Guns that run - out of the box

[JRL]

This question may need it's own thread, but are there any production guns that can really be trusted out of the box (and are not victim to low quality parts)?

Sorry if this is too off-topic.

[SteveK]

This question may need it's own thread, but are there any production guns that can really be trusted out of the box (and are not victim to low quality parts)?

Sorry if this is too off-topic.

HK, HK and , uh...HK. That's about it.

[WDW]

Your question cannot absolutely be answered as guns are made by man and man is prone to make mistakes. Any service pistol with a reasonable track record should be expected to run out of the box, but that doesn't mean it will. Your question is like asking what the weather will be tomorrow. We have ideas and guesses but no one actually knows for sure. Stick with a service type gun and that is the best you can do. Glock 17 and 22, HK USP, P30, 45, Beretta 92G, FS, Sig 226, 229, 220, etc., etc. Also, by asking this question you will get every answer from a top of the line HK to a piece of shit hi-point.

[seabiscuit]

Check out the 2,000 round test thread for some good data on various guns.

[TCinVA]

are there any production guns that can really be trusted out of the box?

Nope.

Let's look at the typical universal answer to that question, the 3rd gen Glock 17.

Now we have lots of combined experience with the Glock 17 that points to most specimens that Glock has shipped working acceptably for most people. None of us knows if right now at Glock HQ somebody had a visit from the good idea fairy and changed a critical part that will turn what is ordinarily a reliable pistol into a ball of suck. Or if they have a problem with a CNC machine that is going to lead to a critical part being enough out of spec to impact reliable function on a particular number of guns from a particular production period. Or if that particular gun you're fondling at the gunstore has a QC issue that didn't get noticed because they just hired a new guy who was busy sexting his girlfriend instead of inspecting your gun. Or if that particular gun you're fondling at the gunstore has been molested by an "armorer" in the store in a way that will impact the reliability of the pistol.

Now if I had to take a gun right out of the box, load it, and use it to defend myself from a zombie hoard, what gun would I pick? A 3rd gen Glock 17.

...but I don't have to do that very often (roving zombie hoards seem to be infrequent these days...perhaps because of Hornady's zombie ammo), and so I try really hard not to because of all the stuff I mentioned above. I try not to rely on a pistol until I've had enough trigger time on it to figure out if it's working properly. Because I have a little more experience than the average purchaser of handguns I can generally get more useful information from looking at and fondling pistols in the gunstore...but since my crystal ball is cracked and cloudy I'm still stuck shooting the thing to figure out if it's going to run properly.

Now if you're asking what pistols there are on the market that offer the best possible odds of buying a mass-produced handgun and not having it be a giant pile of suck, well:

- 3rd generation Glock 17
- H&K P30

Even then it's not a guarantee that the gun you buy won't suck.

[Corey]

Great reply TC. I think Todd covered this question well here http://pistol-training.com/articles/trust-no-one-an-insiders-perspective. You stand a better chance with certain manufacurers and certain ranges of models, but in the end there are no guarantees, you have to shoot it a bunch before you really know. I also think the 2,000 round challenge thread is a good resource for placing your bets and looking for trends, especially as we get more examples.

Oh yeah, my opinion for brands: HK, 3rd Gen Glocks, German made Sigs, Smith M&P series also seems to do well. There may be others, but if I had to take a gun right out of the box and go without any testing I would try to stick with those.

[JodyH]

I owned a late 3rd Gen Glock 17... it suffered multiple double feeds, basically the same extractor related malfunctions that plagued the 4th Gen guns.
My list would be even shorter than TCinVA's.

{LIST}
H&K P-series 9mm's (P2000, P2000SK, P30)
{/LIST}

H&K seems to be the only company that doesn't even try to compete on price, and their products haven't seemed to suffer any cost cutting measures because of it.

[Jay Cunningham]

All handguns suck.

[JodyH]

All handguns suck.
So you'd happily carry a Lorcin?

[JRL]

All handguns suck.

Are handguns more prone to problems than long guns?

Are there any long guns that you feel run out of the box?

[TGS]

I owned a late 3rd Gen Glock 17... it suffered multiple double feeds, basically the same extractor related malfunctions that plagued the 4th Gen guns.
My list would be even shorter than TCinVA's.

{LIST}
H&K P-series 9mm's (P2000, P2000SK, P30)
{/LIST}

H&K seems to be the only company that doesn't even try to compete on price, and their products haven't seemed to suffer any cost cutting measures because of it.

I concur. Unlike S&W, SIG, Beretta, and Glock, HK P-series don't have a history of recurring problems such as phase 3 malfunctions, early unlocking issues, improper nitrocarburizing, reliability effected by WML's, mags that magically pop out of the gun, extractor problems, trigger components that go kaput quickly, chambers that were a too wee-bit unsupported, frequent maintenance cycles on springs, light strike problems......should I continue?

Obviously, there's always going to be a lemon. Duh. This thread has covered the fact that they're man-made tools and thus some aren't going to be right out of the box, and something WILL break in the lifetime of the gun. Well, yeah, I think everyone understands that. That's a pretty lame answer, though.

There will be HK's that have out of spec parts like any other make, but they seem to have a whole lot less of them nor does HK have a knack for using customers as beta testers....and you pay for it. In fact, the only thing I can think of with currently produced HK's that could even be close to a recurring issue would be out-of-spec extractors on USP's....although it's definitely not a widespread, significant problem, it just seems to be that if something on a USP is out of spec, it tends to be the extractor.

[JAD]

All handguns suck.
Oh, that must be exhausting.

[Jay Cunningham]

Jack Leuba (Failure2Stop), orionz06 and I had this conversation a few weeks back.

Everyone's gun is flawless until it breaks. Or you get that guaranteed uber-reliable gun and have problems out of the box and then they all suck and that's it.

Then you get the guy with the XD that runs and runs and everyone calls him a liar. Todd does a torture test on an M&P9 and it performs magnificently, then I buy one that sucks and four of my friends have them and they suck.

One of my students (who absolutely trusts me) buys a Gen3 Glock 19 on my recommendation and it sucks. Jack Leuba has an H&K that sucks, but he probably doesn't know anything about guns.

So all handguns suck. All I can think to do is play the averages, find one I shoot well, and buy three of them.

And long guns suck too.

[JodyH]

So all handguns suck. All I can think to do is play the averages,
Or you could just toss out cool overused catch phrases and carry a Hi-Point.

[JDM]

Jack Leuba (Failure2Stop), orionz06 and I had this conversation a few weeks back.

Everyone's gun is flawless until it breaks. Or you get that guaranteed uber-reliable gun and have problems out of the box and then they all suck and that's it.

Then you get the guy with the XD that runs and runs and everyone calls him a liar. Todd does a torture test on an M&P9 and it performs magnificently, then I buy one that sucks and four of my friends have them and they suck.

One of my students (who absolutely trusts me) buys a Gen3 Glock 19 on my recommendation and it sucks. Jack Leuba has an H&K that sucks, but he probably doesn't know anything about guns.

So all handguns suck. All I can think to do is play the averages, find one I shoot well, and buy three of them.

And long guns suck too.

/thread.

If that doesn't exactly sum up the current situation then nothing will.

[TCinVA]

The core reality at work here is that if you see enough samples of something, you're going to find problems. The Glock 19, as an example, is widely regarded as a good carry gun, perhaps the default recommendation many would make based on Glock's reputation for reliability. Yet if you look back through the history of the Glock 19 you find a number of different problems that have cropped up with the weapons and you find that Glock as a company is sometimes slow to recognize that they have a problem and to work on a fix.

...so the person who buys the pistol that conventional wisdom says is great has the chance of ending up with a gun that doesn't work. Frequently when they ask for help they get told that they're limp-wristing it. Perhaps even by people on Glock's payroll who know better but aren't allowed by their superiors to actually say so.

So while we can try to make suggestions, they are just that: Suggestions. We cannot make predictions because of the factors I talked about previously. Collective experience has shown that if you buy a 3rd generation 9mm Glock pistol that it is highly likely to function acceptably out of the box and for a long and useful service life. Though the number of them out there compared to Glocks is relatively small, the H&K P30/HK45 pistols can legitimately be argued to be on the same plane in terms of being a good bet.

Sig is somewhat hit or miss because of quality control issues which still haven't been corrected. I know some like to pretend that all is well in Sig land, but the truth is that even long-time federal LE customers have received entire batches of pistols that didn't pass a basic function check out of the box. I've been on the line in classes or practices with a number of guys who bought really expensive Sigs only to find they wouldn't function properly out of the box. Our own JoshS bought one of the early E2 9mm pistols and if I remember correctly the trigger on the gun wouldn't reset. I believe he sent it back to the factory twice to have the thing fixed and it still didn't work right. (Correct me if I'm wrong, Josh) Sig certainly still ships guns that will function properly, it's just that the things they have done to make the company more profitable have pretty much eliminated what made their reputation for reliability. Sooner or later there won't be enough kool-aid out there to keep the idea alive that they are better than everybody else in the market and then they'll be stuck trying to sell guns that are about the same as everyone else's in terms of reliability and quality but quite a bit more expensive.

Smith & Wesson, god bless 'em, has a pretty good thing in the M&P which could be a truly awesome thing if they would fix some of the problems that have cropped up with the guns. They've made several internal changes to the pistols to improve the quality of the trigger pull, to deal with trigger reset problems, and to improve the striker's ability to handle dryfire. They still have a nagging issue with the action of a pistol unlocking early on a relatively small number of guns...but it doesn't seem relatively small when you end up with one of the guns that has a problem.

The Croatian XD's are relatively inexpensive and therefore relatively popular, but every time they get subjected to serious testing they flame out. I know there are some folks out there spreading the idea that the reason they don't get selected in agency testing is because of concerns unrelated to the weapon...like potential political instability interrupting support of the pistols :rolleyes:...but in every test they've failed that I'm aware of it's been things directly related to the gun breaking or nightmarish support issues that have done them in.

Beretta's 92 series pistols are pretty good for the most part. Their 96 series pistols are not. Their PX4 series pistols are based around a rotary barrel system which was a monumental failure when tried in the Cougar line of pistols. Beretta managed to talk at least one large state agency into purchasing them and they turned out to be unreliable piles of suck. Beretta thinks they've cracked the rotary barrel nut with the PX4...but they thought the same thing about the Cougar, too. Now they've been farmed out to Turkey and are being sold for almost half the price that they had when Beretta's name was on them. It's not a risk I would urge people to take.

...and we could go on and on all day like this.

The best you can do is, like Jay said, play the averages. Buy something that most people have a good experience with, shoot it a lot to find out if it works and if it works for you, and then if yes on both counts buy a few of them and drive on.

[ToddG]

There is absolutely nothing I would trust enough that I'd carry it without function testing. Minimum function test for me is 500-1000 rounds of ball followed by 100-200 rounds of the JHP that will be carried in the gun. I'm going through that exact process with my G26 right now, in fact.

Jay's post explains things perfectly. Your buddy can get "a good one," then you can get "a bad one." It doesn't really matter to either of you which one got the typical pistol and which the atypical one... he has a gun he can trust and you don't, period.

It's also important to keep in mind that the reliability and durability that we expect far outreaches the manufacturers' design goals. We want guns that will last forever even with high volume practice, but most manufacturers don't test their guns (or warrant them) beyond 20,000 rounds or so. That's multiple lifetimes to 99% of the gun buying public and less than a year for some of the folks here at PF.

A MRBS rate of 1000 is generally considered acceptable in the industry, and 2000 is exceptional. That's with lubrication every 250 rounds and cleaning every 500. The 2k Challenge is a great example of how much more we demand from the gun than that. You will not find a major handgun manufacturer that will guarantee its gun can meet that standard. In fact, most will tell you it's abuse and could technically even void the warranty in some cases. Yet we see the majority of quality name-brand guns make it through the 2K without a hitch.

The trick, then, is separating the wheat from the chaff when it comes to "my gun is reliable" stories. No gun is guaranteed, but some brands are certainly more likely than others. Even within brands, some are better than others. Problems with the SIG 2022 (sigpro) are very rare while the same company's other polymer pistol, the P250, was marginally less reliable than a Chicago politician. The Beretta 92-series (9mm) is phenomenally reliable, but the 96-series (.40) is notoriously less so. There have been a number of persistent issues with 9mm M&P full size guns, but the .40 and .45 models are almost free from complaint. Etc.

You can find people who bought Toyotas and had problems within the first 1,000 miles. But the vast majority do not. You can find people who've got 100k on a Land Rover without ever reporting a problem, but the vast majority do not. You'd be silly to say "Land Rovers are as reliable as Toyotas," but somewhere a Land Rover owner will fight to the death over that perceived slight because his small personal experience has been positive.

Life is complicated.

[TCinVA]

It's also important to keep in mind that the reliability and durability that we expect far outreaches the manufacturers' design goals.


An excellent example of this:

381
380

People generally don't worry about dryfiring Glocks because "it won't hurt them". Well, turns out that if you dryfire them enough, yes, it will. The manufacturer expects you will dryfire the pistol occasionally....not that you will do a minimum of 100 dryfires per day, every day, and more on weekends.

[fuse]

At AFHF in Sept a gentleman ran an xD. Todd said if it made it through the class without issues, it would be the first time an xD was successful in one of his classes.

It ran great. No stoppages.

[ToddG]

I don't think that's correct, but I could be misremembering. I thought he had a few stoppages.

In Oct'10 in Indiana there was a student shooting a ported .40-cal XD who didn't have any stoppages that I'm aware of.

[joshs]

Jack Leuba has an H&K that sucks, but he probably doesn't know anything about guns.

Clearly, he doesn't ;), but I think it was just karma punishing him for trying to be different by getting a TDA instead of a LEM.


Our own JoshS bought one of the early E2 9mm pistols and if I remember correctly the trigger on the gun wouldn't reset. I believe he sent it back to the factory twice to have the thing fixed and it still didn't work right. (Correct me if I'm wrong, Josh)

The gun has only been back once, but I've been reluctant to send it a second time because the CS people I've talked to don't understand what is wrong with the gun. Initially the gun would not reset in single action every five shots or so; the only way to make the gun fire was to decock and fire in double action. After coming back from Sig, the gun now resets every time, but sometimes it is at the short reset point and sometimes it is slightly farther out in the trigger stroke.

In fairness to Sig, in the past two years I had two M&Ps that didn't work, an FN FNP that had a defective FCG, a S&W 442 that sheared the hammer pin from the frame, the above Sig P226, and two G17G4s that were terrible. None of these guns had particularly high round counts, I just have bad luck when it comes to reliable firearms.

[ToddG]

... in the past two years I had two M&Ps that didn't work, an FN FNP that had a defective FCG, a S&W 442 that sheared the hammer pin from the frame, the above Sig P226, and two G17G4s that were terrible.

And what are you shooting now, again? :cool:

[LittleLebowski]

And what are you shooting now, again? :cool:

Abused spouse that keeps coming back for more....

[Mr_White]

An excellent example of this:

381
380

People generally don't worry about dryfiring Glocks because "it won't hurt them". Well, turns out that if you dryfire them enough, yes, it will. The manufacturer expects you will dryfire the pistol occasionally....not that you will do a minimum of 100 dryfires per day, every day, and more on weekends.

You too? Glock gave me a new slide, and now I use a dummy round for dry fire. :)

[BWT]

It sucks but that's the reality of everything on this planet. It will fail. Nothing's guaranteed. Buy the best quality you can afford, practice with it as much as you can/are willing, and be prepared. I'm on the verge of buying a Glock 17 Gen4, and I'm probably going to run into issues... but you gotta make a decision eventually. Plus, honestly, my faith ultimately, isn't in a gun anyway.

[fixer]

The core reality at work here is that if you see enough samples of something, you're going to find problems.

Or find trends...





Beretta's 92 series pistols are pretty good for the most part. Their 96 series pistols are not. Their PX4 series pistols are based around a rotary barrel system which was a monumental failure when tried in the Cougar line of pistols. Beretta managed to talk at least one large state agency into purchasing them and they turned out to be unreliable piles of suck. Beretta thinks they've cracked the rotary barrel nut with the PX4...but they thought the same thing about the Cougar, too. Now they've been farmed out to Turkey and are being sold for almost half the price that they had when Beretta's name was on them. It's not a risk I would urge people to take.

.

I'm a case in point with this subject on the sometimes seemingly contradictory nature of handgun reliability.

I have had good to outstanding experiences with the PX4. I bought two because my own personal experience and testing showed that I was faster out of a holster and on target, and more reliably accurate with a px4 than any of my 4 gen 3 glocks. this wasn't a decision I made casually. This took months, lots of rounds, lots of reading this very site, lots of reading on other forums... I wanted to believe that the Glock was better for me.

So...I have great experiences with a gun that many "professionals" either scoff at or are suspicous of.

About a year ago I picked up a USP because I've always wanted one. It was a dud. An unmitigated joke of a gun. I was rather surprised. So was my LGS. The extraction was erratic and its failure mode was typically complete lack of extraction of the casing.

So I've had a bad experience with a gun that most people and most professionals would have bet a body part on would be great right out of the box.

[TGS]

About a year ago I picked up a USP because I've always wanted one. It was a dud. An unmitigated joke of a gun. I was rather surprised. So was my LGS. The extraction was erratic and its failure mode was typically complete lack of extraction of the casing.


In fact, the only thing I can think of with currently produced HK's that could even be close to a recurring issue would be out-of-spec extractors on USP's....although it's definitely not a widespread, significant problem, it just seems to be that if something on a USP is out of spec, it tends to be the extractor.

[JRas]

"It was the ammo"
"It was my/his grip"
"It was the magazine"
"its not the gun"
:D

[1986s4]

I had a HK USPc .45 about 10 years ago now. I sent it back to HK twice for FTE's and randomly not being able to seat the 8 round mag with the slide closed. This would happen with all mags from time to time. This was my first experience with an HK but it it did not deter me from getting a P-30 recently. I figured it was an annomoly since HK has such a fine reputation. There is a chance with anything built by man that it will be less than perfect.