Was watching some old “Amazing Videos” or some such American TV show, where dramatic surveillance camera / dash cam footage is the main dish, accompanied with a über-macho, OTT voiceover job.
It struck me how often handguns jam in these videos: the meth-head robber lifts a semi-auto pistol to the forehead of the store clerk and pulls the trigger - nothing happens. Or the highway officer finds himself staring at a gun barrel as the crazy pickup driver rolls down his window and you can hear the hammer click, but “amazingly, the gun jammed” (huh?).
Of course none of the many succesful point-blank murders are ever shown on TV, but still - I’d thought modern firearm jams are one in a X million, yet on the surveillance / dash cam videos it seems gun malfunction is a common occurence: at least one such video for about every 60-minute show I’ve seen.
So: does the average modern semi-auto pistol suffer from misfires on a regular basis? I assume neglecting basic maintenance (like any decent meth-head would) will increase the likelihood of jamming markedly? Or are there lots of people stupid enough to load a gun with wrong-sized ammo out there (wouldn’t this make the gun explode)? I just can’t see very many things going wrong with these proven gun designs. But then, I’m a noob.
It depends very much on the weapon. Reliable guns tend to be the more expensive ones, and thus are less likely to wind up in the hands of a meth-head convenience store robber.
For example, I have a very nice Kimber Custom-II 1911-model pistol – big, heavy, based on a time-tested design and manufactured in the United States. I had it jam once on hollowpoint ammo during the first couple hundred rounds, but since then it has functioned flawlessly. It cost me $700.
A pistol of the sort preferred by the aforementioned meth-head convenience store robbers (band name!) will probably run closer to $70 and be made from the cheapest parts Cold War-era Czechoslovakia had to offer. Cheap weapons are especially prone to malfunction if they are not maintained, and as you say, convenience store robbers are not especially likely to give their guns the care and maintenance required to keep them from exploding.
Look up the names Jennings, Lorcin, Raven, Jiminez, Bryco, and Phoenix.
Petty crooks use shit handguns. They are not using 1911s or Sigs. They aren’t even using Czech-made surplus handguns. My Czech police surplus CZ-82 cost 200 dollars and it’s a rock-solid, excellent quality pistol. The kind of people who rob convenience stores for drug money are using the bottom of the barrel handguns - “junk guns” like Lorcin and Jennings .25 and .32 autos, real pieces of junk that are likely to jam after the first shot.
This is news to me! Amazing that there still are crappy, consistently unreliable firearms around - I’d thought they died out with the 1800’s, given that I can buy just about any tool that will do it’s job at any price point, excluding the very cheapest Chinese stuff (high-end gear sure is better than mid-price, but in subtle ways). It blows my mind there still are firearm manufacturers outside the third world who stay in business churning out guns that won’t work. Here where I live the cheapest entry-level guns are the CZ models, and from what I hear they are very reliable and functional, just not as fancy, innovative etc. as their Western European, top-euro counterparts. Just like it should be for high-energy tools used in life-or-death situations.
So quality handguns aren’t as ubiquitous and universally available by now as I thought. Ignorance fought!
Even the inexpensive handguns are pretty reliable if they are properly maintained and loaded with good ammo. They are actually more sensitive to these things than higher quality guns.
The very cheap guns are made from a zinc alloy called zamak. Zamak is better known for its ease of casting than for its strength or wear resistance. If you buy such a gun new, keep it properly lubed, and handle it carefully, you can shoot it for years. Don’t lube it and parts will wear out astonishingly fast. Drop it on a hard surface or pistol whip somebody with it and breakage of major assemblies is a real possibility. These guns don’t stand up well at all to being dry fired extensively either. Internal damage results in failures to fire.
Such guns are also ammo sensitive. They typically function best with standard pressure fmj ammo. Anything else tends to give feeding problems.
Point taken, and I should clarify wasn’t trying to impugn Czech quality as a whole – I’ve never owned a Czech-made pistol, and I do note that those crappy guns from Jennings, Lorcin, Jiminez, Raven, et al., were all made in the U.S.
Note that makers outside the US also produce crap. The Walther P-22 is no better made than a Phoenix Arms .22 and shares the same set of faults and virtues.
Crooks may not know how to operate them and be nervous and the “jam” may be more of a “forgot to put a round in the chamber or take the safety off” or whatever. They probably don’t maintain their guns very well either.
I shot 10,000 rounds a year through my Glock for about 3 years and it only jammed once.
Ammo definitely makes a difference in lower-end weapons. I have an Accu-Tek AT-380 and while it’s vastly superior to the dirt-cheap guns like Lorcin, et al, it’s still picky about ammo. It feeds standard FMJ ball nose rounds with high reliability; jacketed hollow points are problematic and some brands feed better than others. So far, Speer Gold dot has proven the most reliable JHP. Unfortunately, it’s somewhat pricey. Better quality firearms have fewer such feed issues, however it’s a good idea, particularly when selecting a primary defensive round, to run a few boxes through your handgun to gauge reliability.
Plenty of cops as well as robbers tend to neglect their firearms. Since alot of them never draw them, they get a little lazy about cleaning or rotating ammo.
Granted a 10 year old cartridge should still fire, but I wouldn’t want to be my life on the rounds in a mag that has been in the gun for years straight, rain, snow, the time you fell in the creek, or rattling around in the center console of the el camino with the 18 month old french fries and taco bell debris.
Here’s something that may be skewing your perception: In those “Amazing Video!!!” shows, I’m assuming they don’t generally shot footage of someone actually being shot, as that doesn’t usually appear during American primetime. That means the footage is necessarily going to be of people NOT being shot, either because the bad guy didn’t pull the trigger, or missed, or the gun jammed.
So there’s probably plenty of successful shots that are simply unsuitable for airing, due to the blood and gruesome death, and you’re left with an over-representation of bad marksmanship and jammed guns.
The OP acknowledged this, and was more curious about the frequency that a misfire like this might occur. In other words, were the examples he saw two out of a hundred, thousand, or what?
What are the price ranges on reliable ammo and hand guns.?I know people with 700 dollar hand guns. i thought that was normal. What does a police hand gun cost? What does it cost to do target practice?
I saw a program with the rail gun on it. Who could afford to fire that thing?
$700 isn’t too bad; my P99 was $650. Answering the question about a police handgun is difficult, because there is no one gun that qualifies. Probably the most commonly carried is one of the Glock models (with SigSaur in second, I’d assume.) A new Glock of the type that your typical policeman would carry, I’d think, would run you between 500 and 700 bucks.
Ammunition varies wildly. There are cheap reloads, of course, which I stay away from (they dirty the gun.) A box of Winchester White Box ammunition (50 rounds) goes for about 11 bucks at my local Wal-Mart. Speer Gold Dot will cost more.
You can get a decent pistol for less money, of course. I have a little Taurus PT111 that I paid about $200 for, and it’s nice enough. My best friend uses the same gun as his CHL piece, though I prefer the Walther (he has a Walther, too.)
The next time the police do a big bust and collect weapons, pause your tivo and take a good close look. You’ll see a couple nice or newer weapons but the majority will really be badly maintained guns that probably werent too good when they were new.
It does seem that well off drug dealers have much nicer weaponry than thieves. They can afford it. The guy robbing taco bell really isnt in the financial position to keep and maintain a decent firearm and is lucky to own anything that looks intimidating. I bet a lot of those “jammed” guns havent been shot in decades and the thief may well know that it probably wont fire. His primary goal is to take the money via intimidation, not murder.
A maintained, quality handgun is extremely reliable. I have a USP (IMO, the finest handgun in the world) that has only had problems with some out of spec PMC ammo. I actually went out into the desert yesterday and shot it - I accidentally dropped an open box of ammo into some gravel/dust/sand surface that coated everything (turned my black shoes into almost white). I blew it off but decided I wasn’t going to thoroughly clean it just to see what the gun could do - even though I probably ran an ounce of dust/sand through it, no problems.
My Taurus PT-92 has never failed to load or fire after about 1500-2000 rounds through it. My makarov has also never failed with probably 800 rounds. The latter gun cost about $150 - probably cheaper than a lot of the jennings garbage criminals tend to carry. You can be poor and still afford a quality milsurp gun, but they’re just idiots.
So to answer your question - this is just an educated guess, but I’d say a well maintained quality gun (and quality in this case basically means not garbage - the vast majority of guns are good enough) has fewer than 1 malfunction every thousand rounds.
