A widow friend of the family asked me to clean & check the two handguns she had for self-defense- a Glock 42, & a Model 15 that belonged to her late husband. Neither were functional.
The Glock 42 has never been cleaned or lubricated, and had frozen shut. I eventually got it to open, and found that it wasn't even loaded. Had she tried to use it, she would have had a really bad time.
The S&W's cylinder rod had backed out, so it too wouldn't function.
"You win 100% of the fights you avoid. If you're not there when it happens, you don't lose." - William Aprill
"I've owned a guitar for 31 years and that sure hasn't made me a musician, let alone an expert. It's made me a guy who owns a guitar."- BBI
When Covid first happened and we thought it was going to be the Zombie Apocalypse, my neighbor and I ended up talking guns.Originally Posted by Joe in PNG
He had just sold his .38 a few weeks before the coof, and only had his .22 Browning Buckmark, which he went in the house to show me.
I dropped the mag, all the ammo was loaded backwards...
This was an otherwise competent man who did a lot of solid DIY projects around the house and on his car.
I became a believer in revolvers for regular people then.
That was my take many years ago. Even today, I would prefer to see a lot of less "dialed-in" people buy a three or four inch .38/.357 with decent sights rather than stumble about with semiautos, but profit margins, mass marketing and whatnot make 'em want what they want. Logic takes holidays and horses don't necessarily drink the water.
In my own case, self-assessment of the trajectory of my physical and mental capabilities drives firearms choices more than it used to; I find that excessively short/light trigger pulls, ultra-light and/or micro-sized handguns and controls that are - relatively speaking - either undersize or oversize can make a handgun unreliable/undesirable for me.
"What a drag it is getting old."
gn
"On the internet, nobody knows if you are a dog... or even a cat."
At what capacity have you witnessed private citizen involved defensive shootings and how many?
What guns were used and under what circumstances? (semi or Revolver, full sized or compact?) (entangled or moving towards or away or from cover or in the open? Also, were victims reacting or aware of pending attack?)
What percentage (even if an estimate) were there malfunctions?
Thanks in advance
The curse of our modern age is that there's a lot more video of normal people pulling pistols to defend themselves given the near ubiquity of cameras. One does often see draw/grip related issues when it's time for the pistol to come out. As a brief for-instance:
If you go looking through examples of normal people using a pistol in self defense you'll have no problem encountering examples of guns that needed some form of remedial action. Surprisingly, a great many of the people involved seem to be able to make the remedial action happen even though their grip gives evidence that they are probably untrained in the use of the pistol.
Incidentally, in the first video you see the argument against the revolver in that our defender was dealing with multiple attackers and it was his ability to keep making loud noises in their direction that eventually convinced them to seek their entertainment elsewhere...
3/15/2016
Tangent alert:
Some frank soul-searching has made me believe that revolvers occasionally have a place amongst the cognoscenti, as well.
I’ve mentioned this here before: since my work as an educator is seasonal, I find my ability to run a semi under simulated stress waxes and wanes depending upon how much practice I get, with a slow tapering off of fine skill over the course of the academic year. Things like malf clearance, WHO, even the draw. I’ve been at this whole enthusiast thing long enough that I could take a decade off and still roll out of bed and hit “equal height, equal light” well enough to outshoot most gun owners in pure marksmanship, but the fighting skills under discussion here do degrade, IME.
All to say, in the summer, when I have time to shoot matches weekly—and when I’m out enjoying the outdoors away from civilization—I’m a die-hard Glock guy, so far as carry/HD. But at the moment, during the busiest time of the year for me, and at the end of the NPE taper, my HD gun is a speed-six. I’ve run enough wheel gun in enough class and competition that I’m comfortable with my ability to deal with the simpler manual even while under a practice deficit.
TL/DR: there’s less to fuck up under stress with a revolver, less to maintain while the gun is static, and even people with 100s of hours of formal training and 1000s of hours at the range can benefit from that fact during periods of lesser skill maintenance. JMO.
”But in the end all of these ideas just manufacture new criminals when the problem isn't a lack of criminals.” -JRB
Your recollection of a class where you were shooting an otherwise-reliable Glock 17 in the rain and having jams is one of the many instances I had in mind when posting this question originally. Thank you for chiming in.
Regarding establishing a proper firing grip, how many practice, or even can practice drawing while:
- moving left, right, front, back
- from the ground
- while running
- one handed
etc
Stress does funny things to people.
You could be gripping higher, obstructing the slide, pressing the slide release and locking the slide back prematurely, etc.
All kinds of things. I literally locked the slide back prematurely or had slide fail to lock back at my first USPSA matches.
Which the guys all thought was no big deal - new shooter and maybe it was the match pressure, right?
Well… I had been shooting Glocks with extended slide releases for almost a decade then and… previously I had shot and placed as high as 3rd in 2-gun matches a number of years prior (I’m not saying this to saying I’m Jerry Miculek but to say “I know how to handles decently or atleast I did over the 45+ other shooters at that 2-gun match that day”). This was a huge slice of humble pie. But it never occurred in dry fire, competition with other Glocks, or in live fire at the range prior over years and thousands of rounds.
I swapped out my Glock 34 gen 5 extended releases for regular releases. I say that to say stuff happens under pressure. Probably reinforces the value of competing with duty gear to induce stress.
God Bless,
Brandon
Yesterday I was shooting my trainer HK45C at speed (my shot timer's batteries died though!), and it seems I too was holding down the slide release on the left side, or at least my thumb was close enough to it that during recoil on the last round it would press it down and cause it to not lock open. I was tired, running low on water, it was hot, etc. Never had it happen with an HK45C before. The slide release lever goes much further back towards the thumbs compared to the USP.
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