3 July 01

>From a friend in South Africa:

"Last weekend we hosted a Three-Gun Training Exercise. Some comments:

>One-handed shooting skills were sorely lacking. Quite a few stoppages due to limp-wristing.

>The usual crowd of ‘instinctive shooters' showed up. The only thing they did consistently was ‘instinctively' hit everything imaginable, EXCEPT the target! The only way to engage a target successfully is by watching your front sight, settling down, and making each shot hit exactly where you intend it to hit.

>We had fifteen Glocks present. All worked fine except for one, which consistently malfunctioned- mostly failures to eject. When I examined it, I discovered an after-market ‘Lightning Strike Recoil Reducer' had been installed. I removed the after-market part and instructed the pistol's owner to pitch it into the nearest garbage can. When we replaced it with the original, Glock recoil rod and spring assembly, the pistol ran fine from that point forward.

Lessons:

We don't practice shooting one-handed nearly enough. This should be part of every training session.

"Instinct shooting" is rubbish

Stay away from after-market, replacement parts, particularly those made for Glocks.

/John

3 July 01

Last weekend, I was in California presenting an Advanced Defensive Handgun Course. One of my students, a police officer, was using a Glock 23. It blew up as he was shooting!

The magazine shot out of the magazine well, along with several rounds, the base, spring, and follower. The magazine release button and the extractor both blew out and were not recovered. The barrel was split at the chamber, and the crack made it's way a centimeter up the barrel proper. The slide was bulged. The offending case was all but disintegrated. Only the base was in tact. The primer blew out completely.

The shooter was startled, but not injured. The pistol was toast.

To its credit, the Glock held together sufficiently to protect the shooter and bystanders.

The shooter was using homemade handloads and unjacketed (cast lead) bullets. I'm confident the problem was an overcharged case.

Lesson: Don't shoot unjacketed bullets through autoloading pistols, particularly Glocks! Overpressures occur when lead fouling builds up in the barrel.

If you're going to handload, you are going to have to be careful!

/John