Defensive Carry - Internet vs Reality? Trusting Your Carry Gun

I reload and shoot lots of ammo at practice. I have run a few hundred rounds thru each carry gun and have had no issues before carrying them. In the last "Gun Fighting Course" I took earlier this year, I shot 250 Remington 9mm +P Golden Sabers in the morning portion and another 250 rounds of Winchester +P+ Ranger T's in the afternoon. All functioned flawlessly. Clean ammo does help remove FTF's. When I clean my guns I go straight to the range to insure that they will fire when needed. My last QC check point is to chamber check all rounds that I shoot whether practice or those I carry daily.

Is this asked because Glocks are failing at a seemingly high rate lately?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Blue Thunder

I reload and shoot lots of ammo at practice. I have run a few hundred rounds thru each carry gun and have had no issues before carrying them. In the last "Gun Fighting Course" I took earlier this year, I shot 250 Remington 9mm +P Golden Sabers in the morning portion and another 250 rounds of Winchester +P+ Ranger T's in the afternoon. All functioned flawlessly. Clean ammo does help remove FTF's. When I clean my guns I go straight to the range to insure that they will fire when needed. My last QC check point is to chamber check all rounds that I shoot whether practice or those I carry daily.

---

a question---of those rounds , hundreds if not thousands, you have chamber checked...how many have 'failed'

im gonna guess that some small number do not drop free and did you run them also?
cause i'll wager they worked ( but for a obvious badly creased case).

My focus is not so much on the firearms anymore,as there are a lot of quality firearms now,Glock,S&W,F.N,Beretta.....,my prob is with ammo manufacturers,Hornady has sent our dept three different recalls for their ammo we carry in our m-4's for catastrophic failure.So now I only carry what has alway's worked for me.

Quote:

---

Discussion Point: Trusting Your Carry Gun
I'll just come out and say it... I don't need a gun to go bang 1000 times in a row before it can be trusted for carry, I don't even need one to go bang 100 times in a row to be trusted for carry, yet that's what seems to be programmed into the minds of people on gun forums.

---

"Programmed" to do it, implying it's a needless and wasteful task. :confused:

Your lack of testing seems sufficient for you. Me, I prefer proof.

The benefits: proving that a carry gun can function reliably enough to likely do so when needed; and proving that the particular off-the-shelf factory ammo is a great match for the specific gun.

I suppose you could say the manufacturers and their weak tolerances and reliability have programmed me, if that term must be used. I've simply seen far, FAR too many supposed "carry" guns fail to reliably cycle and fire off-the-shelf ammunition for me to have a rose-colored view of that reality. Not everyone's willing to force a gun to prove itself prior to use as a carry gun. That's fine. I am, for my own carry guns, but that's just me.

Quote:

---

It's amazing how reliable a firearm can be when kept scrupulously and properly cleaned and lubricated.

---

That's a generalization, and quite frankly some gun+ammo combinations at various stages during their break-in periods don't follow this idea. In my own case, all my carry weapons have been scrupulously maintained, cleaned and lubricated. After all, it's my life that's on the line, with a "carry" gun.

A decently objective stress test on a given gun/ammo combination is a wonderful way to prove that specific ammunition is bullet-proof through a given gun. Given manufacturing tolerances and how they can stack against you, I know of no other way to prove it. (Hey, I'd love to find a less-expensive method of proving a gun+ammo choice can be relied upon, but to this day I have yet to find anything else approaching proof.)

Of the more than a dozen different guns I've run through testing for potential carry, only four have ever met my 1000rd reliability stress testing criteria: Browning BDM 9mm; S&W 442 Airweight .38spl (50rds was sufficient); CZ P-01 9mm; H&K P2000SK 9mm. No other pistol has ever been able to show me anything near 1000rds of reliability; some were hard-pressed to show double-digit reliability no matter what was done to them. On a firearm sold as a "carry" pistol? Not with my life. It's the main reason I'm so adamant when it comes to my own carry guns.

YMMV.

I would carry any Glock NIB with never firing it. That trust has been built on owning a bunch of them, and shooting thousands of rounds....with never a bobble. Didn't learn squat about them from the internet which came long after I began my affair with Glocks.

My edc fails 100% of the time in my dreams, but I stick with it.

Rounds roll out the barrel & drop to the ground ... or hit the BG & bounce off ... or penetrate the BG with no effect whatsoever, all the while he's laughing ... or fails to go "bang" (just clicks) ... when I throw my empty gun at the BG, I miss. You name it, mine does it.

Not once have I successfully defended myself in my dreams.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by KimBobTex

My edc fails 100% of the time in my dreams, but I stick with it.

Rounds roll out the barrel & drop to the ground ... or hit the BG & bounce off ... or penetrate the BG with no effect whatsoever, all the while he's laughing ... or fails to go "bang" (just clicks) ... when I throw my empty gun at the BG, I miss. You name it, mine does it.

Not once have I successfully defended myself in my dreams.

---

I carry a Taurus polymer semi-auto in my dreams that never fails and works flawlessly. I can shoot the eye out of a needle at 100 yards and drop bad guy after bad guy with my trusty Taurus.

.....and then I wake up. :ticking:

No one can positively say how many rounds it should take for you to be comfortable except you. If you think 1 mag or 10,000 rounds it's your choice and yours only.

None of my "Social Ammo" has failed the chamber check in the last 18 years that I have done it, but around 1-2 percent of my reloads do and they go into the trash can. An oversized round can get stuck in the gun and take it down requiring a lot of effort to get it out. I have had 4 factory FMJ rounds fail the chamber check all of which were mangled cases all of which were WWB rounds in the last 3 years. I only use factory made rounds when I take a "Gun Fighting" course. I use my reloads for competetion shooting.

IMHO it's not that you will need several hundred rounds to end a civilian gunfight. We all know that's ridiculous. It's the % of failures that matter. I don't agree with the OP logic. Would you rather trust your life to a pistol that you personally tested over a few thousand rounds and only had a few failures or would you trust it to a gun that had a failure every few magazines shot?

Its about the percentages and the likelihood of failure. All guns fail. Some fail more often than others. Why wouldn't you use the one that had the least amount of failure percentage? Furthermore, the owner of the gun is prone to more failure than the gun itself (that includes me.)

So I believe in a 1,000 round trigger job. If you, the owner can make it through 1,000 rounds without a failure, that's probably less likely than the gun itself failing.

Handguns/long guns are mechanical devices and as such are susceptible to failure.

Keep in mind a Rolls Royce can fail just as easily as a bottom line Ford.

All one can hope for is if the occasion arises that they need their weapon for defensive purposes it does not fail. Does one really have any real control over a failure. :icon_neutral:

No they don't have any control over the failure, but I think they do have control over using a device less likely to fail.

I don't really put a round count minimum. I generally shoot it enough so that I am comfortable with it. Its like breaking in a new pair of shoes, sometimes the first time you put them on, others its a little at a time.

For example, my new 640 Pro I put about 400 rounds downrange and then shot an IDPA match with it, now I feel comfortable with it. I like running my different guns in IDPA, I run the gear, the gun and see where its weak, strong or maybe I just don't like it. The first time I ran my Gen 4 Glock 23 I shot better than I have ever done with my H&K P2K with over 15,000 rounds down the pipe. the last match we had 3 Glock 9mm's having problems all were pre Gen 4.

If I did not trust a weapon I would not have it let alone carry it. I buy only quality weapons. If I have an issue with one I have I taken care it.
Anything can and will fail you play the odds every time you get in your car, or do any of the task you do everyday. No different with a weapon.
What you do is take care to stack the odds in you favor.
Quality weapons
Know your weapon and the rounds you use in it
Care for you weapon ,clean and lube
If your going to try something new test it well before you put you faith it . Like a new type or brand mag,new trigger parts. That latest cool sound round extreme bad boy put on the market.