How To Keep A Hi Point From Jamming? Trust The Answer

Most handguns are fairly well made tools that do their job reasonably well. Revolvers and pistols are inherently defensive weapons and often a weapon of last choice, so such weapons tend to emphasize reliability above all else. The vast majority of handguns are decent in one way or another, although there have been several notable lemons in modern firearms history. Unergonomic, underperforming, or worst of all, unreliable, these cursed handguns have earned enduring infamy.

The Japanese Type 94

Japan has never been known as an innovator in firearms, and many of its Imperial-era small arms were inspired by or licensed from European designs. In 1934, Japanese gun designer Kijiro Nambu introduced the Type 94 pistol. The Type 94 was a blowback pistol chambered in 8 millimeters. It weighed 1.68 pounds and featured a six-round magazine. Not only was the Type 94 an ergonomic nightmare, it had an unfortunate tendency to discharge during handling. Pressing an exposed trigger on the Type 94’s side actually fires it. It was also possible to press the magazine release simply by placing the pistol on a flat surface, and the pistol was known to be extremely difficult to remove.

Mk. II Gyrojet pistol

During the 1960s, MBA Associates created a line of self-loading rocket weapons. Aside from a rifle and pistol, the company created the Mk. II Gyrojet pistol. The Mk. II was a very light pistol with relatively few moving parts. It fired a self-contained spherical 13×36 millimeter rocket, common to the entire line of weapons. The rocket was spin stabilized, the rocket motor was ignited by the firing pin hitting the nose of the pistol. The missile does not gain stability through the use of fins, but is stabilized by a spin imparted to it as it travels through the gun barrel. The missile ball notoriously slowed down before gaining full speed and could be deflected at very close ranges with a flick of the wrist. The missile was also notoriously inaccurate at longer ranges.

FP-45 Liberator

The FP-45 Liberator was a well-intentioned attempt to equip the millions behind Hitler’s Fortress Europe with an offensive handgun. The single-shot, snub-nose barrel pistol chambered for .45 ACP was designed for resistance fighters. In theory it could be used to shoot a German or Italian soldier and then take his much better service pistol or rifle. It is not clear from the historical record that this was actually ever done, nor is it clear that this was a poor pistol to do so. The short barrel, paired with the .45 ACP cartridge, produced powerful recoil that untrained resistance fighters were unaccustomed to. In addition, it was difficult to aim and had a range of only about 25 feet. If a resistance fighter missed, there was no chance of a follow-up shot.

Smith & Wesson Model 500

In 2003, Smith & Wesson released a pistol designed for use by big game hunters in remote regions. The S&W500 is a five-shot .500 caliber Action Express stainless steel revolver. The revolver weighs 4.3 pounds and features an eight-inch barrel. While the S&W500 is certainly a fine gun for this relatively small cohort that hunts with large caliber revolvers, it’s not on this list for the people who use it properly, but for those who feel compelled to use it for the wrong reasons own. The S&W500 is mostly purchased by gun owners looking for the biggest, baddest pistol – for no apparent rationale. The gun lands at an indoor shooting range, where the pistol’s tremendous roar is enough to shake everyone else on the firing line, and many indoor shooting ranges have therefore banned .50 caliber handguns.

The Mars automatic pistol

In 1900, English firearms designer Hugh Gabbet-Fairfax submitted his new pistol design, the Mars, to the Royal Navy for testing. The pistol was produced in three calibers: 8.5 millimeters, 9 millimeters and .45. The Mars used a unique, extremely complex “long recoil” semi-automatic operating system, in which the barrel and bolt, locked together, traveled a distance greater than the length of the cartridge. The gun had tremendous recoil and the barrel often stayed pointed straight up between shots. According to weapons historian Ian V. Hogg, the Royal Navy’s report on the weapon said in part: “Nobody who fired the pistol wanted to fire it again.” Not surprisingly, the Royal Navy rejected the pistol and Gabbet-Fairfax went bankrupt left after only eighty pistols had been built.

Kyle Mizokami is a San Francisco-based author who has appeared on The Diplomat, Foreign Policy, War is Boring, and The Daily Beast. In 2009 he co-founded the defense and security blog Japan Security Watch.

Image: Creative Commons.

It’s a question that comes up from time to time, and generally from a new shooter who just bought their first firearm (obviously one that feeds from a removable magazine, which I’ll refer to simply as “magazine” in the future , because I don’t need to inflate the word count).

The pistol or rifle you just bought comes with only one or two magazines, and you understand that having more is desirable. Magazines are a common failure point; Many in the training community consider them consumables. Springs wear out, dogs are bent or damaged, track shoes are deformed and hit the ground; There are a number of reasons why having multiple magazines on your gun is a good idea.

So what is the magic number then? How many magazines should you have on hand? Let’s start with the obvious answer: everyone. I don’t mean much. I mean everyone. Every single last. When you’ve wandered the world like Caine and collected every magazine that was ever made, only then will you have had enough.

Until then, however, here are some general guidelines. These are my own personal guidelines, mind you; I’m not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV, and I didn’t sleep in a Holiday Inn Express last night. I’m just a guy who owns a lot of guns (and a lot of magazines), and that’s my experience over the last [murmur] decades.

For your defensive handgun, the weapon you carry every day, I recommend a bare minimum of six magazines. Honestly, given the “two is one” principle, I considered saying 12 (you’ll lose a magazine or two, count on it; they break, don’t work as expected, etc. Something happens. It won’t be Murphy denied).

Six allows you to have three available to rotate in the carry weapon and another three to have them available for distance training (although you should practice with your carry ammo, it doesn’t have to be at the same frequency as your normal training At least shoot “the good stuff” when we change the clocks). Switch up each set if it makes you feel better, but there’s not much reason to (more on that in a moment).

Six magazines – ideally 12 – also provide ample capacity if you’re taking a course or two (and you should; honestly, it’s a great way to test your gear, identify deficiencies in your shooting skills, and generally improve ). The more magazines you can load in advance, the better—you’re paying for class time, not magazine-loading practice. If you’re practicing at a public range where you pay by the hour, read the comment above about time loading magazines doesn’t require – why spend time loading magazines when you could shoot?

With all other firearms it’s honestly a personal preference (and unfortunately also location dependent if you happen to live in an area where capacity is limited etc.). Again, more is better for plinking .22 pistols and rifles – you buy these guns to either teach new shooters or just to have fun, and no one ever says “YAY! We’re loading magazines today!” While it’s a necessary skill we all need to learn, this is something for week three, not the first range trip.

If you’re adding a new person to the lineup (and PLEASE do this!), have plenty of magazines to keep handy. Seriously, a few summers ago my daughter and I went to a private, family-owned shooting range and she went through an entire block of Federal Bulk .22 that afternoon. We had a Ruger 10/22 and a steel plate stand at 25 yards and she had the time of her life hitting those plates. More mags are always better, especially when it comes to firing 550 rounds through 10-round mags.

A few quick points: I don’t want to repeat the whole “take a set” issue of whether or not you can or can’t or should or shouldn’t store magazines with rounds loaded for long periods of time. What I’m saying is that magazines need cleaning – look closely at your pistol magazine, say, 100 rounds. It’s dirty. Learn how to disassemble your magazines.

Also, have a black sharpie and a silver paint marker handy and mark your journals. It could be as simple as “1”, “2”, etc. or any other section of the grid on a Magpul baseplate. When a magazine fails – and you will – you should keep that magazine out of circulation until you figure out what happened. It helps to have a marking system at all times.

Let me close again by saying buy all the magazines. No one ever said, “Damn, I have way too many magazines” (I may have gotten close when I moved…). If you’re on a budget, it helps to keep at least six for your defensive pistol to cover against Murphy without breaking the bank. Original equipment magazines work best, but there are many aftermarket variants that work well.

Have you ever shot at targets and got a cartridge jammed in the action of the firearm? Here are some suggestions on how to clear the blocked round.

Note: All of this assumes that the shooter is using the correct cartridge for the pistol and that the pistol is in proper working order.

Anyone who has had the opportunity to shoot their firearms, whether for leisure, at work, or at the shooting range, has probably experienced their firearm jamming, as this is a fairly common occurrence. On the shooting range, a “jam” is a broad term often used to refer to various firearm malfunctions that people encounter. Poor engineering, faulty rounds, and mechanical problems lead to a number of reasons why the gun has jammed. You can reduce the likelihood of gun jams by regularly cleaning your firearm. However, jams can happen at any time, and even those who use firearms in their careers can have their gun jammed when it matters most. Most professionals are trained in how to quickly deal with when their firearm jams. To ensure your safety at the shooting range, understanding common jams can be helpful and help people improve their shooting skills. Today we at Shooting Range Industries want to talk about common jamming issues.

Types of Gun Jams

Misfire or Hang-Fire: A misfire and hang-fire are two separate faults that have marked differences in cause, but which lead to the same result; The trigger is pulled and nothing happens. Hanging fire is a delay where it initially happens after the trigger is pulled, but the cartridge fires after a short delay. A misfire, on the other hand, is when the gun doesn’t fire at all. It’s important to stay in your firing stance and point the gun down for a solid minute to eliminate the possibility of delay or hanging fire. Once it is positively marked as a misfire after sufficient time has elapsed, remove the cartridge and inspect it. To check the primer, look for an indentation on the back of the cartridge. If the center is hit, it’s probably a bad round. Ask the Stability Officer to help you safely dispose of the failed cartridge. However, if the cartridge was hit off-center or not at all, the mechanism is probably to blame.

: A misfire and a hanging fire are two separate faults that have distinctly different causes, but which lead to the same result; The trigger is pulled and nothing happens. Hanging fire is a delay where it initially happens after the trigger is pulled, but the cartridge fires after a short delay. A misfire, on the other hand, is when the gun doesn’t fire at all. It’s important to stay in your firing stance and point the gun down for a solid minute to eliminate the possibility of delay or hanging fire. Once it is positively marked as a misfire after sufficient time has elapsed, remove the cartridge and inspect it. To check the primer, look for an indentation on the back of the cartridge. If the center is hit, it’s probably a bad round. Ask the Stability Officer to help you safely dispose of the failed cartridge. However, if the cartridge was hit off-center or not at all, the mechanism is probably to blame. Ejection Failure: An ejection failure occurs when a cartridge case exits the chamber but remains lodged in the ejection port. This jam is sometimes referred to as “stovepipes” because it is common that the casing often sticks out perpendicular to the slide like a stovepipe hat. The failed ejection is typically due to poor shooting technique, as the shooter uses a weak grip when firing the shot.

: Ejection failure occurs when a cartridge case leaves the chamber but gets stuck in the ejection port. This jam is sometimes referred to as “stovepipes” because it is common that the casing often sticks out perpendicular to the slide like a stovepipe hat. The failed ejection is typically due to poor shooting technique, as the shooter uses a weak grip when firing the shot. Feeding Failure: Feeding failure occurs when a subsequent cartridge fails to feed into the chamber. This jamming problem is also usually due to the shooter not having a firm grip on the gun when firing. thereby preventing the next round from getting stuck in the traffic jam. Without a firm grip, the entire weapon will spring back as opposed to just slide recycling when properly gripped. Should your weapon not feed, you will likely need to fix the problem by emptying the chamber and possibly dropping the magazine.

Custom designed shooting ranges, designed, manufactured and assembled in the USA

If you have frequent jamming problems when firing your gun due to poor use, you should take a shooting class to learn how to get a better grip on your gun and other basics. Avoiding traffic jams is vital to your safety and the safety of others. Shooting Range Industries makes it really easy to practice and train with your firearms. Contact us to learn more about our custom shooting ranges that can be accommodated on your property!

share on Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

With so many events canceled and shops closed, what a great time to reload! Over the past few weeks I’ve been working on a series of posts that I’m really excited to finally share with you!

This is the first article in a series dedicated to reloading for precision rifle shooting, but much of what I’m about to share could benefit shooters using factory ammo just as much as reloaders – if not more! In the next few posts, I’ll be sharing brand new, primary research that I think you’ll find very interesting. It’ll be mostly about bullet bounce and seat depth, but will also touch on a few other topics that are important for getting first-round hits on targets at long range…but haven’t been explored much in terms of a target, data-driven approach. I honestly feel like this is going to be one of my landmark article series for 2020 and I’m really excited to share it with you!

Part of my goal for PRB is to help new shooters get involved in this sport, which is obviously very close to my heart. I purposely want to bring new people into the conversation. One of my biggest annoyances in life is when someone makes someone else feel stupid. I don’t like feeling stupid, and I don’t want anyone else to feel that way either. So in everything I write, I try to be careful not to jump right into a highly technical conversation and assume everyone knows what we’re talking about. It’s very easy to lose new people over jargon and complexity, so this article will lay a foundation for the conversation that we’ll build on in subsequent posts.

This article provides a comprehensive overview of what most professionally published books and reloading manuals suggest about bullet jump and seat depth in sniper rifles. I have a large stack of books on the subject and have tried to combine the most relevant information from each of them when it comes to fine tuning the seat depth of your ammo.

What is “bullet jump”?

Bullet jump is basically the distance a bullet travels before it hits the rifle in the barrel. This gap is a relatively short distance, typically between 0 and .150 inches, although it might be longer on some factory or magazine-loaded rifles.

There’s a lot going on in a chamber in the tiny window when a round starts. Factors such as whether the bullet jumps .010″ or .070″ before engaging the rifling may seem insignificant, but can have a measurable impact on the bullet’s flight and group size. There are several reasons for this, which I will address below from above. But suffice it to say that these types of details are particularly relevant in shooting disciplines that push the limits of precision and/or engage small targets at long range.

There are two primary ways to fine-tune bullet bounce:

Adjust Bullet Seat Depth: When handloading ammo, you can control how far the bullet must bounce by adjusting the Bullet Seat Depth. However, if a reloader adjusts their seat depth to extend the bullet further outward, the overall cartridge length (COAL) increases, which can prevent a loaded cartridge from fitting in your magazine. So if feeding from a magazine is a priority, you might be limited in how close you can get to the lands. Adjusting the Chamber Freewheel: Another way to get a bullet closer to the lands and stay within magazine length is to shorten the throat of a chamber. Instead of lengthening the bullet out of the case in the direction of the rifling by adjusting the seat depth, you are effectively moving the rifling closer to the bullet. The diagram above shows an area referred to as the “throat”, but this distance is also commonly referred to as the clearance hole. Freebore is simply the distance between the neck and the start of the spin. For example, let’s say the SAAMI chambering for a particular cartridge requires .180″ clearance bore. If we use a chambered reamer that only has .100″ freewheel, this would effectively move the twist back toward the .080″ bullet. Okay, technically it doesn’t “move” the rifle – it just means the chamber reamer would leave more of the rifle near the chamber.

What every gunsmith would have liked to know

Some shooters are obsessed with freebore (sometimes myself) and will occasionally insist on a specific dimension of freebore for their barrel, despite a gunsmith’s recommendations. A gunsmith who is brutally honest might say that this is one of the most annoying parts of his job. I feel like I should say this out loud on behalf of all my gunsmith friends. And I admit, I was sometimes a perpetrator too. While free-barrel can be an important specification, one of the best pieces of advice I can give is this: find a gunsmith that specializes in precision rifles and has a proven track record of satisfied customers, and then tell them what your goals are are and how you plan to use the gun, and finally, trust their recommendations.

What are recommended best practices when it comes to bullet jumping?

“It’s fairly universally accepted that the shorter the distance, the better, and a long-lasting and, for good reason, accuracy-enhancing tactic is to almost or completely eliminate the jump. The longer the bullet and the more ‘spiky’ its tip, the better it will move towards land.” – Glen Zediker, Top-Grade AMMO (published 2016)

I’ve seen countless quotes like the above when reloading manuals and books. Top-Grade Ammo is one of the best handloading resources I’ve read, but here’s how another popular book explains it:

“Handloaders can tinker with the bullet seat depth to well exceed the listed maximum [overall length of the cartridge]. Sometimes they can tinker until the bullet gets very close to the gun. This can dramatically improve accuracy. As COAL brings the bullet close to twist, changes of about 0.005 inches can change accuracy dramatically. …For most hunting rifles and bullets, the optimum bullet-to-rifle jump is usually in the neighborhood of .020 inches; for target cartridges used in target-chambered guns, the ideal jump may be close to zero.” – Mic McPherson, Metallic Cartridge Handloading: Pursuit of the Perfect Cartridge

Glen Zediker wrote a book called Handloading for Competition: Making The Target Bigger, and here are some highlights from what it says about bullet drop and seat depth: “Determining the bullet seat depth that suits a rifle best is usually a ‘fine tuning’ will lure any stray holes to shift into the group. Every load and projectile reacts to the adjustment of the seat depth. … How much jump is a good question, with only one answer: what shoots best. This may not be the answer anyone was looking for, but it is the right one, and it is also not always the one we are willing to accept for various reasons. Most competition rifles shoot best with bullets that jam anywhere between .020 and .020 bouncing. … Again, there is no hard and fast rule for jump height that favors any particular combination, but the odds are better.”

One of the most interesting articles I have ever read about precision shooting was called “Secrets of the Houston Warehouse”. It was written by Dave Scott and published by Precision Shooting Magazine in 1993. It follows a veteran group of benchrest shooters who, in a large warehouse, conducted experiments that redefined extreme precision in rifles. They used the large, controlled environment where the wind never blew and the mirage never shimmered to test virtually every aspect of rifle construction and reloading. They fired 5-shot groups “in the nulls,” meaning the extreme spread was 0.099 inches or less. In fact, they ended up firing 5 shot groups that were only 0.025 inches!!! These experiments contributed to many of the best practices that benchrest shooters still use today, and here’s what this article says about Bullet Jump:

“One thing that is important is that the ball sits squarely on the lands. TJ Jackson reported this fact in the May 1987 issue of Precision Shooting. In a letter to the editor, T.J. wrote, “…in all of our testing at that Houston warehouse…and the dozens and dozens of groups Virgil King shot there ‘in the zeros’…he NEVER fired a single official screamer group when he was ‘hopping bullets ‘. All of his best groups always sat in the lands, or at least touched the lands.” — Secrets of the Houston Warehouse, Precision Shooting Magazine

Most published reloading materials repeat a similar idea. The Hornady Reloading Manual simply says, “In general, the closer the barrel is, the greater the accuracy.”

Another of my favorite sources are the books by Nathan Foster, an accomplished gunsmith in New Zealand and author of Terminal Ballistics Research. I’ve read a lot of what he wrote and Nathan has earned my respect for his practical as well as data-driven approach. Here’s what Nathan says on the subject: “Why sit near the lands? In our last example, Joe was reading an article in which the author explained that he should sit near the lands for best accuracy. Many of you will have heard this statement. Target shooters often go to extremes and wedge projectiles straight into land—but why? The statement “because it’s more accurate” isn’t really an explanation. Current research suggests that the pressure can be made more constant from shot to shot by forcing the projectile into the land.” Nathan later adds, “The projectile can easily hit the lands off-center if it has to travel a long distance . In this case, a bullet close and concentric with the bore can help minimize possible bullet yaw during ignition. Narrow seating can also simply be used as a starting point for harmonious experiments. We can test the sphere near land and then step back if necessary to monitor the impact on accuracy.” So, as expected, Nathan has a more pragmatic approach, starting close and then experimenting around to see which jump gives the best accuracy for that rifle and bullet combination.

dr Harold Vaughn, who is literally one of the greatest explorers of the last 100 years (you should read about him here), agrees with Nathan’s statement on the importance of absolutely centering the ball with the bore. In his book Rifle Accuracy Facts, which covers his extensive research, he shares how benchrest shooters want chambers with minimal clearance in their necks, and also turn the necks of their brass to ensure the bullet is perfectly centered with the bore. dr Vaughn further explains, “They also set the balls in the lands, which helps center the ball. However, seating the bullet in the case so that it touches the rifling in the neck also increases tip chamber pressure, which is undesirable. Obviously the benchrest shooters realized that it is important to have the bullet centered in the barrel and I think they are right. …The seat depth of the bullet in the case affects how close the bullet is aimed to center. Apparently the bullet will be centered when in full contact with the lands, however reference 1 showed that the tip chamber pressure decreases when the bullet is free running before it makes contact with the lands. Since minimum peak pressure for a given load implies minimum bullet distortion, the author prefers a seat depth that, in the case of a benchrest gun carrying light bullets, provides about 0.010 inches into the lands and about 0.020 inches of bullet-free travel before the bullet contacts that Land if a sport involves heavy bullet shooting.

Tony Boyer is the most successful and acclaimed benchrest shooter of all time. He has won multiple world championships and has been named Shooter of the Year over ten times. In his 2010 book The Book of Rifle Accuracy, he says simply, “When you fire the bullet into the lands, the lands themselves align the bullet without forcing an overrun.” However, Tony goes on to say that the bullet shape can affect optimal seat depth, and “there is no hard and fast rule that dictates the best seat depth for all bullet/barrel combinations.” But Tony says there are some common characteristics of barrels when he’s looking for the sweet spot , “With a button-gun barrel like a Shilen, I would have stopped searching for the optimal seat depth at .012 inches off the jam.” …With a quadruple cut barrel (Bartlein or Krieger) be more patient and keep trying until the bullet is completely unmarked. Again, I personally don’t want to shoot the rifle so it becomes my stopping point. So, the guy who proved several times that he can shoot the smallest groups in the world says that he always at least touches the land, and often the bullet gets jammed in it.

“Every once in a while, 2-3 thousandths of a change in seat depth can mean the difference between average accuracy and maximum accuracy,” explains Mike Ratigan, Benchrest Hall of Famer and Extreme Rifle Accuracy World Champion. Wow, 0.002-0.003 inches in the ball jump can make all the difference sometimes! Of the dozen or so published sources I’ve cited (and others) so far, virtually all suggest testing seat depth in 0.005 inch increments, meaning most expect a change in seat depth of just 0.005″. Inches or less can have a measurable impact on group size on target.

I could cite more books, but it seems like there’s overwhelming support that when the absolute smallest groups are your top priority, jump minimization seems like the way to go. Everyone from accomplished scientific researchers to the absolute best of the best, world champion shooters, agrees that you’re likely to find the best accuracy with a bullet jump of .020″ or less.

The one resource that suggests testing longer

The only professionally published resource I’ve found that clearly recommends testing a bullet jump greater than .020″ in a sniper rifle is from Berger Bullets. The Berger Bullets Reloading Manual states:

“It was discovered that VLD bullets shoot best when loaded onto a COAL that puts the bullet in a ‘sweet spot’ 0.150 bouncing out of the lands.”

Berger’s VLD bullets are Very Low Drag bullets with extremely high ballistic coefficients, meaning they are very aerodynamic and ideal for long range shooting, but are known to be sensitive to seat depth (and probably more specifically bullet bounce). Knowing that VLD bullets are very sensitive to bullet bounce, Berger appears to have done a lot of research and found that the sweet spot for optimal accuracy on some rifles can be as high as .150 inches of bullet bounce.

Formerly Master Bulletsmith for Berger and now President, Eric Stecker gives detailed instructions in his manual on how to find the optimal jump with the fewest shots possible, but they’ve also republished similar information online in this article: Getting the Best Precision and Accuracy by VLD bullets in your rifle.

Next

Hopefully this post has given us a good basic understanding of bullet drop, seat depth and freewheel, as well as a comprehensive overview of conventional wisdom and best practices from a variety of trusted published sources.

Stay tuned for upcoming articles that build on this one and delve deeper into some of the latest research on the subject – which could potentially make us reconsider some of our longstanding beliefs on these issues.

Here are the links to the next articles:

How fast does a barrel erode?

This article focuses on how quickly the lands on a gun barrel typically erode, particularly with medium-sized cartridges that are popular in sniper rifle combat. It also covers how many shooters manage seat depth and bullet bounce over the life of the barrel.

This article focuses on how quickly the lands on a gun barrel typically erode, particularly with medium-sized cartridges that are popular in sniper rifle combat. It also covers how many shooters manage seat depth and bullet bounce over the life of the barrel. Bullet Jump: Is Less Always Better?

This article presented some interesting new research done by Mark Gordon of Short Action Customs on what is the most forgiving range of shot jumps for the Berger 105 gr. Hybrid bullet with over 10 different gun/load configurations. It also provides an overview of the test methods and how to interpret the results.

This article presented some interesting new research done by Mark Gordon of Short Action Customs on what is the most forgiving range of shot jumps for the Berger 105 gr. Hybrid bullet with over 10 different gun/load configurations. It also provides an overview of the test methods and how to interpret the results. More Bullet Jump Research!

This article shares more of Mark Gordon’s research on the bullet jump, which is very interesting, original research – and gets everyone talking! This post looks at research data on the 6.5mm 147 gr. ELD-M and Tubbs 6mm 115 gr. DTAC RBT bullets. Listen!

© Copyright 2022 PrecisionRifleBlog.com, All Rights Reserved.

In a relationship with:

by Jessica Muller

It is taught to police across the country.

Officials use it to explain why they shot someone.

Prosecutors, including in Utah, point this out when deciding whether a police shooting was legal.

It’s called the “21-foot rule,” meaning someone running at police with a knife can go about 21 feet before officers draw their gun and fire.

But this standard training technique, which began in Salt Lake City, is now controversial. It has been called outdated, simplistic and even dangerous. It’s not based on science or law. And some national police leaders argue that cadets shouldn’t be taught it anymore.

Yet new cops keep hearing about it.

The 21-foot rule was cited directly by attorneys or the police to justify shootings in five cases in Utah over the past 16 years, according to a Salt Lake Tribune database expanded with help from FRONTLINE. Two others referred to tenets of the rule — such as specifying that a person’s distance was within 21 feet — though they weren’t directly named.

That’s nearly 20% of the 37 times during that period that someone had a knife when a Utah officer fired.

State officials who train new officers say it’s not part of the official curriculum, although it’s mentioned in training courses.

Despite its importance in police culture, the Salt Lake City attorney behind it said it was never meant to be a rigid rule.

“How close is too close?”

It all started in 1982. Dennis Tueller was a sergeant at the time and used to go to the shooting range with the officers to practice drawing and firing weapons.

A new officer posed a question: when would he be entitled to shoot someone who came towards him with a knife?

“Essentially they were asking how close is too close?” Tueller said in a 2018 YouTube video copyrighted by the Utah Attorney’s Office. “I realized I didn’t have a good answer for that.”

So Tueller assigned an officer to play the role of attacker. Another was the officer who was about to be attacked. The attacker ran towards the officer and they estimated how long it would take to reach him.

Read more: Is The Fear Factor In Police Shootings Exaggerated?

They’ve done it over and over again, with different role players. Men and women. Some built smaller, others bigger.

“It’s been pretty consistent,” Tueller said. “And that was sobering. Because we thought we did a pretty good job of pulling a target 7 yards in 1½ to 2 seconds and shooting and attacking. We realized that if you just stand there and wait for the attacker to come and you pull and shoot, he can be over you before the bullet has a chance to cast.”

Tueller published an article in SWAT magazine detailing his findings.

Dennis Tueller’s original 1984 article for SWAT magazine, “How Close is Too Close?” is now published online by a training and consulting firm. (Police Political Studies Council)

“Let’s consider what might be called the ‘danger zone’ when faced with an opponent armed with a sharp or blunt weapon,” he wrote. “At what distance does this enemy enter your danger zone and become a mortal threat to you?”

It was, he said, 21 feet.

The article never proposed a hard and fast rule, but it has stuck.

Read more: Shoot, not to kill. This Utah case is fueling a debate that’s frustrating police.

Tueller, who declined an interview request, has also said repeatedly over the years that he never intended his experiment to be incorporated into police training and used in courtrooms to justify shootings.

“I’ve heard coaches use that mongrelized term ’21-foot rule’ to actually say that if you shoot someone further than 21 feet away, you could be charged with murder,” Tueller said in the YouTube video. “Or anyone within 21 feet, you are authorized to shoot.”

Should the 21-foot rule be taught?

Whether or not Tueller intended it, the concept known as the 21-foot rule or “Tueller drill” has become firmly established in American law enforcement.

“I would argue that you can’t find a police officer anywhere in the United States who doesn’t know the 21-foot rule,” said Randy Shrewsberry, executive director of the Institute for Criminal Justice Training Reform. “It’s not just a part of regular training, it’s something we keep reminding officers of throughout their careers.”

Shrewsberry and other proponents of police training reform have argued that the rule is too simplistic to be effective for today’s officers.

“It has no scientific basis whatsoever,” Shrewsberry told a FRONTLINE reporter. “It was never published in a scientific journal. … The main flaw of the 21-foot rule is that it fails to provide nuance. Those 21 feet assume the ground is flat. It assumes the speed of the alleged attacker. It is assumed whether the officer has his gun in his holster or not.”

And it’s possible that 21 feet won’t be enough.

A group of researchers conducted a scientific investigation of the 21-foot rule, which was published in the journal Police Practice and Research in 2020. The researchers – William Sandel, M. Hunter Martaindale and J. Pete Blair – wrote that after a series of tests in a laboratory setting, police needed more space and that “the term ‘safe distance’ has allowed the 21-foot rule to become standard to become in the field, but it puts the officers at risk.”

“This is especially true considering that officers tend to miss and a shot rarely stops a suspect’s forward motion,” they wrote. “It’s also important to note that this study took place in a laboratory setting, which provided officials with a best-case scenario and the greatest chance of success.”

Chuck Wexler, executive director of the national non-profit Police Executive Research Forum, helps advise police departments on best practices. He said his organization began recommending departments to remove the 21-foot rule from their training in 2016. He said he initially faced some resistance — “Old habits are hard to break,” he said — but more agencies have come on board in recent years.

“It’s a simple, simplified way of looking at a more complicated problem,” he said. “And it has incredibly tragic consequences.”

Wexler said police officers should instead learn to slow things down and create distance and try to speak to an armed person to de-escalate an encounter before it becomes a confrontation. An officer should try to find cover, he said, rather than following an arbitrary rule that says he can shoot if someone with a knife is within a certain range.

Read more: A Utah prosecutor says new self-defense law makes it harder to charge problem cops

“The answer to that really is to start thinking about tactics,” he told The Tribune, “and thinking about what you have to do to successfully protect the officers and the issue they’re dealing with.”

Now a guideline, not a guideline

Although the 21-foot rule is not officially in policy manuals, it is still taught to new Utah officials.

Reporters from FRONTLINE and The Tribune heard training officers teach it during scenario-based exercises at the state police academy, which is part of Peace Officer Standards and Training, known as POST.

Maj. Scott Stephenson, director of POST, said the 21-foot rule isn’t officially in the curriculum, but added that he wasn’t surprised his coaches would still mention it.

“It effectively shows that a dangerous person can travel at least 21 feet before most officers can draw their gun,” he said. “It’s also been part of the police training culture for a long time.”

The Salt Lake City Police Department taught journalists the 21-foot rule as part of a use-of-force training in 2017, but department spokesman Brent Weisberg said recently that it’s a guideline — not a guideline – acts for the department.

Salt Lake City Police Department Sgt. Mike Burbank plays the role of an armed suspect during a demonstration over the use of force and arrest tactics in Salt Lake City, Tuesday, December 5, 2017. (Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune)

“The SLCPD training unit is sharing this guidance with academy cadets for reference to show how much distance can be gained from an officer in a short amount of time before a response occurs,” he said in a statement. “Cadets are instructed to respect the distance between themselves and an armed suspect and to be aware, if possible, of putting more distance or cover between themselves and the suspect.”

Some specialized trainers are beginning to offer alternatives.

At a recent crisis intervention training session for Davis County police officers, Licensed Psychologist Todd Soutor brought up the exercise.

“What is the distance you are taught to be away from [someone?],” he asked a room of officers.

“Twenty-one feet,” an officer replies quickly.

“Is there ever a time when someone has a knife you’d rather be 10 feet from than 21 feet from?” asked Sooutor.

“If it’s a butter knife and you’re making a peanut butter sandwich,” an officer replied.

Soutor challenged her to think differently. Perhaps 10 feet is a safe distance when there are chairs and obstacles between an officer and a subject and room for an officer to retreat. He called it “artificial distance”.

“You have to think about that,” he told police. “This is an example of real distance. Twenty-one feet when standing on a straight path with no obstacles versus artificial distance.”

A justification for police shootings

On a March evening in 2019, an individual called police to report a loud argument between a man and woman outside their Harrisville home.

When the three officers got to Jamal Bell’s home, they found the front door damaged. Body camera footage shows officers pushing open the door, shining a light inside and asking if anyone was home.

At first nobody answered until Bell showed up with a knife in each hand. He sauntered towards the officers, footage shows, as they backed away and yelled at him to drop his guns.

An officer attempted to fire a taser, but Bell slammed the door before the electrified probes could hit him. One of the officers then kicked the door open and officers continued to order Bell to drop the knives.

Footage shows Bell raising his arms to his sides and swaying from one foot to the other.

“Come one step closer and I’ll shoot you!” yelled an officer. “I will shoot you!”

Bell stepped into the door a few yards from the officers. Just seconds later, three officers opened fire, hitting Bell nine times.

He survived.

Less than six months later, Weber County police officers were again confronted by a man with a knife, this time in Ogden.

There, on August 26, 2019, a neighbor called the Ogden Police Department to report a man acting strangely.

“I tried to speak to him,” the man told the dispatcher. “He doesn’t really react. He looks very confused and then he pulled out a knife.”

This man, Jovany Mercado, was diagnosed with schizophrenia and when he had an episode, he would hear things or get emotional and easily confused. He walked back from the street to his house. Footage from the family’s security camera showed Mercado pretending to speak to someone, but no one was there. He wiped away tears.

READ ALSO: New Utah Police Shooting And Race Data Called ‘Extremely Uncomfortable’, ‘Disappointing’

Officers found Mercado behind the family’s carport. The surveillance camera footage showed that the police asked him to drop the knife. He didn’t, moving the knife from hand to hand as he walked slowly through the building toward the opening in the chain link fence.

Four officers fired. He was hit 16 times and died.

Jovany Mercado-Bedolla as seen in body camera video taken before he was shot dead by officers on August 16, 2019. (Ogden Police Department)

In both cases, Weber County Attorney Chris Allred cited the 21-foot rule as one reason these shootings were legally justified.

In Bell’s case, Allred wrote that an officer told investigators he was specifically thinking of a training video.

“[The officer] said that every time in this training the officer would be stabbed before he could draw his gun and shoot,” Allred wrote. “This ’21-foot rule’ is common training for police officers.”

Allred wrote much the same when ruling officials justified shooting Mercado, saying it was a common scenario in role-based training.

“At a demonstration, officers had encountered a person with a knife and were trying to retreat and retreating further and further, putting them at a tactical disadvantage,” he wrote. “One officer was taken hostage during this encounter due to the inaction of first officers.”

Allred said he references the 21-foot rule because it explains why officers were concerned for their safety because of the distance between them and the man with a knife.

“Evidence showed the suspect got very close to officers before they fired,” Allred wrote in an email. “And in both cases, proximity was just one of several factors used to assess whether it was reasonable under the overall circumstances for officers to believe the use of deadly force was necessary.”

Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill has ruled more police shootings in the past decade than any other Utah prosecutor. He told The Tribune that officers had lifted the 21-foot rule, but he said that didn’t mean the officer was automatically entitled to use force. He said an officer must reasonably have feared for his life or another if he pulled the trigger.

READ ALSO: Utah Prosecutors Were “Surprised” That Police Shot So Many People In 2020

Gill said what tactics police are taught, like the 21-foot rule, may be the basis of that fear, but that fear still needs to be based on the “underlying facts and the totality of the circumstances surrounding this particular situation.”

Critics say the training should be changed. The focus, they say, should be on teaching cadets to de-escalate an encounter.

That includes Bell, the man who was shot nine times. At a protest in 2019, he said he felt the police would have shot him no matter what, even if he had dropped the knives. He added that he never threatened the police and said he wanted them to get better training so a gun wasn’t the only option.

Robert Sykes, an attorney representing Mercado’s family, said in 2020 that Ogden officers had ample opportunity to de-escalate the encounter or use less than deadly force. His family is now suing the Ogden Police Department.

“I know a knife can be a deadly weapon, definitely,” Sykes said. “But they had enough time to tell him to stop or I’ll shoot. You had many options. You didn’t have to kill that young man.”

Watch the full FRONTLINE and The Salt Lake Tribune collaboration “Shots Fired” below.

FRONTLINE reporters Taylor Eldridge, Muna Mohamed and Abby Ellis and Tribune reporter Paighten Harkins contributed to this report.

This story is part of a collaboration with The Salt Lake Tribune as part of FRONTLINE’s Local Journalism Initiative, funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

gun eater

We bring you honest, reliable and engaging firearms news and reviews

American arms manufacturer

Hi-Point Firearms, also known as Strassell’s Machine, Inc (distributed by MKS Supply), is an American firearms manufacturer based in Mansfield, Ohio. All of their firearms are manufactured at various Ohio locations.

Construction of products[edit]

pistols [edit]

A Hi-Point JCP pistol

Hi-Point semi-automatic pistols are polymer frame pistols based on the blowback design. Unlike other blowback pistols like the Walther PPK, P-64 and Astra 600 which use a heavy slide combined with a stiff recoil spring to keep the slide closed, these pistols use a heavier slide so they have a softer can use return spring. Compared to bolt-action handguns of the same caliber and dimensions, the Hi-Point is fairly top-heavy. As with most blowback handguns, this pistol has fewer moving parts that require cleaning and lubrication than its locked breech counterparts.

While most semi-automatic pistols can be disassembled on site without the use of tools, Hi-Point pistols require a small punch or screwdriver and hammer to dislodge a pin in the housing to allow slide removal (and thus to allow for on-site removal). -Strip).

Instead of being made from forged steel, the slide is die-cast from Zamak-3. Zamak is a zinc alloy often used in inexpensive firearms; Previous manufacturers to use this technique included the Lorcin Engineering Company and Raven Arms. Die casting is particularly prevalent in Ohio, which influenced the decision to implement it.[1]

Unusual for this design are Hi-Point pistols for +P ammunition in calibers up to .45 ACP. [citation needed] Blowback designs are generally simpler in design and easier and cheaper to manufacture than locked-breech recoil-operated firearms. While the fixed barrel of a blowback gun generally contributes to improved accuracy, blowback guns typically need to be larger and heavier than a locked breech gun firing the same caliber.

Carabiner[edit]

The Hi-Point carbine is a line of pistol-caliber carbines manufactured by Hi-Point Firearms chambered for 9×19mm Parabellum, .40 S&W, 10mm Auto, .45 ACP, and .380 ACP. Very inexpensive, they are made from polymers and alloyed metals as much as possible, resulting in a reduction in production costs and selling price. It works via a simple direct blowback action. Hi-Point carbines use a polymer stock, a stamped sheet metal receiver cover, and a cast Zamak-3 receiver and bolt. The barrel is steel and is rifled with a 1-10 inch right twist.

Use of zinc alloys[edit]

Some people are suspicious of Hi-Points because of the use of Zinc Alloy (Zamak-3) castings in much of their construction. [citation needed] However, the parts made from Zamak-3 in Hi-Point pistols (slide) are low-stress components that do not require the strength of steel at these pistol cartridge power levels. The slide consists of a Zamak-3. The frame is made of steel reinforced high strength polymer. Highly stressed and wearing components in Hi-Points, such as the barrel, chamber, slide and other small parts are made of steel.

Caliber[ edit ]

Hi-Point manufactures firearms in the following calibers:

Security [edit]

Hi-Point firearms have a manual thumb safety and an integrated drop safety that prevents firing if the firearm is dropped. Up until the 2000s, all Hi-Point products except for the 995 carbine (9mm) had a last-round opening and magazine disconnect safety, preventing firing unless a magazine was in the Weapon. With the replacement of the original 9mm carbine with the new 995 TS model, all pistols and carbines now have these features.[10][11]

Gallery [ edit ]

Hi-Point CF380 pistol with two-tone finish; The C-9 is identical except that it’s plain black and chambered for 9x19mm Parabellum

Hi-Point C380 pistol with locked breech

“Generation 1” 995 Hi-Point Carbine

Hi-dot C9

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ReliablyUnreliableGuns

Oops…

Sterling Archer, Archer “Be careful. The fuse is off so it could go off for no reason.”

Advertisement:

Apparently, Hollywood doesn’t trust the “big brands” when it comes to guns, as there are two things one can typically expect about firearms depicted in fiction:

Any jarring or dropping of a cocked chambered weapon will discharge it. Bonus point if the bullet hits a Mauve Shirt or other consumable Mook.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a cheap Saturday Night Special or professional quality, $1200 SIG-Sauer, count on this one. Never mind that virtually all guns designed after 1968 contain a special mechanism to keep the hammer from falling if the trigger is not pulled properly, and that gunsmiths had added them long before that. If you poke it, it will go out. However, gun-using professionals say there are only two classes of gun users: those who have accidentally discharged a gun and those who will eventually have an accidental discharge of a gun; For this reason, basic gun safety says you should treat any loaded firearm as if it were, just in case you’re dealing with a gun that’s damaged or just plain badly designed enough that it is her.

Clamped is broken every time.

It’s a well-known fact that even the best guns occasionally jam after repeated firing. Common causes include a cartridge not seating properly in the breech, a spent case sticking on ejection (a condition known as “stovepipeping”), poor quality ammunition (insufficient pressure to rotate the gun), or poor firing handling (not enough energy from firing is absorbed by the hands/arms to allow the slide or breech to move back far enough to cycle). such an event renders it completely useless. Worse, the wielder, whether they be fresh-faced civilians who have never seen a real gun before, or a lifelong hunter and trained soldier (who ought to know better under any circumstances), will invariably throw the jammed gun away. Of course, in fiction, where guns never run out of ammo unless something knocks it out of service? A weapon disabling jam may be the only way to get someone to actually stop shooting without getting killed.

Advertisement:

a notice

Note that the recommended course of action in the event of a misfire is to keep the gun pointed in a safe direction for some time: the primer may actually inadvertently burn slowly and go off without warning. Of course, when you’re fighting for your life, this particular rule falls out the window.

Incidentally, Hollywood also treats a backfire as a jam. Ammo primers, while very rare for modern ammunition from reliable manufacturers, in the order of a million or fewer, occasionally do not work as intended. When an ammo round fails to fire, no one in fiction simply pulls the trigger a second time if it’s a revolver, or in the case of semi-automatics, performs the action manually to remove the dud so they can continue firing. On the other hand, this fits in with the typical Hollywood approach to plans in general

To a very limited extent, this may be the truth on TV, as it is possible to jam a gun so badly that it takes serious work to straighten it out when a round is fired, but this housing is structurally flawed. Instead of being pulled out of the chamber by the extractor, the extractor rips off the bottom of the casing. If the action continues and a new round is loaded, the new round partially lands in the groundless casing still stuck in the chamber. This often results in a tough jam and requires tools and time to clear up – plus a subsequent security check of the weapon to ensure it has not been compromised when not in active combat. In any case, the weapon will be inoperable for at least a few minutes and may require partial disassembly. and every once in a while you will hear from gun manufacturers recalling guns that are not drop proof. But that kind of proves the point about Hollywood’s approach: the gun is being recalled because discharging it when dropped isn’t considered normal operation in real life. Also note that, in the US at least, all such recalls are voluntary; Firearm manufacturers are exempt from the Consumer Product Safety Act. Note Automobile, airplane, boat and pesticide manufacturers are also exempt from the CPSA as they make all things that even with proper operation can easily kill you – remember, the last one is poison.

Advertisement:

If the person is really too dumb to live, they can look into the barrel to see why it’s not working. (If you need to be told why this is a bad idea, you should never touch a gun.)

Since this is so common, it would be easier to list only particularly egregious examples and subversions. See also Rare Guns (many of which are rare because the designers couldn’t overcome the reliability issues with the time and money they had) and Convenience Misfire. See Reckless Weapon Use, Loaded Gun Juggling, and I Just Shot Marvin in the Face if danger is caused by the user’s carelessness or stupidity.

Examples:

Open/close all folders

Anime & Manga

Averted in Full Metal Panic!: The Second Raid. In “Her Problem”, Yu Lan’s silenced pistol jams as she tries to shoot Kaname. She simply clears the jam and quickly resumes shooting.

One of Havoc’s two cannons fires in chapter 37 of the Fullmetal Alchemist manga, allowing Riza to spring into action. He is not shown discarding the jammed gun, but we can assume he did since he only carries one afterward. In Brotherhood, a spent bullet gets stuck in Riza’s pistol when fighting the remaining candidate leaders, allowing her enemies to catch her (she just runs out of ammo in the manga). In this case, it actually made sense because the fight was so close that she didn’t have time to clear the jam before she had a sword to her throat.

. He is not shown discarding the jammed gun, but we can assume he did since he only carries one afterward. Averted in Gunslinger Girl – During Hillshire’s first encounter with Franca, Franca tricks Hillshire into putting out his pistol. Instead, it just caused a traffic jam. Hillshire simply clears the jam and starts firing at Franca. There is also a scene where Henrietta is doing pistol training. Her gun won’t fire and she looks down the barrel to see the problem. Raballo, the Fratello for another girl, promptly takes the gun from her and yells at her Fratello Giuseppe for not training her properly.

Another aversion to noise in an early episode of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, where Teana’s old magic pistol jams at a critical moment during training, she just fixes the problem in a matter of seconds and fires again.

Justified in Lupine III: Operation: Returning the Treasure. Jigen shoots his opponent to intentionally cause a jam, then kills them before he has a chance to clear the jam.

Type 1 currently being played in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED: Cagalli * Whose firearms experience can amount to a crash course in the desert before throwing and discharging a pistol in frustration for about a month. Athrun * Military-trained with pistols by the ZAFT is nearly hit by the cluster round and immediately chides her for being stupid enough to throw a loaded and cocked pistol.

throws a pistol in frustration, causing it to discharge. Athrun is nearly hit by the stray round and immediately chides her for being stupid enough to throw a loaded and cocked pistol. Justified in Maiden Rose when Klaus’ gun gets stuck in the middle of a Mexican standoff (which is just bad timing) and when he gets out of it he can’t fix it anyway because his one arm is badly wounded and the morphine has finally worn off. His teammate fixes the problem for him immediately.

Averted by Aldnoah.Zero in the first season finale. Slaine fires about 10 rounds from his pistol and after shooting Asseylum in the head, fires at Saazbaum before a stovepipe occurs. However, he retracts the slide and clears the malfunction, then uses the same gun to shoot Inaho in the face.

before a stovepipe occurs. However, he pulls back the foil and deletes the malfunction, then Inevitable in Upotte!! as two of the four main characters are the personifications of weapons notorious for being so in reality. Elle (the L85A1) in particular will have part of her gun fall off or break at least once or twice per episode almost every time she tries to pull the trigger, but Sixteen (the M16A4) will also get hit by an extreme fall from it during the Jungle War Games arc after eating a too-spicy chicken nugget (which translates to too dirty ammo in her gun) before a round of the games. She ends up failing to feed properly after every single shot, to the point that she only wins by using a ridiculous shooting method where she holds the grip in her off-hand and thereafter the forward assist with every single finger of her other Hand fans out every shot.

comic books

The guys have the M20 assault rifle, an expy of the M16 (the story goes that the M16 was pretty much rushed into service just to get this thing out of inventory). How bad was it? So bad that it helped create the parallel reality of the story; The gun was so poorly designed that it turned the Battle of Ia Drang from a slightly American-tinged stalemate into a curb-stomp battle with every single American soldier dead (when they were found, all Americans were decapitated and their heads stuck on the worthless guns). A later issue claimed that the magazine was the biggest problem, as it was made of an extremely light and fragile material (dubbed “aluminum foil” by one embittered soldier), which caused the liner to buckle altogether after only a few shots . It is stated that the only reason the rifle entered service was because Vought-American, its designers, thought the weapon would find little use in peacetime and they bribed politicians to get reports of their bad ignoring performance.

All-New Ultimates: One of the skull’s weapons was jamming during combat. His friend then told him to throw it away.

fan works

In the segment of the Mass Effect fic The Translation in Blood, set during First Contact War, a turian scout (future Councilor Sparatus) is able to capture then-Lieutenant Hannah Shepard (Spacer Shepard’s mother) because her rifle became tangled in something She was on the run and walked away and wounded her in the arm.

Movies — Animation

There is a running gag in Robin Hood (1973) where Trigger’s crossbow will go off Old Betsy if Trigger even pushes her. This happens regardless of whether the “safety” is engaged on the crossbow, and possibly even more often when the safety is engaged. Sheriff: Something funny is going on here. Come on, you’re covering for me. [they take a few steps with the sheriff in front of Trigger, then stop] Wait a minute. Uh… is security still on Old Betsy?

Trigger: You bet, Sheriff. [strokes the crossbow affectionately]

Sheriff: I’m scared of that. you go first

Movies — Live Action

literature

In one Biggles book, a pirate (a few centuries before Biggles’ time, of course) leaned a pistol against a candle while seated at a table, and when a vibration shook the table, the pistol slipped off the candle, hitting the table and shot a ball right into the pirate, killing him. Even modern replica flintlock weapons are quite prone to accidental discharges when dropped. Assuming the bolted weapon is dropped, even if powder pours out of the primer pan, it can still be ignited by the sparks.

This is an important plot point in Valentin Pikul’s novel The Riches (Богатство). A misfiring rifle kills Ispolatov’s love interest.

While most weapons in The Dark Tower work just fine, fully automatic firearms are guaranteed to block. This is justified in that anyone who uses them is either A) using a looted, poorly maintained weapon they are unfamiliar with, B) axe-crazy, or C) too dumb to live. Well, apart from the time Alain Johns uses one in Wizard and Glass.

Because of this, Harry Dresden only uses older weapons like revolvers: his magical aura interferes with any kind of technology, and the better the technology, the faster he breaks it. Revolvers are functionally simple and cannot jam. Notably, he doesn’t use his magical curse on handguns, likely because a malfunctioning handgun doesn’t mean it won’t fire. In the first book, this applies during the final confrontation. Harry interrupts the rogue warlock’s powerful spell, sending an overload of magical energy everywhere. The Warlock’s accomplices open fire with an Uzi, which quickly jams, and Harry realizes they’re probably lucky it didn’t explode. If they resume fire, it’ll be with a revolver. Incidentally, the fact that he gets better results with a revolver than with a modern Glock might be evidence that Harry’s Walking Techbane tendencies are at least partly psychosomatic; Revolvers are less susceptible to common stowage conditions and are largely indiscriminate in terms of quality of ammunition, but in terms of mechanical complexity and total number of moving parts, they are about equal to a semi-automatic. And yet we never hear of Harry having to take any of the three revolver models he’s owned over the years to a gunsmith for a mainspring replacement or something under warranty.

The second half of The Emperor’s Finest is basically a game of Space Hulk, down to the Terminator’s familiar weapon being jammed and slaughtered by Genestealers while he tries to fix it. The Genestealers intentionally sacrifice a massive wave to force it to overheat.

This is central to the plot of the short novella The Rifle, which follows how a Civil War-era rifle passed from owner to owner for over a century, with no one even bothering to check if the gun was loaded. It was, and this is discovered when the rifle is knocked off its wall mount at the end of the book, causing it to discharge and killing a young neighbor.

In The Great Balloon Race, the Greek rebel leader on Cyprus drops his shotgun when his bike crashes and the gun goes off, shooting high-flying Sylvia.

In Harry Turtledove’s post-apocalyptic novel The Valley-Westside War, weapons from The Beforetimes still exist, but most people use bows or muskets, as no one knows if a centuries-old weapon will blow you up if you try to use it.

Live Action TV

music

A stanza of Rilo Kiley’s “Accidntel Deth” (sic: Indietronica artist Dntel produced the song) contains at least one instance where the accidental death was from a deer killed by the narrator’s father (who is unlikely to be Jenny Lewis), when his shotgun went away without him wanting it (probably because he hit it too hard or something) when he was eight years old hunting with his father. The father then swears off weapons.

The film “Space Hero” by Anne Prather & Julia Ecklar sings about the wonderful craftsmanship of a space ace’s weapons: “With the stocks made by Mattel … Well, on every second pass, one’s get you in the ass!” ”

The entire music video for Korn’s “Freak on a Leash” begins with this trope. The video begins with a bunch of animated kids sneaking out at night so they can play on private property. A guard pursues, trips, and his gun falls and lands on the magazine, causing it to fire. The rest of the video is the camera following the sphere until it returns to the animated scene.

tabletop games

theatre

In the opening scene of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera La Forza Del Destino, the hero and heroine are confronted with their father as they try to escape. The hero surrenders by dropping his pistol on the ground, which accidentally goes off, killing the old man.

toys

NERF: NERF blasters are mostly pretty reliable, though the occasional blaster makes it through quality control with crippling flaws. The Maverick has earned a reputation for having the most problematic samples due to the tight tolerances required for a reliable cylinder feed mechanism. Another revolver-drum weapon, the Barricade, looks more like a Warhammer 40K bolter than a traditional revolver, but it’s also prone to mis-inserting darts at the first (and worst) opportunity. Part of this is due to its firing mechanism, a flywheel-based friction launcher that sometimes doesn’t really have the power to pull the dart all the way out before the cylinder advances with the next trigger pull. While the Longshot Rifle is otherwise reliable at firing darts at a good distance, compared to something like a Recon, it has an above-average tendency to chew darts out of its magazine at the wrong time and contaminate them in its receiver. That’s one of the prices to pay for a fairly powerful dart launching system. The Centurion’s intricate slide bolt feed can sometimes result in MEGA darts being pinched between exposed parts of the internal assembly, definitely rendering the dart useless by bending, folding and mangling. The Vulcan is a battery-powered, belt-fed behemoth of a machine gun; However, if you don’t manage to shoot the arrow completely out of his belt before advancing to the next one, it will get stuck there and there is no way to remove it other than pull the belt as tight as possible and shred the arrow. This type of misfire is caused by either old, worn arrows not achieving a proper gas seal in the “chamber” or improper loading of the arrows, causing them to not seat properly in the “chambers” on the belt.

Other non-Nerf blasters, especially cheap, unbranded generics, are also prone to such reliability flaws that render them useless to non-modders. Some brands even use ropes as part of their cocking and launching mechanism. These naturally fray quickly with use and are often on the tricky side of replacement. Over-tension any of these weapons and the rope for the mechanism may stretch or snap, rendering it unusable. Shur Fine Guns indeed.

video games

web videos

Percy in Critical Role uses a homebuilt 5th edition D&D Gunslinger fighter archetype (since he and the rest of Vox Machina were taken over by Pathfinder, who had an official Gunslinger class). All of his weapons have a misfire value, and a roll equal to or less than that value will cause the weapon to jam, requiring an action and a successful tinker check to fix. Failing this, the weapon is broken until it can be repaired out of combat. This is justified for several reasons. First, it keeps firearms from being a game-breaker in an otherwise medieval fantasy setting. Secondly, in this setting Percy invented guns and the only ones that exist are his prototypes or made by a Loony fan who stole his designs so they’re terribly engineered by modern firearms standards. Animus, the revolver he took from the aforementioned mad fan Anna Ripley, is even worse as it deals psychic damage to the user if it misfires.

Even worse is causing psychological damage to the user if it misfires. Iraqveteran8888 once tried to make a video showing them firing a Calico SMG with their unique spiral magazine. What actually got posted was that they showed you the fragments after the thing exploded and injuries to Barry’s hand.

once tried to make a video showing them firing a Calico SMG with their unique spiral magazine. What actually got posted was that they showed you the fragments after the thing exploded and injuries to Barry’s hand. This event is the crux of Studio C’s Zorro’s Misfire, where a discarded weapon just keeps firing every few seconds, inevitably hitting Zoro every time.

‘, where a discarded weapon will just keep firing every few seconds, hitting Zoro every time. Possibly the worst incident of this nature ever recorded on YouTube is the Kentucky Ballistics incident (shown in the main image) originally recorded on April 9th, 2021. When Scott tested the durability of a fire hydrant made from multiple .50 BMG rounds tested (fired from a Serbu Firearms RN-50 breech-loading single-shot rifle), the weapon could not handle the continuously building pressure from an unstable and abnormally hot SLAP Round Note Saboted Light Armor Penetrator to the point where it was literally in front of his face and body exploded. As a result, he suffered not only a broken arm and nose, but also the shrapnel of the gun penetrating his carotid artery to the point where he nearly died from blood loss. Luckily, his father, who recorded the video, was able to take him to the hospital. The image of him bleeding and in the hospital was not pleasant, to say the least. This is more of a case of “reliably unreliable ammunition” as the firearm itself was compliant and built to withstand high pressures to chamber the powerful .50 BMG cartridge and its variants (Serbu Firearms was not this round foreign, as the RN-50 was the third .50 BMG capable rifle in their stable). Some analysts have pointed to the special SLAP cartridge that Scott used as the culprit, which somehow produces more than double the pressure of what the factory proof-loaded .50 BMG cartridges did due to poor aging or sometime tinkering around with. Additionally, there is no outward indication of how safe it is to use one. The best approach to preventing such an accident is to review the history of a round and simply never take, store and use ammo from old armories. He then went back and fired the rest of the cartridges from that batch and most of them were bad and often required mechanical assistance to unscrew the barrel cap and retract the bullet because the bullets were overloaded. The weapon didn’t fail, however, until he loaded an intentionally measured overloaded bullet to, as Mythbusters would put it, duplicate the result. And in terms of damage, the recovery was almost a copy of the accident. Scott’s use of a thumb to stem the bleeding became a minor meme, and he soon came out with “Just Put A Thumb In It” t-shirts to capitalize on the meme.

(shown in main image), originally taken April 9, 2021. When Scott tested the durability of a hydrant made from multiple .50 BMG rounds (fired from a Serbu Firearms RN-50 breech-loading single-shot rifle), the firearm failed the continuously building pressure from an unstable and abnormally hot SLAP round to the point where it was literally in front of his face and body. As a result, not only did he suffer a broken arm and nose, but the shrapnel from the gun tore his carotid artery so badly that he nearly died from blood loss. Luckily, his father, who recorded the video, was able to take him to the hospital. The image of him bleeding and in the hospital was not pleasant, to say the least. The YouTube channel In-Range TV has a series exploring how fouling your guns affects their performance. This includes her infamous mud test, in which she scoops soupy lumps of mud onto a gun’s receiver and tests if she can reliably fire afterwards. What they have found most of the time is that two things make a gun less reliable in adverse conditions: the more exposed holes the gun has in its receiver and the speed of its mechanism. The AK, for example, is known for being reliable in the sense that it isn’t sensitive to the average conscript not looking after his rifle, but the moment you put something more substantial than dirt or sand in the receiver throwing – which is easy to do Due to the loose tolerances and large opening for movement of the bolt’s charging handle, it’s no longer reliable because the parts get easily glued together and can’t move with all that mud. In contrast, the AR-15 rifles are virtually sealed from the elements, including a dust cover to prevent anything from touching the breech, and since the gas escapes the ejection port on the side of the breech, the rifle does “self-clean.” that part, there should be mud there.* A later test of the SIG MCX SPEAR, after it was inducted into the US military as the XM5, showed that it performed similarly well with the dust cover closed before mud was spilled on the gun but if left open anything was possible off – the design of the gas piston meant the vent holes are in the front of the gas block rather than the side of the bolt, and the addition of a side-mounted charging handle also adds another route of entry for mud to get into the working parts.Short-stroke gas pistons are all the rage for their combination of dependable sub-norma performance conditions and low recoil, but they are incredibly sensitive to mud contamination in general. Testing on the FAL, with its large ejection port and sand cuts in the bolt carrier to give loose debris such as sand a place to shove it out of the way, found that mud would get in where it would interfere with the weapon’s operation can: the rifle jammed after two shots, with the bolt refusing to go into battery with a live cartridge in the chamber, and after the mud had time to dry, it was completely locked. On two separate tests of the AUG, she similarly failed, the first time locking up after a few shots and the second time, at the behest of Steyr USA, they adjusted their gas system to the “adverse” setting and failed to extract on the first round before the charging handle fully locked both times. Roll-delayed recoil, on the other hand, is one of the most violent cycling actions ever devised, as there is almost no opportunity for gas to escape until it’s pushed back down the bolt and paired with a suitably strong recoil spring on the rear, meaning it’s the Bolt is fully immobilized, it is basically guaranteed to fire and run properly. In a test with the G3, it was found that it would not eject after each shot, requiring the stock to be slammed to the ground while the charging handle was pushed down from the top, but the bolt still consistently went into the battery when it was operated manually in this way. and after the mud was given time to dry, the gun worked properly again. Ein Test des CETME-Modells L schnitt sogar noch besser ab und bereitete ihnen nur geringfügige Probleme, als sie Schlamm in den Fahrweg des Ladegriffs schütteten und ihn dann manuell fuhren, was zu einem einzigen Mal führte, bei dem der Bolzen nicht in die Batterie ging bevor ein weiterer Ruck am Griff es wieder zum Laufen brachte. Handfeuerwaffen funktionieren im Allgemeinen gleich, obwohl die Geschwindigkeit der Aktion tendenziell wichtiger ist. Der versiegelte Toggle-Lock der Luger P08 funktionierte einwandfrei, zum Teil, weil die Toggle-Lock-Aktion geradezu Hochdruckmunition erfordert, um zuverlässig zu funktionieren, während die M1911 mit ihrem externen Hammer nach ein paar Schüssen klemmte, aber schließlich zurückkam größtenteils funktionstüchtig, nachdem der Verschluss wieder mit brutaler Gewalt geöffnet wurde, und der FK BRNO konnte nicht einmal eine Runde abfeuern, weil Schlamm den Hammer daran hinderte, entweder mit genug Geschwindigkeit zum Feuern herunterzufallen oder sich weit genug zurückzuziehen, um die Sear erneut zu aktivieren. Sowohl die Glock 19 als auch die Hi-Point C9 blockierten trotz ihrer geschlosseneren Mechanismen früh, aber die Hi-Point mit geradem Rückstoß gab mehr Schüsse ab und wurde durch eine schnelle Wasserspülung wieder zum Leben erweckt, während die Glock mit kurzem Rückstoß hat nur einen Schuss abgegeben, bevor er sich bis zu dem Punkt verklemmt hat, an dem selbst das Übergießen mit Wasser ihn nicht mehr zum Laufen bringen konnte, was Karl zu dem Schluss führte, dass wahrscheinlich Schlamm in die Verriegelungsnasen des Laufs gelangte und ihn daran hinderte, vollständig in die Batterie einzudringen.

zu untersuchen, wie sehr sich die Verschmutzung Ihrer Waffen wirklich auf ihre Leistung auswirkt. Dazu gehört ihr berüchtigter Schlammtest, bei dem sie suppige Schlammklumpen auf den Empfänger einer Waffe schaufeln und testen, ob sie danach zuverlässig schießen kann. Was sie die meiste Zeit herausgefunden haben, ist, dass zwei Dinge eine Waffe unter widrigen Bedingungen weniger zuverlässig machen: Je mehr exponierte Löcher die Waffe in ihrem Empfänger hat und die Geschwindigkeit ihres Mechanismus.

Western animation

Wrist slack is a phenomenon commonly seen in semi-automatic pistol shooters where the shooter’s grip is not tight enough and the wrist is not held tight/straight enough to prevent the firearm’s frame from moving backwards while the gun is locked or pushed bikes. This condition often results in an inability to complete the operating cycle, which is actually called a malfunction but is commonly (and incorrectly) called a “jam”. Rifles and shotguns, when fired without a stock in the shoulder, can also be prone to slack wrists. Of the important variables involved in this type of malfunction, bullet and gas momentum, breech and barrel mass, recoil spring preload and spring rate, and mass of the firing hand and arm are much more important than wrist compliance (drowsiness).

Operating cycle overview[edit]

The cycling of any type of semi-automatic firearm can be divided into two phases; the first is the rearward movement of the breech or slide (hereafter just referred to as the slide, which is the most common form in pistols), the second is the forward movement of the slide. The rearward movement of the slide is initiated by the shot force and continues using the inertia of the slide. As the carriage moves backwards, a spring called the return spring compresses, absorbing the carriage’s energy and slowing it down. Approximately 50% of the momentum transmitted by the ball and gas is converted to kinetic energy of the carriage relative to the frame. This energy is stored by the return spring. The other approximately 50% of the impulse is converted into kinetic energy by accelerating the hand and arm mass. During this phase, the fired cartridge case is pulled out of the barrel and ejected. When the bolt is fully back, it is stopped by the fully compressed recoil spring. The spring then pushes the slide forward, drawing a new cartridge from the magazine and pushing it into the chamber. The firearm is then ready to fire the next round.

How a slack wrist can lead to bike failure[edit]

Depending on the actuation mechanism, there are a number of places where a slack wrist can cause cycle failure. Recoil-operated firearms are more susceptible to failures of this type than blow-back and gas-operated firearms, and polymer-framed light handguns are more susceptible than steel-framed heavy handguns or even lighter metal alloy handguns. When there is not enough energy to move the carriage back far enough relative to the frame to perform the action, this is known as a slack wrist. When too much energy is expended in moving the slide back relative to the frame, it is called a slide slam.

In recoil-operated and gas-operated firearms, the slide reacts against the frame, pushing the frame forward slightly against the recoil of the bullet exiting. In recoil-operated firearms, the slide reacts to the bullet and the frame is not under any force at the time of the shot. When the bolt begins to recoil rearward, some of this energy is transferred to the frame through the locking mechanism (in locked bolt designs) and the recoil spring. This transferred energy also accelerates the frame backwards. If the frame is not sufficiently restrained by its mass and the shooter’s grip or extended wrist, the frame will “catch up” to the slide and the recoil spring will not fully compress and the slide will recoil forward with less than intended power.

A common result of a slack wrist is an ejection failure due to the slide moving too slowly at the point where the ejector activates. The slow-moving crate is caught as the gate closes, causing a “stovepipe” jam. These jams are easily cleared by smacking the used brass out of the way with the side of the hand or closed fist. The other common result of a slack wrist is a failure to return to the battery: the slide moves too slowly to fully chamber the new cartridge, causing the slide to stop partially open. The least common form of error is a feeding error, where the slide returns to the battery with an empty chamber because the slide has moved back just far enough to eject the fired round but not enough to take the next round from the magazine to remove.

How to treat flabby wrists[edit]

As the name suggests, the problem is most common in shooters who have a loose grip or allow their wrists to flex or flex too much relative to their forearm during recoil. A firm, two-handed grip or a stiff wrist relative to the forearm often solves the problem. However, some shooters lack the strength for such a tight grip, and in this case there are three options to explore: tighten the grip, switch weapons, or switch ammo.

In the event that physical limitations cannot provide a proper hold and hold out, an alternative would be to use a manually controlled firearm action, such as a handgun. B. a revolver. Revolvers are a viable option for shooters who have difficulty with semi-automatic designs. The other alternative is to select a firearm that has a heavier frame relative to its slide. Polymer-framed handguns have the lightest frames, and because the frame is flexible, it absorbs more energy than metal frames. Aluminum and titanium alloys are slightly heavier and much stiffer than the polymers, and steel is the heaviest frame material commonly used. Full-size frames are also heavier than compact-size frames. The heavier frames have more inertia and rely less on the shooter’s grip strength to keep the frame steady.

The other approach is to change the ammo used. Light, low-velocity bullet charges, such as those used in target shooting, have the least energy available to carry out the action and are therefore most sensitive to a slack wrist. A heavier or faster ball will help. Accurate Powder conducted tests of different powder types in Glock and SIG Sauer handguns and found that fast-burning powders resulted in increased failures and that medium- and slow-burning powders (from the range appropriate for the cartridge) gave the best reliability. [citation needed] Slack wrist would amplify these changes, so quick powders should be avoided.

If the ammo is too weak or the recoil spring is too stiff or the breech is too heavy and there is slack wrist malfunction, the cure can be a stronger ammo or a lesser force recoil spring. If the ammunition is too powerful, the recoil spring is too weak, or the bolt is too light, bolt bang will occur. Slide Slam is bad for the gun and bad for the shooter’s hand. Proper balance is achieved when the ejected cases land about 5 feet from the shooter. In this balance there is sufficient ejection and no slipping.

When a police weapon selects weapons and ammunition for a diverse population of personnel ranging from low hand mass to high hand mass, the trade-off is to have the heavy-handed experience with a slide slam, rather than the light hand with limping wrist-caused malfunctions. The result is that those in the squad with heavy hands will see ejected boxes go further than 5 feet. This small amount of slide slam can cause minor additional wear on the slide, frame, and high-mass hand of the shooter, but it’s a better option than a limp-wrist malfunction for the low-mass officers.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ReliablyUnreliableGuns

Oops…

Sterling Archer, Archer “Be careful. The fuse is off so it could go off for no reason.”

Advertisement:

Apparently, Hollywood doesn’t trust the “big brands” when it comes to guns, as there are two things one can typically expect about firearms depicted in fiction:

Any jarring or dropping of a cocked chambered weapon will discharge it. Bonus point if the bullet hits a Mauve Shirt or other consumable Mook.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a cheap Saturday Night Special or professional quality, $1200 SIG-Sauer, count on this one. Never mind that virtually all guns designed after 1968 contain a special mechanism to keep the hammer from falling if the trigger is not pulled properly, and that gunsmiths had added them long before that. If you poke it, it will go out. However, gun-using professionals say there are only two classes of gun users: those who have accidentally discharged a gun and those who will eventually have an accidental discharge of a gun; For this reason, basic gun safety says you should treat any loaded firearm as if it were, just in case you’re dealing with a gun that’s damaged or just plain badly designed enough that it is her.

Clamped is broken every time.

It’s a well-known fact that even the best guns occasionally jam after repeated firing. Common causes include a cartridge not seating properly in the breech, a spent case sticking on ejection (a condition known as “stovepipeping”), poor quality ammunition (insufficient pressure to rotate the gun), or poor firing handling (not enough energy from firing is absorbed by the hands/arms to allow the slide or breech to move back far enough to cycle). such an event renders it completely useless. Worse, the wielder, whether they be fresh-faced civilians who have never seen a real gun before, or a lifelong hunter and trained soldier (who ought to know better under any circumstances), will invariably throw the jammed gun away. Of course, in fiction, where guns never run out of ammo unless something knocks it out of service? A weapon disabling jam may be the only way to get someone to actually stop shooting without getting killed.

Advertisement:

a notice

Note that the recommended course of action in the event of a misfire is to keep the gun pointed in a safe direction for some time: the primer may actually inadvertently burn slowly and go off without warning. Of course, when you’re fighting for your life, this particular rule falls out the window.

Incidentally, Hollywood also treats a backfire as a jam. Ammo primers, while very rare for modern ammunition from reliable manufacturers, in the order of a million or fewer, occasionally do not work as intended. When an ammo round fails to fire, no one in fiction simply pulls the trigger a second time if it’s a revolver, or in the case of semi-automatics, performs the action manually to remove the dud so they can continue firing. On the other hand, this fits in with the typical Hollywood approach to plans in general

To a very limited extent, this may be the truth on TV, as it is possible to jam a gun so badly that it takes serious work to straighten it out when a round is fired, but this housing is structurally flawed. Instead of being pulled out of the chamber by the extractor, the extractor rips off the bottom of the casing. If the action continues and a new round is loaded, the new round partially lands in the groundless casing still stuck in the chamber. This often results in a tough jam and requires tools and time to clear up – plus a subsequent security check of the weapon to ensure it has not been compromised when not in active combat. In any case, the weapon will be inoperable for at least a few minutes and may require partial disassembly. and every once in a while you will hear from gun manufacturers recalling guns that are not drop proof. But that kind of proves the point about Hollywood’s approach: the gun is being recalled because discharging it when dropped isn’t considered normal operation in real life. Also note that, in the US at least, all such recalls are voluntary; Firearm manufacturers are exempt from the Consumer Product Safety Act. Note Automobile, airplane, boat and pesticide manufacturers are also exempt from the CPSA as they make all things that even with proper operation can easily kill you – remember, the last one is poison.

Advertisement:

If the person is really too dumb to live, they can look into the barrel to see why it’s not working. (If you need to be told why this is a bad idea, you should never touch a gun.)

Since this is so common, it would be easier to list only particularly egregious examples and subversions. See also Rare Guns (many of which are rare because the designers couldn’t overcome the reliability issues with the time and money they had) and Convenience Misfire. See Reckless Weapon Use, Loaded Gun Juggling, and I Just Shot Marvin in the Face if danger is caused by the user’s carelessness or stupidity.

Examples:

Open/close all folders

Anime & Manga

Averted in Full Metal Panic!: The Second Raid. In “Her Problem”, Yu Lan’s silenced pistol jams as she tries to shoot Kaname. She simply clears the jam and quickly resumes shooting.

One of Havoc’s two cannons fires in chapter 37 of the Fullmetal Alchemist manga, allowing Riza to spring into action. He is not shown discarding the jammed gun, but we can assume he did since he only carries one afterward. In Brotherhood, a spent bullet gets stuck in Riza’s pistol when fighting the remaining candidate leaders, allowing her enemies to catch her (she just runs out of ammo in the manga). In this case, it actually made sense because the fight was so close that she didn’t have time to clear the jam before she had a sword to her throat.

. He is not shown discarding the jammed gun, but we can assume he did since he only carries one afterward. Averted in Gunslinger Girl – During Hillshire’s first encounter with Franca, Franca tricks Hillshire into putting out his pistol. Instead, it just caused a traffic jam. Hillshire simply clears the jam and starts firing at Franca. There is also a scene where Henrietta is doing pistol training. Her gun won’t fire and she looks down the barrel to see the problem. Raballo, the Fratello for another girl, promptly takes the gun from her and yells at her Fratello Giuseppe for not training her properly.

Another aversion to noise in an early episode of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, where Teana’s old magic pistol jams at a critical moment during training, she just fixes the problem in a matter of seconds and fires again.

Justified in Lupine III: Operation: Returning the Treasure. Jigen shoots his opponent to intentionally cause a jam, then kills them before he has a chance to clear the jam.

Type 1 currently being played in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED: Cagalli * Whose firearms experience can amount to a crash course in the desert before throwing and discharging a pistol in frustration for about a month. Athrun * Military-trained with pistols by the ZAFT is nearly hit by the cluster round and immediately chides her for being stupid enough to throw a loaded and cocked pistol.

throws a pistol in frustration, causing it to discharge. Athrun is nearly hit by the stray round and immediately chides her for being stupid enough to throw a loaded and cocked pistol. Justified in Maiden Rose when Klaus’ gun gets stuck in the middle of a Mexican standoff (which is just bad timing) and when he gets out of it he can’t fix it anyway because his one arm is badly wounded and the morphine has finally worn off. His teammate fixes the problem for him immediately.

Averted by Aldnoah.Zero in the first season finale. Slaine fires about 10 rounds from his pistol and after shooting Asseylum in the head, fires at Saazbaum before a stovepipe occurs. However, he retracts the slide and clears the malfunction, then uses the same gun to shoot Inaho in the face.

before a stovepipe occurs. However, he pulls back the foil and deletes the malfunction, then Inevitable in Upotte!! as two of the four main characters are the personifications of weapons notorious for being so in reality. Elle (the L85A1) in particular will have part of her gun fall off or break at least once or twice per episode almost every time she tries to pull the trigger, but Sixteen (the M16A4) will also get hit by an extreme fall from it during the Jungle War Games arc after eating a too-spicy chicken nugget (which translates to too dirty ammo in her gun) before a round of the games. She ends up failing to feed properly after every single shot, to the point that she only wins by using a ridiculous shooting method where she holds the grip in her off-hand and thereafter the forward assist with every single finger of her other Hand fans out every shot.

comic books

The guys have the M20 assault rifle, an expy of the M16 (the story goes that the M16 was pretty much rushed into service just to get this thing out of inventory). How bad was it? So bad that it helped create the parallel reality of the story; The gun was so poorly designed that it turned the Battle of Ia Drang from a slightly American-tinged stalemate into a curb-stomp battle with every single American soldier dead (when they were found, all Americans were decapitated and their heads stuck on the worthless guns). A later issue claimed that the magazine was the biggest problem, as it was made of an extremely light and fragile material (dubbed “aluminum foil” by one embittered soldier), which caused the liner to buckle altogether after only a few shots . It is stated that the only reason the rifle entered service was because Vought-American, its designers, thought the weapon would find little use in peacetime and they bribed politicians to get reports of their bad ignoring performance.

All-New Ultimates: One of the skull’s weapons was jamming during combat. His friend then told him to throw it away.

fan works

In the segment of the Mass Effect fic The Translation in Blood, set during First Contact War, a turian scout (future Councilor Sparatus) is able to capture then-Lieutenant Hannah Shepard (Spacer Shepard’s mother) because her rifle became tangled in something She was on the run and walked away and wounded her in the arm.

Movies — Animation

There is a running gag in Robin Hood (1973) where Trigger’s crossbow will go off Old Betsy if Trigger even pushes her. This happens regardless of whether the “safety” is engaged on the crossbow, and possibly even more often when the safety is engaged. Sheriff: Something funny is going on here. Come on, you’re covering for me. [they take a few steps with the sheriff in front of Trigger, then stop] Wait a minute. Uh… is security still on Old Betsy?

Trigger: You bet, Sheriff. [strokes the crossbow affectionately]

Sheriff: I’m scared of that. you go first

Movies — Live Action

literature

In one Biggles book, a pirate (a few centuries before Biggles’ time, of course) leaned a pistol against a candle while seated at a table, and when a vibration shook the table, the pistol slipped off the candle, hitting the table and shot a ball right into the pirate, killing him. Even modern replica flintlock weapons are quite prone to accidental discharges when dropped. Assuming the bolted weapon is dropped, even if powder pours out of the primer pan, it can still be ignited by the sparks.

This is an important plot point in Valentin Pikul’s novel The Riches (Богатство). A misfiring rifle kills Ispolatov’s love interest.

While most weapons in The Dark Tower work just fine, fully automatic firearms are guaranteed to block. This is justified in that anyone who uses them is either A) using a looted, poorly maintained weapon they are unfamiliar with, B) axe-crazy, or C) too dumb to live. Well, apart from the time Alain Johns uses one in Wizard and Glass.

Because of this, Harry Dresden only uses older weapons like revolvers: his magical aura interferes with any kind of technology, and the better the technology, the faster he breaks it. Revolvers are functionally simple and cannot jam. Notably, he doesn’t use his magical curse on handguns, likely because a malfunctioning handgun doesn’t mean it won’t fire. In the first book, this applies during the final confrontation. Harry interrupts the rogue warlock’s powerful spell, sending an overload of magical energy everywhere. The Warlock’s accomplices open fire with an Uzi, which quickly jams, and Harry realizes they’re probably lucky it didn’t explode. If they resume fire, it’ll be with a revolver. Incidentally, the fact that he gets better results with a revolver than with a modern Glock might be evidence that Harry’s Walking Techbane tendencies are at least partly psychosomatic; Revolvers are less susceptible to common stowage conditions and are largely indiscriminate in terms of quality of ammunition, but in terms of mechanical complexity and total number of moving parts, they are about equal to a semi-automatic. And yet we never hear of Harry having to take any of the three revolver models he’s owned over the years to a gunsmith for a mainspring replacement or something under warranty.

The second half of The Emperor’s Finest is basically a game of Space Hulk, down to the Terminator’s familiar weapon being jammed and slaughtered by Genestealers while he tries to fix it. The Genestealers intentionally sacrifice a massive wave to force it to overheat.

This is central to the plot of the short novella The Rifle, which follows how a Civil War-era rifle passed from owner to owner for over a century, with no one even bothering to check if the gun was loaded. It was, and this is discovered when the rifle is knocked off its wall mount at the end of the book, causing it to discharge and killing a young neighbor.

In The Great Balloon Race, the Greek rebel leader on Cyprus drops his shotgun when his bike crashes and the gun goes off, shooting high-flying Sylvia.

In Harry Turtledove’s post-apocalyptic novel The Valley-Westside War, weapons from The Beforetimes still exist, but most people use bows or muskets, as no one knows if a centuries-old weapon will blow you up if you try to use it.

Live Action TV

music

A stanza of Rilo Kiley’s “Accidntel Deth” (sic: Indietronica artist Dntel produced the song) contains at least one instance where the accidental death was from a deer killed by the narrator’s father (who is unlikely to be Jenny Lewis), when his shotgun went away without him wanting it (probably because he hit it too hard or something) when he was eight years old hunting with his father. The father then swears off weapons.

The film “Space Hero” by Anne Prather & Julia Ecklar sings about the wonderful craftsmanship of a space ace’s weapons: “With the stocks made by Mattel … Well, on every second pass, one’s get you in the ass!” ”

The entire music video for Korn’s “Freak on a Leash” begins with this trope. The video begins with a bunch of animated kids sneaking out at night so they can play on private property. A guard pursues, trips, and his gun falls and lands on the magazine, causing it to fire. The rest of the video is the camera following the sphere until it returns to the animated scene.

tabletop games

theatre

In the opening scene of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera La Forza Del Destino, the hero and heroine are confronted with their father as they try to escape. The hero surrenders by dropping his pistol on the ground, which accidentally goes off, killing the old man.

toys

NERF: NERF blasters are mostly pretty reliable, though the occasional blaster makes it through quality control with crippling flaws. The Maverick has earned a reputation for having the most problematic samples due to the tight tolerances required for a reliable cylinder feed mechanism. Another revolver-drum weapon, the Barricade, looks more like a Warhammer 40K bolter than a traditional revolver, but it’s also prone to mis-inserting darts at the first (and worst) opportunity. Part of this is due to its firing mechanism, a flywheel-based friction launcher that sometimes doesn’t really have the power to pull the dart all the way out before the cylinder advances with the next trigger pull. While the Longshot Rifle is otherwise reliable at firing darts at a good distance, compared to something like a Recon, it has an above-average tendency to chew darts out of its magazine at the wrong time and contaminate them in its receiver. That’s one of the prices to pay for a fairly powerful dart launching system. The Centurion’s intricate slide bolt feed can sometimes result in MEGA darts being pinched between exposed parts of the internal assembly, definitely rendering the dart useless by bending, folding and mangling. The Vulcan is a battery-powered, belt-fed behemoth of a machine gun; However, if you don’t manage to shoot the arrow completely out of his belt before advancing to the next one, it will get stuck there and there is no way to remove it other than pull the belt as tight as possible and shred the arrow. This type of misfire is caused by either old, worn arrows not achieving a proper gas seal in the “chamber” or improper loading of the arrows, causing them to not seat properly in the “chambers” on the belt.

Other non-Nerf blasters, especially cheap, unbranded generics, are also prone to such reliability flaws that render them useless to non-modders. Some brands even use ropes as part of their cocking and launching mechanism. These naturally fray quickly with use and are often on the tricky side of replacement. Over-tension any of these weapons and the rope for the mechanism may stretch or snap, rendering it unusable. Shur Fine Guns indeed.

video games

web videos

Percy in Critical Role uses a homebuilt 5th edition D&D Gunslinger fighter archetype (since he and the rest of Vox Machina were taken over by Pathfinder, who had an official Gunslinger class). All of his weapons have a misfire value, and a roll equal to or less than that value will cause the weapon to jam, requiring an action and a successful tinker check to fix. Failing this, the weapon is broken until it can be repaired out of combat. This is justified for several reasons. First, it keeps firearms from being a game-breaker in an otherwise medieval fantasy setting. Secondly, in this setting Percy invented guns and the only ones that exist are his prototypes or made by a Loony fan who stole his designs so they’re terribly engineered by modern firearms standards. Animus, the revolver he took from the aforementioned mad fan Anna Ripley, is even worse as it deals psychic damage to the user if it misfires.

Even worse is causing psychological damage to the user if it misfires. Iraqveteran8888 once tried to make a video showing them firing a Calico SMG with their unique spiral magazine. What actually got posted was that they showed you the fragments after the thing exploded and injuries to Barry’s hand.

once tried to make a video showing them firing a Calico SMG with their unique spiral magazine. What actually got posted was that they showed you the fragments after the thing exploded and injuries to Barry’s hand. This event is the crux of Studio C’s Zorro’s Misfire, where a discarded weapon just keeps firing every few seconds, inevitably hitting Zoro every time.

‘, where a discarded weapon will just keep firing every few seconds, hitting Zoro every time. Possibly the worst incident of this nature ever recorded on YouTube is the Kentucky Ballistics incident (shown in the main image) originally recorded on April 9th, 2021. When Scott tested the durability of a fire hydrant made from multiple .50 BMG rounds tested (fired from a Serbu Firearms RN-50 breech-loading single-shot rifle), the weapon could not handle the continuously building pressure from an unstable and abnormally hot SLAP Round Note Saboted Light Armor Penetrator to the point where it was literally in front of his face and body exploded. As a result, he suffered not only a broken arm and nose, but also the shrapnel of the gun penetrating his carotid artery to the point where he nearly died from blood loss. Luckily, his father, who recorded the video, was able to take him to the hospital. The image of him bleeding and in the hospital was not pleasant, to say the least. This is more of a case of “reliably unreliable ammunition” as the firearm itself was compliant and built to withstand high pressures to chamber the powerful .50 BMG cartridge and its variants (Serbu Firearms was not this round foreign, as the RN-50 was the third .50 BMG capable rifle in their stable). Some analysts have pointed to the special SLAP cartridge that Scott used as the culprit, which somehow produces more than double the pressure of what the factory proof-loaded .50 BMG cartridges did due to poor aging or sometime tinkering around with. Additionally, there is no outward indication of how safe it is to use one. The best approach to preventing such an accident is to review the history of a round and simply never take, store and use ammo from old armories. He then went back and fired the rest of the cartridges from that batch and most of them were bad and often required mechanical assistance to unscrew the barrel cap and retract the bullet because the bullets were overloaded. The weapon didn’t fail, however, until he loaded an intentionally measured overloaded bullet to, as Mythbusters would put it, duplicate the result. And in terms of damage, the recovery was almost a copy of the accident. Scott’s use of a thumb to stem the bleeding became a minor meme, and he soon came out with “Just Put A Thumb In It” t-shirts to capitalize on the meme.

(shown in main image), originally taken April 9, 2021. When Scott tested the durability of a hydrant made from multiple .50 BMG rounds (fired from a Serbu Firearms RN-50 breech-loading single-shot rifle), the firearm failed the continuously building pressure from an unstable and abnormally hot SLAP round to the point where it was literally in front of his face and body. As a result, not only did he suffer a broken arm and nose, but the shrapnel from the gun tore his carotid artery so badly that he nearly died from blood loss. Luckily, his father, who recorded the video, was able to take him to the hospital. The image of him bleeding and in the hospital was not pleasant, to say the least. The YouTube channel In-Range TV has a series exploring how fouling your guns affects their performance. This includes her infamous mud test, in which she scoops soupy lumps of mud onto a gun’s receiver and tests if she can reliably fire afterwards. What they have found most of the time is that two things make a gun less reliable in adverse conditions: the more exposed holes the gun has in its receiver and the speed of its mechanism. The AK, for example, is known for being reliable in the sense that it isn’t sensitive to the average conscript not looking after his rifle, but the moment you put something more substantial than dirt or sand in the receiver throwing – which is easy to do Due to the loose tolerances and large opening for movement of the bolt’s charging handle, it’s no longer reliable because the parts get easily glued together and can’t move with all that mud. In contrast, the AR-15 rifles are virtually sealed from the elements, including a dust cover to prevent anything from touching the breech, and since the gas escapes the ejection port on the side of the breech, the rifle does “self-clean.” that part, there should be mud there.* A later test of the SIG MCX SPEAR, after it was inducted into the US military as the XM5, showed that it performed similarly well with the dust cover closed before mud was spilled on the gun but if left open anything was possible off – the design of the gas piston meant the vent holes are in the front of the gas block rather than the side of the bolt, and the addition of a side-mounted charging handle also adds another route of entry for mud to get into the working parts.Short-stroke gas pistons are all the rage for their combination of dependable sub-norma performance conditions and low recoil, but they are incredibly sensitive to mud contamination in general. Testing on the FAL, with its large ejection port and sand cuts in the bolt carrier to give loose debris such as sand a place to shove it out of the way, found that mud would get in where it would interfere with the weapon’s operation can: the rifle jammed after two shots, with the bolt refusing to go into battery with a live cartridge in the chamber, and after the mud had time to dry, it was completely locked. On two separate tests of the AUG, she similarly failed, the first time locking up after a few shots and the second time, at the behest of Steyr USA, they adjusted their gas system to the “adverse” setting and failed to extract on the first round before the charging handle fully locked both times. Roll-delayed recoil, on the other hand, is one of the most violent cycling actions ever devised, as there is almost no opportunity for gas to escape until it’s pushed back down the bolt and paired with a suitably strong recoil spring on the rear, meaning it’s the Bolt is fully immobilized, it is basically guaranteed to fire and run properly. In a test with the G3, it was found that it would not eject after each shot, requiring the stock to be slammed to the ground while the charging handle was pushed down from the top, but the bolt still consistently went into the battery when it was operated manually in this way. and after the mud was given time to dry, the gun worked properly again. A test of the CETME Model L performed even better and gave them only minor problems when they dumped mud in the charging handle travel path and then manually ran it, resulting in a single instance of the bolt not going into the battery before another tug on the handle got it going again. Handguns generally work the same, although speed of action tends to be more important. The Luger P08’s sealed toggle lock worked flawlessly, partly because the toggle lock action requires downright high-pressure ammunition to work reliably, while the M1911, with its external hammer, jammed after a few shots, but eventually came back mostly working after the breech was opened again with brute force, and the FK BRNO couldn’t even fire a round because mud prevented the hammer from either falling down with enough speed to fire or retreating far enough to reactivate the Sear. Both the Glock 19 and Hi-Point C9 jammed early despite their more enclosed mechanisms, but the straight-recoil Hi-Point fired more shots and was revived by a quick water flush, while the short-recoil Glock only has one Shot fired before jamming to the point where even dousing it with water couldn’t get it running, leading Karl to conclude that mud probably got into the barrel’s locking lugs and prevented it from firing fully enter the battery.

to investigate how much fouling your guns really affects their performance. This includes her infamous mud test, in which she scoops soupy lumps of mud onto a gun’s receiver and tests if she can reliably fire afterwards. What they have found most of the time is that two things make a gun less reliable in adverse conditions: the more exposed holes the gun has in its receiver and the speed of its mechanism.

Western animation

Last week we reported about some malfunctions when loading squibs. This time we’re going to talk about backfires and hanging fires – what they are and what to do about them.

A misfire is a failure of the primer mixture to be started after the primer (or the rim of a rimfire case) has been hit by the firing pin with a reasonable hit, or the failure of the initiated primer to ignite the powder. This term is also commonly used to refer to a failure in firing caused by an inadequate hit on the primer (perhaps more aptly referred to as a “light hit”).

A misfire is experienced as a cartridge’s complete failure to fire when the trigger is pulled and the hammer or firing pin falls. A light firing pin hit is probably the most common cause of misfires, but occasionally they can also result from worn or defective ammunition. If a slight hit from the firing pin is the cause of the misfire, a shallow indentation in the primer can usually be seen when the misfiring cartridge is removed from the chamber.

While not inherently dangerous, misfires should be treated with caution as it is initially impossible to distinguish a backfire from a hanging fire. Therefore, whenever a round fails to fire, the shooter should use proper safety procedure for handling pendant fire (see below).

A hangfire occurs when there is a noticeable delay between the time the hammer or firing pin hits the primer and the firearm actually fires. Typically, in pendant fire, the shooter pulls the trigger, causing the hammer or firing pin to drop, but no shot is fired immediately. However, the ignition process was initiated inside the housing and after an unpredictable delay time the weapon discharged. Like a primer, a pendant fire can be created by using degraded ammunition or ammunition that has had its primer or powder contaminated.

The danger of a hanging fire is that it is often mistaken for a backfire. This in turn can lead to two different types of hazards. First, a shooter who assumes a non-firing round is a misfire can immediately open the gun’s breech to remove the malfunctioning round. A cartridge that ignites when so loose can cause damage to the firearm and serious injury to the shooter. Additionally, a shooter who assumes he or she has suffered a misfire may not be able to perform proper muzzle control, potentially pointing the gun in an unsafe direction if fired unexpectedly.

Any time the hammer or firing pin falls and the gun fails to fire, hanging fire should be assumed. The firearm should not be opened or discharged, but should be pointed in a safe direction for 60 seconds with a modern cartridge – and two minutes with a muzzleloader. This is sufficient time for a pendant fire to be fully lit. If a minute goes by and the gun doesn’t discharge, it’s actually a misfire. The firearm should be unloaded and the cartridge in question inspected for slight nicking of the primer, contamination, etc.

If a normally reliable firearm refires or misfires with a particular ammunition (particularly old or possibly damaged ammunition), discontinue use of that ammunition and dispose of it in accordance with local regulations.