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

[Flamingo]

I also saw some MALFs (I almost put "a lot", but I have only been to 2 ECQC classes so my experience level is low with the entangled fight and shooting) when folks were "floating" (term stolen from Craig) the gun in an entangled fight. I think that is because of limp wristing/bad grip.

I believe that much of this is because of the stress that performing in ECQC brings on. Just imagine how much more it is in a true fight for life.

[HCM]

I don't have hard data, but my belief is that lightweight striker pistols, especially smaller/short barrel models, depend more on you holding the pistol firmly, than heavier hammer fired pistols. One hand, poor grip, under lubcricated, and you go further and further from the center of the reliability envelope.

I would agree with that.

I previously experimented with a PMM comp on an Sig 320.

You could see the difference in how the gun cycled and how reliable it was just switching between the tungsten infused grip, the aluminum grip and the regular polymer grip.

[Clusterfrack]

Real ones? Not very.

...watching people try to clear them is like watching a kid with progeria get pushed down the stairs.

LOL!

[HCM]

Another biggie, usually induced by unnecessary administrative handling rules.

Somewhere I read that @Mas actually studied NYPD officers called in off of patrol to qualify and found that coming in off the street 10% of them didn't have a round in the chamber of their pistol. He might be able to shed more light on that, but I have no reason to doubt it.

Maybe, but we issued lockboxes and encourage officers to leave their gun loaded at all times and we still see it. There’s a certain percentage of people who are paid to carry a gun who are simply not comfortable carrying or handling their gun.

Back in the day when I was testing with various law enforcement agencies, I tested with a sheriffs office that had a series of required yes or no questions. One of those was do you understand that you will be required to carry a loaded handgun while on duty. When I asked about that, I was told they had a deputy who had spent several years transporting inmates from the county jail to state prison for service of sentences with an unloaded handgun. I’ve since seen this type of question as a mandatory part of the hiring process for other agencies.

So I have no reason to doubt what Mas reported.

Several years ago when I was running the firearms program, we did a “come as you are qualification where people had to show up and shoot their gun and duty load out instead of unloading the gun and prepping their magazines for the qualification course.

We saw several people who didn’t have a round the chamber, had the wrong type of ammunition mixed in and/or did not have fully loaded magazines.

We recently had someone on TDY from another office who came out to qualify and refused to keep a round chambered because while in the Academy, she had had a negligent discharge and shot herself.

This spur of conversation where we revisited why it works for me doesn’t necessarily work in a team environment when others are depending on you.

[Jim Watson]

This is more common in females

My IDPA protege is subject to random misfeeds, which she blames on her hold.
Maybe so, I have tried her with different ammo and different recoil springs with no improvement.
Not often but always aggravating.
Exhortation on a firm grip seems not to take, either.

[SwampDweller]

I will also note that I likewise see relatively frequent malfunctions during private citizen involved defensive shootings, so I know it’s not just an LE thing.

I will admit sometimes it makes me wonder if most of these people would be better served with a quality revolver (including myself). Generally these things seem to be very close quarters and there’s a very short amount of distance and time to get a few shots off before being shot/stabbed/bludgeoned.

[DDTSGM]

From wikipedia, a lousy source but the first result in any search engine. Sentences one and two of paragraph one:

"Limp wristing is a phenomenon commonly encountered by semi-automatic pistol shooters, where the shooter's grip is not firm enough and the wrist is not held firm/straight enough to keep the frame of the firearm from traveling rearward while the bolt or slide of the firearm cycles. This condition often results in a failure to complete the operating cycle..."

Failure to properly grasp the gun causes stoppages (and is also a sign that the rest of the structural support back to the torso and down to the feet on the ground will also be sloppy). This isn't fudd lore, it is an observable occurrence as old as the semi-automatic pistol. The "b******t" rests in the blind faux-diagnostics of internet strangers when someone posts about experiencing stoppages. Observable wet noodle arms and poor grips while viewing footage is not that.

I'm not sure why we need to skewer the term "limp-wristing" and talk about a firm grip when that is what limp-wristing indicates. Particularly when the term is pretty self-explanatory for remediation: tighten up your shit.

I've got a foot in both yours and HCM's camps.

(Note - if you are going to try anything I describe here, do so by chambering the live round with a magazine of one round - then insert a magazine loaded with only actual action-proving dummies into the mag well. That way if you lose control of the pistol nothing happens. Also if you are fainthearted do the exercise over4 grass or a carpet.)

The thing that always intrigued me about 'limp wrist' malfunctions when we first began teaching auto pistol to the masses was that in trying to replicate them myself I was almost never able to do so. One of the things we've tried and demoed (loaded as indicated in the note above) is firing the pistol held between only the thumb on the back strap, and the trigger finger - still functional many more times than not. Done this oodles of times, loosening the grip until the pistol isn't retained during recoil - still functional, again, many more times than not.

Early on, I had a model 639 that I had put a bunch of rounds through. At one point it began having random failure to extract malfunctions. Quite by accident I discovered that if I shot with some 'give' in my strong shoulder, I could induce the FTE almost on demand.

I began pondering this and it became my theory that although there are a lot of ways to interrupt the auto-pistol's cycle of operation, fail to ejects - if not caused by some obvious deficiency in the pistol - were often caused by the shooter 'retreating' from the recoil or anticipated recoil.

This may be a moot point - the cure for 'retreat' is basically firmer shoulders and grip on the weapon - almost the same as the cure for limp-wristing.

In an earlier post HCM mentioned draws in the Academy. We introduced draws early in our Academy, well before firearms. First week we had a two hour class entitled 'mechanics of the draw' which went over the fundamentals of grip and the four-stage draw which we taught. The last portion of the class was a practical session with all the firearms instructors on deck to correct any mistakes. From that point on, everyday after roll call (which was held in our gym) students were drilled on the draw. We encouraged then to step into the gym during breaks to practice so long as they weren't grabassing.

When we started this practice we were using ASP red pistols. As time progressed and holsters became more form fitting we went to Ring (IIRC) blue pistols as they fit more holsters. Be3fore I retired we had nearly 300 blue and red pistols in order to accommodate the 120 students we had in session during the period two academy classes over lapped.

Building time to practice the draw during basic training is important, and with a crammed schedule, very hard to do without admin support.

[DDTSGM]

I will also note that I likewise see relatively frequent malfunctions during private citizen involved defensive shootings, so I know it’s not just an LE thing.

I will admit sometimes it makes me wonder if most of these people would be better served with a quality revolver (including myself). Generally these things seem to be very close quarters and there’s a very short amount of distance and time to get a few shots off before being shot/stabbed/bludgeoned.

The problem with revolver shooting under stress is the trigger weight of the DA stroke and short stroking.

To deliver a fast sure DA stroke while holding the revolver steady on target - requires more than a modicum of repetitive grip strength.

When we were training revolvers we tested grip strength by having the students place the muzzle of the revolver in a two-inch hole bored in board's mounted on the wall of our gym at different heights to accommodate differences in the students. We wanted them to be able to execute 49 (IIRC) trigger pulls in a minute without hitting the sides of the hole. I believe at the time this was the FBI's test for the grip strength required to complete firearms training. My thoughts were this was a good test for the grip strength required to rap off six-rounds in a gun fight without waving the muzzle all over the place.

Short stroking, and I'm talking of S&W revolvers here as that's what 99% of my experience was with, is when the shooter doesn't allow the trigger to come all the way forward on the DA stroke. Depending on how far the trigger is from full reset, two things can happen - the shooter begins to pull and the trigger is locked, or, the shooter begins to pull and the cylinder rotates but the hammer isn't picked up.

Each of those is easily remediated by simply allowing the trigger to come fully forward. If the shooter hasn't experienced this before, or isn't aware that this can occur, it could cause them to freeze during a life-threatening situation. That is a problem.

A clean revolver is a reliable revolver. If the revolver is clean it should function through just about any realistic confrontation. One of the big problems with revolvers, again S&W's, is allowing the ejector rod to become loose leading to difficulty in opening the cylinder. Another war stopper is flakes of powder coming to rest under the extractor star during reloads. A couple of flakes of powder in this area can cause difficulty in closing the cylinder. Make sure that area is clean and dry - no oil.

Eventually, crap and crud from firing will build up in the gap between the end of the cylinder and the barrel, this shouldn't be a problem if you clean your revolver.

[feudist]

I will also note that I likewise see relatively frequent malfunctions during private citizen involved defensive shootings, so I know it’s not just an LE thing.

I will admit sometimes it makes me wonder if most of these people would be better served with a quality revolver (including myself). Generally these things seem to be very close quarters and there’s a very short amount of distance and time to get a few shots off before being shot/stabbed/bludgeoned.

There is an argument to be made that for a purely defensive CCW weapon, where one has no duty to intervene, arrest, take into custody or pursue the snubby is eminently satisfactory.
The primary threat is overwhelmingly that of a predatory attack by transactional criminals. They're looking for an easy score, not a fight. Mo Betta is mo betta...but in the vast majority of defensive uses rounds #1 through #5 are orders of magnitude more important than #6 through #XX.
Even if one's threat profile is different due to occupational or lifestyle risks that particular calculus doesn't change. If you are the victim of a motivated, targeted attack the distance that you get engaged from may lengthen and even more importantly the determination of your attacker may change to the point that you need to fill him in with more than five rounds, but the critical first few seconds are where the threat to life and limb are the highest.
Outliers and Black Swans exist, and have an outsized effect on perceptions, and certainly no one ever said after a gunfight "Dammit! I carried too much ammo, never again."

[steve]

Another biggie, usually induced by unnecessary administrative handling rules.

Somewhere I read that @Mas actually studied NYPD officers called in off of patrol to qualify and found that coming in off the street 10% of them didn't have a round in the chamber of their pistol. He might be able to shed more light on that, but I have no reason to doubt it.

I had a trainee like that, showed up without a round in the chamber because his gun was an autoloader.