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lawrnk wrote:

arod757 wrote: I've ordered dummy rounds for my Glock to practice clearing a malfunction at the range.

Expect a heck of alot of practice, and almost no reality.

I'm not sure what you mean here. My plan was to randomly load a dummy round somewhere in the middle of the magazine and go fire as usual and practice clearing the dead round when the malfunction occurs as quickly as possible. I'll probably just do half mags and have my wife load the mags for me with or without a dummy round so I don't know for sure whether there's going to be a malfunction on that particular magazine. I'm not sure how else to practice this.

Any suggestions to make this more in tune with reality would be greatly appreciated.

What lawrnk is meaning is you will probably practice the clearing a lot more than you will need it in your daily life. Granted there is a possibility that you may NEED it. If you do then you will really, Really, REALLY need it. I practice reloading, clearing malfunctions, & multiple threat defense.
I also teach folks the above.
Then I tell them that in the real world, if they need to reload or clear a malfunction the average guy on the street is probably in more trouble than one person of average skill, & average practice sessions is going to be able to deal with.
Do practice these skills but spend the vast VAST majority of your time on the most likely threat.
Six feet to contact. When shots are fired most of the time 2nd & 3rd BGs run. If they stay to finish the fight even us who have trained a long time are in a heap O trouble. Not many Sgt. Yorks on the streets & I for sure are not one.

I have seen some folks that did a good job of target shooting at 10yds & even 15. On their 1st attempt at a contact defense, hit BG, push off, move & shoot, would completely miss a silouete at 3ft. Could not believe they missed.

Practice marksmanship.
Practice reloads & malfunction drills.
Practice multiple threat.
But not at the expense of the 3ft threat.
My .02 & some think it worth about half that.
LT

Thank you very much for your response, LT. I'll keep your suggestions in mind when practicing, and I'm going to start looking around for some sort of defensive tactics course around San Antonio soon. I feel like I'm shooting fairly well on the practice range, but I'm sure one of these classes would get my ego in check real quick though.

What longtooth said, and most importantly, I'd stake my life on Glock.

I think what he meant is that since you have a Glock, you won't have very many malfunctions!

bdickens wrote:I think what he meant is that since you have a Glock, you won't have very many malfunctions!

I agree wholeheartedly.

But the "you never know" keeps creeping into my brain. So I'll practice to become proficient or at least so it doesn't surprise me if the gun doesn't go off and I know immediately what to do. That way I'm not standing there with my thumb in my ear waiting to get shot. I too will bet my life that when I draw my Glock and pull the trigger, it will fire. But like I said, "you never know."

I posted this in another thread but it works for here as well.

http://theprepared.com/index.php?option ... &Itemid=40

This glock gets the snot beat out of it and it still fires with at most a field strip. DO NOT replace parts in your glock with aftermarket stuff. Everything you want (extended slide stops, barrels, trigger connectors of diff weights, etc) can all be purchased glock factory at the same or better price than most aftermarket.

Oddly, the only thing my glock has yet to feed properly are snap caps I think it is because they are so short, I have the blue pachmyr ones, If i place them forward in the mag they go in just fine but if i tap the mag they jam.

IDPA.

if you have the marksmanship basics mostly down, you might as well start now. you'll quickly find that handling a miss-feed while trying to hit multiple threats, on the move and with a bit of adrenaline in the system is a far different task than doing the same in your lane at the range.
I start a match kinda hoping I have a few malfunctions during the day (my early batches of reloads were very accomodating as this goes). I'm not at the point where those extra seconds matter in the big picture, and they are very valuable training aids.

I shoot with the crew at texas tactical :http://texastactical.net/matches/idpa.asp. the range where they hold their matches is very convenient to the N. San Antonio folks. ..fyi

arod757 wrote: I'll probably just do half mags and have my wife load the mags for me with or without a dummy round so I don't know for sure whether there's going to be a malfunction on that particular magazine. I'm not sure how else to practice this.

Any suggestions to make this more in tune with reality would be greatly appreciated.

You can unload the top 5 rounds of your fully charged mag and have someone else add in the dummy rounds, not as the first round. Then perform your course of fire. If you get a "click" instead of a "bang"..... tap, rack, back on target and finish your course of fire. As you progress, you can add a side step movement to the drill any time you tap & rack.

I think the S. T. Action Pro are the best for training.
http://www.stactionpro.com/


The failure to fire, so I'm told, is the most common type of malfunction in modern autoloaders. Other malfs, failure to extract, double feed, etc.. are good to practice, but you have to set them up. That takes the surprise/realism out of the practice, and that's a big factor.

Out in the world, the suggestion is if tap, rack, doesn't fix the gun, then go to second gun or RUN to cover and clear the malfunction there.

arod757 wrote:

bdickens wrote:I think what he meant is that since you have a Glock, you won't have very many malfunctions!

I agree wholeheartedly.

But the "you never know" keeps creeping into my brain. So I'll practice to become proficient or at least so it doesn't surprise me if the gun doesn't go off and I know immediately what to do. That way I'm not standing there with my thumb in my ear waiting to get shot. I too will bet my life that when I draw my Glock and pull the trigger, it will fire. But like I said, "you never know."

Better safe than sorry is right. I know quite a few glock owners, never heard of a glock malfunction so far.

Even Glocks malfunction! I know the Glock fans don't like to be reminded but when you have been to as many matches as I have you see all guns will malfunction.

My suggestion is that if you practice enough and get involved with IDPA you will get sufficient malfunction practice and have a lot of fun doing it!

I've had several failures in my Glock while shooting IDPA, which always brings a lot of joy to the 1911 guys at the club.
Most of the time the problem has been with weak hand only shooting - I tend to limp wrist. But every time I've been able to finish the stage with maybe only a second or so time spent clearing the malfunction. Practising malfunction clearing isn't a lot of fun, but well worth doing. My gun may never jam up in a real life situation and with ammo better than aluminum Blazers, but I sure don't want to give the 1911 guys the satisfaction of seeing me not finish an IDPA stage.

Be sure to practise all the common malfunction scenarios: Failure to feed, failure to extract, and double-feed.

arod757 wrote:... and I'm going to start looking around for some sort of defensive tactics course around San Antonio soon. I feel like I'm shooting fairly well on the practice range, but I'm sure one of these classes would get my ego in check real quick though.

Highly recommend John Farnam http://defense-training.com/

I wrote about his courses here: http://www.texasshooting.com/TexasCHL_F ... f=8&t=7450

and here: http://www.texasshooting.com/TexasCHL_F ... f=8&t=7479

He travels around the country, comes to Victoria TX in early March and late October each year. OK, Victoria is not exactly "around San Antonio", but I drove down from S.A. and Seguin for these courses, and was well worth my while. You will get good techiques and lots of practice in malfunction and reloading drills, as well as a lot of other stuff. Granted, a malf or empty 14-shooter is an extreme event in an "average" self-defense encounter, but on the other hand, self-defense encounters are extreme cases to start with. Up to you how many bases you want to cover.

CompVest wrote:Even Glocks malfunction! I know the Glock fans don't like to be reminded but when you have been to as many matches as I have you see all guns will malfunction.

My suggestion is that if you practice enough and get involved with IDPA you will get sufficient malfunction practice and have a lot of fun doing it!

I'm sure they have. I've never seen it. But I've never seen a ghost either.

The failure to fire, so I'm told, is the most common type of malfunction in modern autoloaders. Other malfs, failure to extract, double feed, etc.. are good to practice, but you have to set them up. That takes the surprise/realism out of the practice, and that's a big factor.

We practice these using snap caps. Have a partner "Jam" your weapon anyway he/she chooses, place under a towel on a table. At the buzzer, the shooter uncovers the weapon, determines what type of "stoppage" has occurred and clears the weapon.

Puts the "surprise" right back into it.