Recently I've been toying with the idea of switching to 9mm after shooting .45 ACP for most of my life, for all the usual reasons. My primary carry pistol is an HK45C that I have more experience with than any other pistol. I also have a Glock 19 that I shoot acceptably well under a shot timer, but I am not as confident in my ability to make good hits with it as I am the HK. In a previous thread I was encouraged to try an H&K 9mm since I am so intimate with the 45C, specifically the P30 V3. I purchased one when a good deal came up. Last weekend, I took the 45C, the unfired P30, and my G19 out to the range with my limited supply of 9mm and some .45. I quickly discovered that I was indeed faster with the P30 than the 45C, and started really enjoying how the pistol shot, despite the long reset. The familiarity I had with it because of the HK45C was comforting and inspired confidence. I was beginning to fall in love as I rung steel, until about 350 rounds in. I loaded up the pair of 10 round magazines it came with (they are ban-compliant, and I had 17 rounders on the way but I couldn't wait), loaded one in the chamber, and then topped off the mag. On the first shot, the casing of the +1 failed to extract, being lodged as pictured below. The slide went far back enough that it tried to feed the next round, so the magazine was stuck. Without thinking, I stripped the magazine out, along with the loose round that was trying to feed, but remembered to take a picture of the brass left in the pistol. The ammunition was Winchester 124gr NATO, so it wasn't weak ammo. I shot another 50 rounds without issue, but ran out of the 9mm I brought.
I prefer to fire at least 1,000 rounds in a new pistol before I start to consider it as a reliable carry piece, and I feel more comfortable after 2,000 consecutive rounds of reliable operation, provided proper cleaning between range trips. Unfortunately, my supply of 9mm is far less than optimal, and at least 700 rounds of it is cheap Aguila including 115 grain. I have evaluated what I would need to do to establish trust in this P30 after a malfunction in the first range trip: I would need to fire another 1900 rounds without a stoppage before I could trust it. I could buy a couple of hundred more rounds of 9mm at inflated prices to have the 1900 rounds I'd need, but it'd be a risk shooting it all to verify carry reliability in one new pistol.
I'm trying to determine whether I should give this pistol another chance, or if I should save the 9mm ammunition for training with an already-proven reliable 9mm; my G19. I do really like the P30. With most of my experience being on an HK45C, staying with a very similar pistol in 9mm is appealing to me, as is the DA/SA action. However, I have no interest in keeping it if I can't establish a baseline reliability that I would trust, and the cost/value of 9mm ammunition it would take to do so is quite substantial. If it had more stoppages during the vetting process, I would feel like I just wasted a lot of precious ammunition for nothing. Am I being too harsh on the P30 for having one malfunction? Should I attempt to shoot another 1900 rounds through it to build confidence, or should I sell it and devote my 9mm focus on the Glock?
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Originally Posted by ViniVidivici
