Why do Pistols Jam More in Actual Shootings vs On the Range?

[SwampDweller]

I've seen this commented on this forum here and there over the years, and it's something I've also observed. Generally, modern duty-grade semi-auto pistols are incredibly reliable and forgiving on the range. Going 1k+ rounds in one range day with no stoppages without being cleaned isn't particularly extraordinary for a basic full size duty pistol of reputable make. Many times these pistols go thousands of rounds between stoppages.

But when things go haywire, such as seen in the bodycams of officers in shootings, it seems like they have stoppages a lot more often. To a lesser extent I've observed this in particularly stressful training that puts strain on the shooter and gun.

During a podcast with Darryl Bolke, in the context of revolvers he talks about how they are less likely to have a malfunction during an actual shooting compared to a semi auto, but are less reliable on the range when running lots of ammo through them. Why is this? Why are semi autos so reliable on the range, but seemingly have much higher stoppage rates in actual shootings? I haven't compiled any actual data on this, it's just something I've observed and I've seen others here comment on it from time to time.

One answer is simply "limp wristing," but that seems too simplistic to be an explanation on its own.

[Ndbbm]

Limp wristing is basically it. Sloppy grip and basically lack of body alignment that provides the base for the semi auto to function against to cycle reliably. Fingers against the slide and or pressing up on the slide lock.

On the revolvers, unburnt powder gumming things up in tight mechanical area is my basic understanding.

Jason

[GearFondler]

"Limp wristing" is a main reason if you expand it to "compromised grip"...
- actual limp wristing
- overly high grip stopping the slide
- accidently forcing up the slide stop
- accidentally hitting mag release
- other grip errors I'm sure I'm forgetting

Also, other weird stuff like...
- Mag release was hit before the incident or during an entanglement
- Mag loaded improperly
- Slide pushed out of battery during entanglement
- Gun in Condition 3

I'm no expert but I expect they will chime in soon with better answers.

[feudist]

A lot of it is a sort of operator error that's baked into pistol designs and the mile wide chasm between how guns are practiced with versus how they are employed. Dropping mags, knocking slide locks into engagement, thumb getting in the path of the slide and getting a fouled grip during the draw. Grabbing halfway down the grip and then accelerating explosively off the recoil vector essentially puts the pistol "on the float" in zero G. Very hard to duplicate under range safety conditions but fairly common when things go loud.
This gets overlooked/explained away during practice and thus never trained out or adjusted for. How many times have you read a gun review and the author attributes malfs to "My crappy reloads" or needing to get "familiar" with the gun? Sometimes it's patently obvious that the gun is simply not going to work 100% in their hands under flat range conditions, much less suboptimal ones...yet it's the gun they are issued, or worse, invested in.

[HCM]

I've seen this commented on this forum here and there over the years, and it's something I've also observed. Generally, modern duty-grade semi-auto pistols are incredibly reliable and forgiving on the range. Going 1k+ rounds in one range day with no stoppages without being cleaned isn't particularly extraordinary for a basic full size duty pistol of reputable make. Many times these pistols go thousands of rounds between stoppages.

But when things go haywire, such as seen in the bodycams of officers in shootings, it seems like they have stoppages a lot more often. To a lesser extent I've observed this in particularly stressful training that puts strain on the shooter and gun.

During a podcast with Darryl Bolke, in the context of revolvers he talks about how they are less likely to have a malfunction during an actual shooting compared to a semi auto, but are less reliable on the range when running lots of ammo through them. Why is this? Why are semi autos so reliable on the range, but seemingly have much higher stoppage rates in actual shootings? I haven't compiled any actual data on this, it's just something I've observed and I've seen others here comment on it from time to time.

One answer is simply "limp wristing," but that seems too simplistic to be an explanation on its own.

“Limp wristing” is some red shirt /fudd lore b******t people who don’t know any better say when they don’t really know why malfunctions are occurring.

The answer is grip, specifically the grip, draw and presentation process.

Semi automatic pistols are recoil operated. For the pistol to function through the cycle of operation, it needs something to recoil against to allow the recoil spring to compress fully and allow the slide to travel to rear before the recoil, spring allows, the slide to move forward and pick up another round. That “something to recoil against” is the shooter’s grip.

So DB is spot on since the cycle of operation for double action revolvers depends on working the trigger finger, not on having something to recoil against as it is much more forgiving of grip issues.

If you study enough OIS videos you’ll notice that the incidence of malfunctions is significantly higher when officers are drawing under time in response to a threat vs shootings where officers start out with the gun already in hand and their grip is already established.

Most cops are not gun people. They don’t dry fire or do dry practice on their grip and draw on their own even though it’s something that their life could depend on. They might do it a little bit when they’re in the police Academy but that’s it.

Combine that with the fact that most police qualification courses are designed to check a box and are not particularly challenging. The time pressure is minimal and what little time pressure there is involves a known par time.

Then all of a sudden somebody is trying to kill them while their gun is holstered and they are trying to draw the gun as fast as possible for the first time ever.

It’s a recipe for getting a bad grip and bad grips induce malfunctions.

If you look at the law enforcement use force video thread here you’ll also see multiple instances where officers draw in response to a threat and then place their support hand thumb behind the slide inducing malfunctions. This is an issue with improperly building the grip during presentation.

In my experience, we also see that when officers get stressed and or disoriented such as in high stress, force on force training or when shooting from unconventional or “down and disabled “positions.

To a lesser extent you also see officers inducing malfunctions by unintentionally, hitting magazine, releases, or activating slide locks with rounds remaining in the gun, these are also grip related malfunctions.

You can also have officers who are injured, including injuries to the hands. People tend to focus on what they perceive as the threat, meaning they will often focus on the weapon in somebody’s hand, resulting in a disproportionate amount of hits to the hands.

After the Academy, the average police officer in the United States goes to the range with their agency once or twice a year and shoots anywhere between 50 and 200 rounds. In my area most of the smaller departments shoot once a year and shoot 50 or 100 rounds.

[SwampDweller]

“Limp wristing” is some red shirt /fudd lore b******t people who don’t know any better say when they don’t really know why malfunctions are occurring.

The answer is grip, specifically the grip, draw and presentation process.

Semi automatic pistols are recoil operated. For the pistol to function through the cycle of operation, it needs something to recoil against to allow the recoil spring to compress fully and allow the slide to travel to rear before the recoil, spring allows, the slide to move forward and pick up another round. That “something to recoil against” is the shooter’s grip.

So DB is spot on since the cycle of operation for double action revolvers depends on working the trigger finger, not on having something to recoil against as it is much more forgiving of grip issues.

If you study enough OIS videos you’ll notice that the incidence of malfunctions is significantly higher when officers are drawing under time in response to a threat vs shootings where officers start out with the gun already in hand and their grip is already established.

Most cops are not gun people. They don’t dry fire or do dry practice on their grip and draw on their own even though it’s something that their life could depend on. They might do it a little bit when they’re in the police Academy but that’s it.

Combine that with the fact that most police qualification courses are designed to check a box and are not particularly challenging. The time pressure is minimal and what little time pressure there is involves a known par time.

Then all of a sudden somebody is trying to kill them while their gun is holstered and they are trying to draw the gun as fast as possible for the first time ever.

It’s a recipe for getting a bad grip and bad grips induce malfunctions.

If you look at the law enforcement use force video thread here you’ll also see multiple instances where officers draw in response to a threat and then place their support hand thumb behind the slide inducing malfunctions. This is an issue with improperly building the grip during presentation.

In my experience, we also see that when officers get stressed and or disoriented such as in high stress, force on force training or when shooting from unconventional or “down and disabled “positions.

To a lesser extent you also see officers inducing malfunctions by unintentionally, hitting magazine, releases, or activating slide locks with rounds remaining in the gun, these are also grip related malfunctions.

You can also have officers who are injured, including injuries to the hands. People tend to focus on what they perceive as the threat, meaning they will often focus on the weapon in somebody’s hand, resulting in a disproportionate amount of hits to the hands.

After the Academy, the average police officer in the United States goes to the range with their agency once or twice a year and shoots anywhere between 50 and 200 rounds. In my area most of the smaller departments shoot once a year and shoot 50 or 100 rounds.

A well thought out response. So it comes down to how the user is manipulating it. What's weird is sometimes I don't see anything obvious with the officer's hold on the gun, but bodycam footage isn't a great way to observe this.

I've also seen people who've shot thousands of rounds through their pistols on a flat range without any stoppages suddenly run into issues when shooting in competitions or classes with a higher stress factor, similar to what is seen in many officer involved shootings. But these are people who are far from novices who don't shoot enough. It seems to have something to do with being shot in "zero g" as @feudist points out. This isn't necessarily something that can be avoided entirely, especially in vehicles, so how does one mitigate this risk with an autoloader?

As has been pointed out, these are often chaotic situations where you don't have control over how you get to move or contort yourself.

[HCM]

A well thought out response. So it comes down to how the user is manipulating it. What's weird is sometimes I don't see anything obvious with the officer's hold on the gun, but bodycam footage isn't a great way to observe this.

I've also seen people who've shot thousands of rounds through their pistols on a flat range without any stoppages suddenly run into issues when shooting in competitions or classes with a higher stress factor, similar to what is seen in many officer involved shootings. But these are people who are far from novices who don't shoot enough. It seems to have something to do with being shot in "zero g" as @feudist points out. This isn't necessarily something that can be avoided entirely, especially in vehicles, so how does one mitigate this risk with an autoloader?

As has been pointed out, these are often chaotic situations where you don't have control over how you get to move or contort yourself.

What you’re talking about is the “that has never happened before” factor.

Life’s a risk- you mitigate that by “stress testing / inoculating” yourself and your gear in competition and training.

[60167]

What you’re talking about is the “that has never happened before” factor.

Life’s a risk- you mitigate that by “stress testing / inoculating” yourself and your gear in competition and training.

Yep.

Most cops hardly train, if at all outside of agency mandated training. That said, it's rare that true speed is pushed in training or practiced at all. Then we see tons of OIS videos where cops are trying to draw the gun as fast as they can while moving, and then shooting .16 splits and doing really badly because they've never practiced it before.

[WobblyPossum]

@HCM’s response is excellent. I tried hitting most of those points in a brief lecture last quarter when we worked malfunction clearances with my guys. You’ll find fewer malfunctions in videos where the officers already had their guns in their hands prior to everything going bad. If they had the opportunity to establish a correct SHO, or better yet, a correct two handed grip on the gun before getting into the stressful circumstances that directly led to the shooting most of the issues he touched on won’t materialize. If the officers only tried getting the gun in their hands after they already took fire, the chances of malfunctions increases. The example I like to cite was a video from a year or two ago where officers had to bail out of their car after taking fire. The officer who exited the passenger seat drew and fired two or three rounds before his magazine dropped unexpectedly. He reloaded and fired another two or three rounds before his magazine dropped unexpectedly. He reloaded a second time and was able to fire the entirety of the magazine. Then he had to run back to where his first mags dropped in order to collect one off the floor while the threat was still active because he no longer had spare mags on his person. Something about how he built his grip on the draw kept activating his mag release until he corrected it. I don’t know if it was his strong hand thumb on the mag release or his support hand putting pressure on it but I can only imagine what he was thinking when that third magazine ran dry and he knew he had to reload but didn’t have his other mags anymore.

If anyone can find that video and post it here, it’s a great visual.

[HCM]

@HCM’s response is excellent. I tried hitting most of those points in a brief lecture last quarter when we worked malfunction clearances with my guys. You’ll find fewer malfunctions in videos where the officers already had their guns in their hands prior to everything going bad. If they had the opportunity to establish a correct SHO, or better yet, a correct two handed grip on the gun before getting into the stressful circumstances that directly led to the shooting most of the issues he touched on won’t materialize. If the officers only tried getting the gun in their hands after they already took fire, the chances of malfunctions increases. The example I like to cite was a video from a year or two ago where officers had to bail out of their car after taking fire. The officer who exited the passenger seat drew and fired two or three rounds before his magazine dropped unexpectedly. He reloaded and fired another two or three rounds before his magazine dropped unexpectedly. He reloaded a second time and was able to fire the entirety of the magazine. Then he had to run back to where his first mags dropped in order to collect one off the floor while the threat was still active because he no longer had spare mags on his person. Something about how he built his grip on the draw kept activating his mag release until he corrected it. I don’t know if it was his strong hand thumb on the mag release or his support hand putting pressure on it but I can only imagine what he was thinking when that third magazine ran dry and he knew he had to reload but didn’t have his other mags anymore.

If anyone can find that video and post it here, it’s a great visual.

It’s worth watching the whole video, Houston is wild…