I'm trying to figure out what's going on with my Browning 380.

When a round is fired, the slide naturally moves back to eject the casing (so far so good). The problem is that the slide remains back instead of returning to the forward position. The slide release stop latch (#2 & #3 in the image ) springs up into the notch (#1 in the image) which prevents the slide from moving forward. I must press down on the slide release stop latch to release the slide to move forward... which it does.

Somehow this doesn't seem right but I don't see how it could behave any differently. the latch is spring loaded and will naturally popup into the notch when the slide is in the back position.

Anyone have any ideas whats going on with this?