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The Beginning Students guide to pistol stoppages, what really happens...

Click and No Bang - Beginning Student holds pistol up to face, muzzle pointed skyward at a diagonal. With support hand scratch head while continuing to ponder.
 
Good write up.

Echoing earlier post with the obligatory quote (it's been at least a few months since it was posted hasn't it?) on importance of drill. "Under pressure, you don't rise to the occasion, you sink to the level of your training."

Read it, but then do it. Over and over.
 
Maintenance and quality ammo prevents many a stoppage.
To add to this point, another (and much more severe) cause of a failure to go into battery: a squib round.

Undercharged or without powder entirely, the bullet barely starts into the barrel and the slide either A. Attempts to pick up a new round but is unable to fit into the chamber because of the blockage, or B. Slide short strokes, pistol goes click with no bang, shooter does a tap-rack, then pistol fails to go into battery like in scenario A.

I have witnessed this twice (never with hand loads I had any part in rolling) and was thankful both times that the squib round barely traveled down the barrel, thus causing a failure to go into battery that no amount of tap-racking could solve!
 
No such thing as a double feed in a pistol, mechanically impossible...it's a fail to extract, incorporate the two.

Remedy

1 - Engage magazine release, pull the magazine out, reinsert magazine, rack slide, go

2 - Lock slide back, pull magazine out, reinsert magazine, slide forward, go

If one of the above doesn't fix the problem, nothing will...plan B...
 
Five is right out.
This is one of my all time favorite movie quotes.
Maintenance and quality ammo prevents many a stoppage.
This^ along with seating the magazine completely. Was at a class last weekend where about 15,000 rounds went downrange. Saw lots of malfs from ammo (low power reloads not cycling), mags not seated completely, likely dirty / un-lubed guns by the afternoon of day two and three squibs, two from reloads and one from factory ammo. The usual suspects plus the squibs. Someone had a Glock with some broken spring thingy (technical term...don't speak Glock) and another the pulled out their back up which had some maintenance issues that needed to be resolved.
 
This is one of my all time favorite movie quotes.

This^ along with seating the magazine completely. Was at a class last weekend where about 15,000 rounds went downrange. Saw lots of malfs from ammo (low power reloads not cycling), mags not seated completely, likely dirty / un-lubed guns by the afternoon of day two and three squibs, two from reloads and one from factory ammo. The usual suspects plus the squibs. Someone had a Glock with some broken spring thingy (technical term...don't speak Glock) and another the pulled out their back up which had some maintenance issues that needed to be resolved.
Your story can't be true, because Glocks don't fail…just kidding of course! 😄
 
Rack 3 times on the ceiling if you want me?
check chamber from muzzle end!
ask where the safety is on a revolver. ( actually heard this more than once )
my brother-in-law tried to wrap his support hand around the front of the cylinder of my blackhawk.
my exwife loaded an entire magazine for a hipower backwards.

gotta love them newbs, an endless source of comedic entertainment.
 
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