Can a bad magazine allow a handgun to fire unintentionally?

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mikemyers

mikemyers

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A friend of mine has an old semi-automatic handgun, which has been sitting around for a long time. He got it as a gift, and was checking it out (unloaded). I heard it go "click" unintentionally - good thing it was not loaded.

He sent it off to a gunsmith, and apparently the gun smith told him:

" As for the issue, I got new magazines … and brought it to a gunsmith who fired it and he told me there was no more problem due to the magazine issue, and to not use the old ones."

I'm curious - is there any way in which a defective, or old, or damaged magazine can allow a handgun to fire unintentionally? I would have thought absolutely not - the gun won't fire because something in the gun won't allow it to fire unless/until the shooter wants it to fire, no matter whether the magazine is in place or not, good, damaged, defective, or any other kind of potential defect.

Am I right?
 
Well- some old pistols will close the slide as soon as a LOADED magazine is inserted, 1914 and HSC Mauser's, IIRC correctly......
But even this shouldn't result in a slamfire unless something else is wrong with it. And it wouldn't occur by inserting an empty mag.
But, as with any old machine, things wear and break, caution is prudent and keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction at all times.
 
Anything is possible. Depends on the firearm. What model firearm is it?

I have seen some pretty flaky designs in some old firearms. A magazine pushes something out of place and trips the sear... possible... sure. How many firearms will go off if you drop them on the hammer when there is a round in the chamber? No modern firearms that I know of but I know of MANY older firearms that will.
 
I am pretty sure that it was a Walther PPK, probably used by the military back in WW II. That makes it a rather old gun, so maybe the safety mechanism from back then wasn't so safe, as noted above?

If so, that makes it a poor choice to use for "carry". I assume most people would want something more modern.
 
It (a flaky magazine) OUGHT not cause the gun to fire. It more likely there's something else not quite right. (Usually only problems with the sear or hammer or trigger can cause an unanticipated ignition... and a magazine should have NO way to affect those parts. (The magazine is an independent sub-system, so to speak, it doesn't connect to anything that can make the gun drop the hammer.) What makes this scenario more questionable is you don't really know what the person handling the gun was doing -- you just saw/heard the consequences of his actions. (This would be especially true if the person handling the gun was unfamiliar with it.) But as others have said, almost anything is possible.
 
As commented there is not enough information about your friends "old semi-automatic handgun" to give a meaningful answer.

However the answer is maybe.

Visit "Forgotten Weapons" on youtube. Ian reviews and discusses in detail old gun designs, how they function,the advantages and problems they had.

Very well done videos and I have spent many hours watching them. The thing many may find surprising is that most things have been tried in gun design and successful designs died off due to lack of financial backing, poor management or politics.
 
I am pretty sure that it was a Walther PPK...
Click to expand...
As far as I can tell, there is no mechanism in the original PPK design that would allow the gun to fire by manipulating the magazine. The trigger bar is routed outside the magazine well and the sear and hammer mechanism are not accessible from the magazine well. There is no magazine safety.

The firing pin is visible/accessible via the magazine well, but I can't think of a way that one could, from inside the magazine well, impart enough energy to the firing pin to cause the gun to fire from the bottom. You can't see either end, you only see it as a smooth steel rod surrounded by a spring which is holding it to the rear.

If it definitely was a Walther PPK, I would feel confident in stating that there is nothing you can do inside the magazine well that could cause the gun to fire.

What MIGHT have happened is the following. The gun has a safety/decocker on it. It might be possible for a PPK that has not been lubricated properly and that has a very weak recoil spring to hang up with the slide partially closed when the decocker is in the safe/decock position. Under those circumstances, the hammer would be back because the slide hasn't closed enough for the decocker to drop the hammer. Then, conceivably, inserting the magazine might jar the gun, causing the slide to fully close and the hammer to fall since the decocker is engaged.

It should be noted that this would not cause the gun to fire since the safety/decocker is engaged, but it might startle someone who wasn't familiar with the mechanism of the gun.

In spite of some experimentation, I can not generate this kind of behavior in my PPK, but I think that it might be possible under just the right circumstances.
 
Magazine in a ppk only touches the ejector, which is the slide lock. In a working Walther, the safety physically blocks the firing pin from moving no matter what else you do. It's quite carry safe. It'll work unless the safety drum is cracked in two, which is very rarely seen ouside the earliest models. Easing the hammer down on decocking prevents it from occuring. I think they thickened the safety metal sometime in the 30s.
 
I should mention, when you put on the safety decocker, the hammer falls quite firmly . Someone unfamiliar with a ppk might mistake this for an accidental firing but it's normal and the gun will not discharge.
 
mikemyers said:
A friend of mine has an old semi-automatic handgun, which has been sitting around for a long time. He got it as a gift, and was checking it out (unloaded). I heard it go "click" unintentionally - good thing it was not loaded.

He sent it off to a gunsmith, and apparently the gun smith told him:

" As for the issue, I got new magazines … and brought it to a gunsmith who fired it and he told me there was no more problem due to the magazine issue, and to not use the old ones."

I'm curious - is there any way in which a defective, or old, or damaged magazine can allow a handgun to fire unintentionally? I would have thought absolutely not - the gun won't fire because something in the gun won't allow it to fire unless/until the shooter wants it to fire, no matter whether the magazine is in place or not, good, damaged, defective, or any other kind of potential defect.

Am I right?
Click to expand...
There is insufficient information in your original post to make a determination. Are you sure it's not a Mauser HSc? They look similar. As Schegel points out, dropping the slide on a PPK with the decocker down will drop the hammer (as designed) but since you guys didn't even know what gun it was, I suspect you didn't know that the decocker was on it either. As for carry, the only thing to be aware of is 'slide bite'.
 
I had a PPK/s that started doubling on me a few years ago when I took my oldest daughter to the range, but that was from a worn sear issue not a mag issue.

I have personally never heard of a bum mag causing a gun to fire...but I've heard lots and experienced lots regarding bum mags causing guns to jam and then not fire...:eek:
 
Interesting... Never had anything like that happen.

I think I would try to make it happen with the old mags again (empty mags of course lol)

Being an older pistol I would bet something else is at play here...
 
Doubtful advice from the gunsmith. Very easy to test the information. Try to replicate the problem of firing with an old magazine. Same safety caution as before, unloaded of course. If the problem occurs with old and new magazines, then your friend needs to find a different gun smith.
 
As suggested, I posted this in the Walther Forums, http://www.waltherforums.com/forum/...tional-discharge-old-walther.html#post1003706

I don't know that this is THE reason, but it sounds plausible to me. Waiting to hear back from my friend:

Was he maybe playing with the combined safety/decocker? That one makes a distinct click decocking the gun.

The gun was new to my friend, and I knew nothing about it but for what I heard. We both assumed it tried to fire, but the above is another explanation for what we heard.

(I'm probably in the minority, but I'm not sure about the wisdom of carrying around a WW II handgun for self defense so many years later. That's a separate issue though.)
 
mikemyers said:
(I'm probably in the minority, but I'm not sure about the wisdom of carrying around a WW II handgun for self defense so many years later. That's a separate issue though.)
Click to expand...

Any competent gunsmith can address the SAFETY concerns the owner might have about carrying an older weapon, but keep in mind that WWII weapons are still being widely used around the world (although here in the U.S. many of them are now considered collector pieces and put away...) There are still a lot of WWII era weapons used as hunting guns around the world.

Age isn't as big a concern as the weapon's basic design and condition. The caliber and rounds used might be a more-appropriate focus when trying to decide whether to carry such a weapon. Guns like the PPK were often carried by officers or support staff, but as best I can tell this type of weapon was not really considered an important/critical weapon for troops involved in heavy combat. (On both the German and Soviet side, such weapons were often used as a "backup/last resort" weapon, or used to put animals out of their misery (and sometimes to execute prisoners, including civilians).

That said, any weapon (that works) is better than a pointed stick. A lot of folks here in the U.S. still carry .32 ACP weapons as their primary weapon.
 
Curious - if no competent gunsmith had gone through either gun, and you had a 1937 handgun and a handgun from 2017, 80 years later, would you feel the same with the older gun as with the newer gun? I would think that design improvements might make the newer gun safer and more reliable, and 80 years worth of wear is something else to consider.

If I had the Walther, I'd probably put it in my gun safe as a collector's item.
 
mikemeyers said:
Curious - if no competent gunsmith had gone through either gun, and you had a 1937 handgun and a handgun from 2017, 80 years later, would you feel the same with the older gun as with the newer gun? I would think that design improvements might make the newer gun safer and more reliable, and 80 years worth of wear is something else to consider.
Click to expand...

Except for improved drop safety mechanisms and firing pin blocks -- both designed to prevent problems that a careful user can also keep to a minumum -- I'd argue that the changes between the older guns and modern ones are not that great -- except for a wider use of alloys and polymer. (The new materials don't make the guns safer or more accurate, but they do allow for easier/longer carry and higher capacities.)

New guns aren't really all that different than the older ones except for the two safety issues cited, and some of the 1937 guns can be pretty safe if the user understandsk. The materials with which they are made gets "old" and decrepit a lot less quickly than we do. Then, too, I'd argue that there have been MORE negligent discharges with newer gun designs than with many of the old designs -- of course, that may simply be a function of many more gun owners getting hands on guns. (Hard to know, as the stats will never address how many gun owners account for how many unintentional discharges.)
mikemeyers said:
If I had the Walther, I'd probably put it in my gun safe as a collector's item.
Click to expand...
And your great grandchildren (or their children) would maybe be pleasantly surprised by their "collector" value - IF -

1) inflation doesn't go up faster than the value of the gun (history suggests otherwise), and
2) we're still allowed to have guns when you and I are gone.

.
 
I have learned to never say "never", but I can't think of any way that it could happen and I have never heard of it happening.
 
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