto pistols by inserting the magazine in a particular way.

It doesn't require a lot of force once one understands what's going on. The key is that the magazine should be run home so that the force is applied not just straight upwards (at right angles to the slide) but also with a forward angle.

When the force bumps the gun forward, it bumps the slide slightly out of engagement with the slide stop and the slide stop will fall out of engagement with the slide under spring force since there's nothing holding it in engagement now that there's a loaded magazine in place.

You can replicate this without a magazine by locking the slide back and then bumping the back edge of the bottom of the grip. I will point out that this is quite uncomfortable to do if the pistol has a lanyard loop.

I don't think that guns are designed to do this. It would be more accurate to say that the design of most semi-autos doesn't prevent it from happening and makes it possible.

 

[bigfatdave]

the feature is incorporated into certain production runs of the Bersa Thunder 9 Pro but not others.

is it in the manual?
Is there a specialized mechanism to perform the feat?

Or did Bersa CS just give you a line to explain a non-malfunction non-feature?

 

[HorseSoldier]

Correct. Every HK I own will do this, especially if I tilt the handgun to its side when slamming the mag.

While this will work many times, it's not something I would practice, simply because the one time you would count on it, it wouldn't work.

My experience with HKs as well (USPs, anyway). Not consistent enough to be part of technique, but pretty common on speed reloads.

 

[JayPee]

No, bigfatdave, I checked several manuals and there is no mention of it in any of them, which is why I called the factory warranty center. I would have no way of knowing if they were misstating their case. The slide stop function in the gun was completely normal in all other respects.

This particular gun was a Thunder 9 Pro without the "Pro" stamped on it, which means it was an interim model marketed until Bersa could get the new gun past the feds. So could this have been an interim feature, or a feature reserved for military and police contracts mistakenly installed in a civilian gun? Who knows. Foreign manufacturers of military pistols are frequently lacking in consistency, to say the very least.

JayPee

 

[FruitCake]

Yup. My G17, G30, and a lot of my other full size guns do it if done hard enough

 

[Smaug]

I just found out I can get my CZ 97B to do it. I noticed it during competition this past weekend. I don't really like it, and I think JayPee makes some great points.

I'm going to try not slamming it home so hard in the future. I'm also going to try to count rounds fired in my head, and swap mags after 9 rounds, (mag capacity is 10) so I don't need to rack or release the slide at all. That seems to be the fastest way when going through multiple mags, at least in competition.

I did have a lot of jams, but they started on the second round (stovepiping) which leads me to suspect light powder charges in my reloads and not a problem caused by firm mag seating.

 

[PercyShelley]

FWIW, the British EM-2 rifle actually had a bolt release that was triggered whenever a loaded or partially loaded magazine was inserted and the bolt was rearwards. I'm surprised this hasn't been copied more.