What To Do With A Broken Gun

[ROAshooter]

Trust it

"Trust it"...to do what??...punch holes in a paper target???or to defend your life in a life threatening situation???...which begs the question...how often have you been in a life threatening situation??....really.....unless your using it as a duty weapon....which I doubt.....I imagine you have never been in a situation that it going bang would ..."save your life"....so as other have pointed out...add in that fact to the odds...and move on...or trade it in for a Charter Arms Pitbull....

 

[joem1945]

I've had 2 gun failures. One went beck to the factory 4 times and I had to fix it myself. Then the same gun failed again (different symptom) and went back to the factory where they scraped it. Since they didn't make that model anymore I was offered any other pistol they were still making in a caliber I didn't want. Would I buy that brand again NEVER EVER!!!!

 

[Warp]

I carried and trained with a G17 for years. It had a mechanical malfunction once, I caused it by polishing the wrong part too much. I have the ultimate faith in it.

About five years ago I changed to a Springfield XD 45 Tactical. Another trouble free gun. What's better, it is a .45 caliber and holds 14 rounds. As if it couldn't get any better I simply shoot it better than the G17.

A couple of weeks ago, it broke (I most likely have in excess of 5,000 rounds through it). The trigger &/or striker won't reset. I sent it off to Springfield and they are going to fix it at no charge.

Here's the question. I knew what caused the breakage on the G17 and after fixing it myself I had no problem trusting again. I'm having a little niggle in the back of my mind about the XD though.

I think maybe it is because I don't know the operating system as well that I could diagnose and repair it myself. Then I tell myself that Springfield is bringing it back to factory reliability so I shouldn't worry. Then I ask myself, "should I really have trusted it in the first place?"

Do YOU fully trust a gun after it has broken?

I bought a new in box Glock that I knew to be a problem-child model, but I let the internet apologists convince me it was an overblown non-issue. Well, it wouldn't reliably feed JHP. I sent it back to Glock...same thing. So I sent it to them a second time and requested an entirely different model. No way I was going to trust that exact pistol again, and likely not that model, either.

They exchanged the gun, the extra magazines I had purchased, and moved my night sights over. Good service. Slow though, it took almost 8 weeks to get it back the first time.

"Trust it"...to do what??...punch holes in a paper target???or to defend your life in a life threatening situation???...which begs the question...how often have you been in a life threatening situation??....really.....unless your using it as a duty weapon....which I doubt.....I imagine you have never been in a situation that it going bang would ..."save your life"....so as other have pointed out...add in that fact to the odds...and move on...or trade it in for a Charter Arms Pitbull....

It only takes one time.

Not having needed a firearm in self defense yet in no way means you never will.

If you are going to have a firearm or firearms for the role of self defense...you need to trust them (for good cause) to work.

 

[Nickotym]

"Trust it"...to do what??...punch holes in a paper target???or to defend your life in a life threatening situation???...which begs the question...how often have you been in a life threatening situation??....really.....unless your using it as a duty weapon....which I doubt.....I imagine you have never been in a situation that it going bang would ..."save your life"....so as other have pointed out...add in that fact to the odds...and move on...or trade it in for a Charter Arms Pitbull....

Given that the average police officer rarely fires his gun at a perp on duty, why does it matter if I am carrying it on duty or as a CCW?

 

[RetiredUSNChief]

To make a point here with respect to reliability and what it takes to verify it:

I suppose, since we ALL have guns that are 100% reliable, none of us have ever felt the need to practice clearing malfunctions?

(Yes, the level of sarcasm is pretty high here. Does not apply to anybody who realizes the intent of this statement.)

 

[Warp]

To make a point here with respect to reliability and what it takes to verify it:

I suppose, since we ALL have guns that are 100% reliable, none of us have ever felt the need to practice clearing malfunctions?

(Yes, the level of sarcasm is pretty high here. Does not apply to anybody who realizes the intent of this statement.)

All guns will malfunction given enough opportunities.

Some will do so at a much higher rate than others.

For myself and the reliability of my carry guns, I don't know what those rates are for most as I did not track until relatively recently. I know I've never had a malfunction from either revolver, but then I have the fewest round through them. I have a Gen4 Glock 19 with 1,680 rounds and no malfunctions of any type. I carry it a lot. I also like to carry (particularly in winter) my HK VP9, it has 1,940 rounds with one FTRTB in the first 150 rounds using cheap weak 115gr, nothing after that but perfect function. The other semi autos I have had a lot longer and shot for many more rounds, with a couple malfunctions or something like that over the years, but I don't really know the numbers.

Of course I practice immediate action drills from time to time, even though the odds of needing to do that are exceedingly small

 

[Snyper]

*facepalm*

That "fraction of a percent" started at what...100 rounds, increasing from there?

Just another arbitrary number.
That 100 started with the first magazine

The point remains there is no magic number that makes a gun "trustworthy".
It's all in the mind of the owner

 

[RetiredUSNChief]

Just another arbitrary number.
That 100 started with the first magazine

The point remains there is no magic number that makes a gun "trustworthy".
It's all in the mind of the owner

You are correct...there is no "magic number".

However, the point of cycling "X" number of rounds through a gun is to test its reliability...in one area of my field of work, it would be called "repeatability".

Nobody here is saying that such a test won't ensure a failure of some kind WON'T happen...only that it's demonstrably UNLIKELY to happen over a given wide range of testing sample.


Here's another thought...how many people here clean their guns, including their carry piece, after use? And, after having torn down, cleaned, and reassembled their carry weapon, how many have actually test fired their carry weapon as a function check?

If they don't test fire, how do they KNOW it will work when needed? Just by knowledge of the fact that every other time they've done this, it's worked when they used it afterwards?

That history is another example of a "statistical sampling" over the life of a carry piece with any given owner.


Things that make you say "Hmmm...".

 

[lysanderxiii]

You are correct...there is no "magic number".

However, the point of cycling "X" number of rounds through a gun is to test its reliability...in one area of my field of work, it would be called "repeatability".

Nobody here is saying that such a test won't ensure a failure of some kind WON'T happen...only that it's demonstrably UNLIKELY to happen over a given wide range of testing sample.


Here's another thought...how many people here clean their guns, including their carry piece, after use? And, after having torn down, cleaned, and reassembled their carry weapon, how many have actually test fired their carry weapon as a function check?

If they don't test fire, how do they KNOW it will work when needed? Just by knowledge of the fact that every other time they've done this, it's worked when they used it afterwards?

That history is another example of a "statistical sampling" over the life of a carry piece with any given owner.


Things that make you say "Hmmm...".

You know, you can get caught in an endless 'do-loop' with that sort of thinking...

The more you shoot, the more the parts wear, the more the parts wear, the less the reliability, the more you need to shoot to ensure that you have the reliability you require....

And-

If you disassemble to clean, you need to test the reliability after cleaning which means re-cleaning...or...you don't clean, so now you need to shoot some more to ensure the crud and corruption left from shooting does not reduce reliability.

OH, and one more thing - let's assume we have a very reliable gun, the design has shown in testing to fail one time in a million rounds. That's a statistical average, yours might fail three time in the first four shots...or, right when you need it. Its really a crapshoot, only generally speaking, the odds are in your favor, rather than the house's.

As to the OP's initial question:

What To Do With A Broken Gun?

Fix it, simple.