A different take on reliability - Guns you've personally seen fail

[HCM]

Gun: Radical Firearms AR-15
Setting: Law Enforcement Training
How did it fail: bolt broke on both sides of the cam pin hole.
What was the remedy: pending
Was it your gun or someone else's: Local PD Officer

Attachment 100726

Attachment 100727

There are a lot of A.R. 15 companies out there, some have consistently maintained good quality. Some have varied over the years, but the two that are on my NFE list and make me throw up in my mouth a little when I see them in a serious use setting are Radical Firearms and Bear Creek Arsenal.

Update: This was a dept owned rifle and the third failure of this type this dept has experienced with the Radical rifles out of a sample size of < 50. The Firearms staff’s solution is to STRONGLY encourage officers to buy their own POW rifles for duty use.

[Joe Mac]

Gun: Colt 1911 Enhanced
Setting: Outdoor improvised range
Failure: FTF
Fix: Customized by Terry Tussey
Your gun or someone else’s: A friend's

Also if known whether the failure was a design or manufacturing failure or operator error / failure to do proper preventive maintenance.

I would say this was a design/manufacturing issue.

Notes: We were young and this was the first "nice" handgun any of us had purchased. My buddy was quite proud of it, and the fact that it would feed brass. I'll admit being impressed by that. He began carrying it at the gun shop where he worked before he had even shot it. We harassed him about that and his defense was, "I have blind faith in Colt." He actually was a very knowledgeable shooter, but never lived down that comment once we saw the FTFs during that first range session.

I once saw an officer buy an antique military 1911, load it up with 230 Gold Dot, and begin carrying it off duty without having fired it yet...

[Exiledviking]

A saw a Walther Q5 Match go down during a match recently. The magazine catch broke near the middle of the part. Looking at the part, it appeared to be a MIM part.
The owner was happy with Walther as they quickly took care of him.

[HCM]

Gun: Remington 870 Police (PD trade in via GT Distributors
Setting: Outdoor range
Failure: FTF due to broken / compressed firing pin spring
Fix: replaced FO spring with new Wolff FP spring.
Your gun or someone else’s: mine

Had a weird issue with a new to me PD trade in 870 a few weeks ago.

When attempting to fire from the shoulder the gun would light strike and fail to fire. This occurred both with “push pull” and conventional “pull into the shoulder” methods.

However, the gun fired consistently from CQB short stock and under arm positions. Never encountered an issue like this with an 870 (or any other shotgun).









Determined it was a firing pin spring issue. FP was broken into three pieces and compressed to about half normal length.

[Detmongo]

Gun:Gen 2 G19
Where: Outdoor range
Malfunction: Broken trigger bar
fix: replace the trigger bar with a smooth face G17 trigger bar and did a complete rebuild on the lower. The gun had 11,000 rds through it not sure how many total as it was purchased years ago used.
Ran an additional 500 rds since the rebuild including 100 rds of carry ammo 124gr gold dot. All is fine.

[HCM]

Gun: SIG P365
Setting: Outdoor range / LE Qualification
Failure: FT fire / dead trigger - appears to be broken trigger bar spring
Fix: replace trigger bar spring (pending)
Your gun or someone else’s: someone else’s. Officer has had the gun approximately 1 year - round count estimated under 1k.

[19852+]

Gun: Glock 21
Setting: IDPA match
How did it fail: Mag base plate gave way, ejecting all rounds out the bottom
What was the remedy: Replace mag
Was it your pistol or someone else's: Someone else

Gun: Pre-B CZ 75
Setting: Range
How did it fail: Broken Slide stop
What was the remedy: Use spare slide stop
Was it your pistol or someone else's: Mine
It is a '91 manufacture pistol with many thousands of rounds and the original slide stop. About 10 years ago I bought a spare and I was amazed that I had not lost it yet..

My most used and abused pistol is my 2012 Colt government .38 super. It functions with both a 9mm barrel and .22 top end, it gets lots of use and no babying. I treat it like a Glock. I maybe jinxing myself but it has been problem free since I got it.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

Just remembered, a long time ago. A SU-16 Keltec 223 rifle, stock cracked clean off at pistol grip. In a carbine class at Rehn's. Shooter had to borrow Karl's Marlin Camp Carbine to continue.

[Horseman]

Gun: Smith and Wesson M&P-15 AXE Rifle (LE-only SKU).

Setting: Initial function fire and armorer's inspection.

How did it fail: Failures to extract and eject. Chamber had visible striations/damage, under inspection.

What was the remedy: Contacted S&W customer service. After quick explanation to rep, a return label was e-mailed. Rifle was shipped back to S&W, returned to us at no cost, two weeks later.
Factory paperwork indicated they reamed the chamber and replaced the bolt.
Rifle now has 100% function and shows acceptable accuracy.

Was it yours or someone else's: Department-owned/ issued.

[HCM]

GPT Trigger below belongs to a shooting acquaintance. Failure occurred after 4k rounds during which the gun was cleaned and lubed regularly.







Gun: Glock 17 Gen 5
Setting: Range
How did it fail: cracked trigger mechanism housing
What was the remedy: re-install original factory trigger group
Was it your pistol or someone else's: someone else’s