When would you lose faith in your CCW?

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marb4

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I recently purchased a Glock 36. It carries and shoots great and until yesterday I had around 350 flawless rounds through it. At the range yesterday I had two failure to feed malfunctions in a box of Sellier & Bellot ammo (230 grain ball). After this, I fired 50 rounds of Federal (walmart) and 25 rounds of my carry ammo (Federal 230 grain HST) with no problems. Interesting that both failures were from the same box and using the same magazine.

The question is:

Would you lose faith in your carry pistol after this type of situation or chalk it up to an ammo and/or magazine fluke?
 
Impossible to lose faith when I never had faith.

You should have tried to recover the casing. Some failure to feed is caused by out of spec casing.
 
This wouldn't shake my confidence in the weapon, and would only shake it slightly in the ammo from which the failed rounds came.

Another, trouble-free box would likely restore confidence to pre-failure levels..
 
I wouldn't get to worried. You found an ammo you gun doesn't much like. That is true about many firearms. Beside firearms don't offer any guarantees. But they are still better than a sharp stick. Now if you have a FTfeed , fire , or eject in regular fashion regardless of ammo, then I would worry.
 
Would you lose faith in your carry pistol after this type of situation or chalk it up to an ammo and/or magazine fluke?
Click to expand...

I would just look on it as an opportunity to practice malfunction drills.
Click to expand...

BINGO!!!

No gun is impervious to failure. EVERY gun can fail and if shot enough, will likely experience some form of failure. You may have 5,000 rounds at 100% reliability, but that doesn't mean that when you are attacked, and you fire that 5,001st round, it is absolutely going to work (though the odds are certainly in your favor).

Every one of my carry guns functions 100% as far as I have experienced, and I believe the probability that they will work if needed is as close to 100% as possible with any mechanical device. But I still do things like load an empty case into the mag, load a snap cap, out of spec round, etc.. to make sure I know how to handle a malfunction.
The guy who trained me in real practical self defense shooting, actually handed me the first 1911 I had ever shot. It was a Wilson Combat CQB. (yeah, i got spoiled from the get-go). He put a cheap nasty .22 conversion kit in it because he KNEW it would fail, and he banged into my head over and over again that you have to prep for failure.

Now, to answer the OPs question more directly, I would still trust that gun. It has proven likely with your carry load, which is the most important load. If ever there is a time for failures, it's at the range, for all of the reasons mentioned above. You might want to call S&B and read them the lot number off the box. there may be problems with that lot. Sometimes they want the ammo back to run tests on it, and will send you enough ammo to make it worth your time. But as said above, some guns just don't like certain ammo for whatever reason.
 
In 2014, ammo....

In 1994, Id blame the gun or the pistol magazine.
In 2014, Id say the QC of the ammunition may be the problem. :rolleyes:
After the 2012 blitz, all the munitions makers(Black Hills, ATK, Corbon, Remington, Hornady, etc) went bananas. They claim they had staffs & logistics working 12/16/20 hours a day. :eek:
Some of the rounds would be less than perfect.
In 2014 I think things will level off but these lots or bulks of US ammunition will need to shake out.
Hornady had a bad batch of the highly praised Critical Duty in +P 9x19mm. They had warnings out for it.
 
At 350 rounds that gun may still be at break-in; what are you using to clean & lube this gun?
 
In a some what related vain...

I'm amazed at how some people will excuse poor performance from a gun they "fall in love with" some times.

My brother has a Kimber 1911 and I've now been to the range with him twice, where it jammed up multiple times (I stopped counting after 3). Yet he loves to tell me how excellent the gun is. :^o
 
Personally, I would lose faith, but I've been told I have rather strict standards. For something like a Glock, I don't really believe in a "break in" period, and for the money being paid, it better work out of the box, with any quality ammo.

I would bet my money that your malfunctions were ammo-related. I would not bet my life on that, however.

Ultimately it's up to you if you still have faith in it. It is true that if you shoot often enough in enough different situations, you will experience a malfunction, no matter what the gun is. This is why we practice jam-clearing.
 
About a year ago during an advanced handgun class we had three individuals shooting three different guns chambered in three different calibers made by three different manufacturers and each of those individuals had one fail to fire. Every one of them had thousands of rounds through those pistols and neither of them had ever had a fail to fire. When inspected, all of the primers wre dimpled and all of them fired when loaded back into the gun and tried a second time. None were using their chosen carry ammo so every one of them used the moment to execute a Tap-Rack-Assess-Continue drill and never gave it a second thought. All claim they would continue carrying that pistol. After class we had a discussion and came to a similar opinion as RustyS opines here. All of the ammo had been purchased recently, as in during the ammo shortage days, and we suspected ammo or primer QC as the problem.
 
JDR said:
At 350 rounds that gun may still be at break-in; what are you using to clean & lube this gun?
Click to expand...
I've been using Break Free CLP (which is what I've use in all my pistols for years).

I ran a box of Remington UMC and a mag of my carry ammo through it this afternoon with no problems. Thats around 130 rounds since the malfunctions with no further issues.
 
Frog-Lube.....

Try a small tube of Frog-Lube, www.froglube.com . :D
I got a 4oz bottle of CLP about a month ago. They suggest cleaning/applying the CLP 2 or 3 times first before you get full results.
FL is safe(you can use bare hands), non toxic, FDA grade. ;)
It has a slight play-doo/Pepto Bismal odor but that disapates quickly.
Only use light amounts too. Some gunners slop gobs of FrogLube or soak it like a salad then complain about blotches or sticky ooze. :rolleyes:
Just apply a small amount, wipe it off & let it "season" the metal.

Midwayusa.com offers the 1.8oz CLP sample size. :D
 
My personal standard is 500 rounds without any failures that I can not identify the cause of (i.e. bad magazine, improper grip, etc.) before I consider it reliable enough for self-defense. Many consider that to be too high of a standard but it's my life at stake.

It may well be your gun doesn't like S&B ammo or something else may be going on. Only by continuing to shoot it will you be able to determine which is happening.
 
Love my G26 and carry it....in my hands it has over 2000 rounds thru it (I handload and practice with the same ammo I carry) flawlessly. My Wife did get a number of strange malfunctions with different ammo and we chalked it up to not getting a proper grip on the gun as it is too thick for her small hands.

I would depend on it without question - my Wife not so much.

She has a G42 and we have perhaps 1K rounds thru it now. She experienced several malfunctions in the first 50 round box of Winchester Train and Defend....I chastised her about the her mousy grip (she was intimidated shooting a brand new gun) and corrected her grip and she has never had a malfunction since. I occasionally get a premature lock back on the gun using the same ammo she has never had a failure with due to my right thumb catching the slide lock sometimes.

She depends on her Glock 42 with hot hand loads and trusts it implicitly. Me? Not so much....

VooDoo
 
No gun is impervious to failure
Click to expand...

Bingo.



Failures happen, it doesn't matter what the name on the slide is. A failure here and there every thousand rounds or so is of no concern to me. As they say _____ happens..

If it's happening routinely then it's an issue that needs to be addressed prior to using for SD purposes.
 
marb4 said:
I recently purchased a Glock 36. It carries and shoots great and until yesterday I had around 350 flawless rounds through it. At the range yesterday I had two failure to feed malfunctions in a box of Sellier & Bellot ammo (230 grain ball). After this, I fired 50 rounds of Federal (walmart) and 25 rounds of my carry ammo (Federal 230 grain HST) with no problems. Interesting that both failures were from the same box and using the same magazine.

The question is:

Would you lose faith in your carry pistol after this type of situation or chalk it up to an ammo and/or magazine fluke?
Click to expand...
Marb, examine your Federal ammo closely. I quit buying their red box crap because their 45ACP FMJ bullets looked like a child used a ball pene hammer on them. My Glock 21 hated red box, Winchester white box and high end ammo was fine.

If you ran that much S&B without issue using that mag, chances are it was the ammo since that's what was changed.
 
I took my new CZ to the range Saturday....FTE's all over the place. Maybe I shouldn't have tried 3.5gr of titegroup and the stock 17# spring. Or maybe it's a lemon.:neener:

Anyway I don't lose faith until it fails with multiple magazines and many different brands of ammo, during different sessions after a good cleaning(s)


So many variables out there; Ammo, Grip, Maintenance, Magazines...
 
As almost any gun manufacturer would say...

It's the fault of the ammo!

But seriously, I wouldn't mistrust the firearm if it flawlessly expended your typical carry rounds. (And that's coming from a NON Tactical Tupperware fan!!)
IMHO, I'd feel secure. If you still have doubts, fire off some more rounds.
 
marb4 said:
Would you lose faith in your carry pistol?
Click to expand...
If I only experienced issues with a particular brand/lot # of ammunition with my Glocks when other brands/lot #'s of ammunition worked fine, I would lose faith in that particular brand/lot # of ammunition. ;)
 
Like pretty much everyone else, I would give it a good (detail) cleaning and lube it up. Then run some carry ammo through it. If it ran good, I would be fine.
Unless it started to make a habit of screwing up. That's a different story.
 
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