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Ok so less a review and and more an observation.

We have had a new 3.8 XDm in the safe a few weeks now. Bought for my wife as a CC gun.

Finally get her to the range with her new gun..

Found out it has a trait I never noticed with mine or with her and any other gun we own...... this gun is sensitive to limp wristing causing failure to go in to full battery.
Her hands, my XD compact, no such issue, Her hands my full size XDm no issue, same with the CZ75 we shot today, and a S&W 645. My hands,, shooting her 3.8 XDm no issue.. BUT, once a box has been shoot and she is a bit tired.... she had a FTF or 2 in every mag. Bang on the back of the slide, make it go full battery, and it fires... I can shoot 1, 2, 4 mags after every one of her FTF and never have an issue.

We shot more the 500 rounds today in this gun.. Speer, lawman, Blazer brass and aluminum, UMP, Hornady Critical defense. Two weights, in target stuff and a box of 230 grain Hornady CD.
I had no FTF in this gun at all, she had 1 or 2 per mag for all but the Blazer AL case stuff...

It was a repeatable deal..... with lots of focus, and constant reminders... she would shoot though a mag, but if I moved away, and just observed, by mag two.. we were back to weak grip and FTF..

Back to back shooting a different gun after each FTF in the XDm 3.8 resulted in ZERO FTF for her, and I had ZERO FTF in her gun all day.

All told we shot more then 1000 rounds today.... great day... but we have some work to do if this new gun is to be considered reliable IN HER HANDS.

Interesting, bronco78. At my last range session, I shot 225 rounds through mine, and I noticed that it had a couple of failures to go all the way into battery. The gun was getting pretty fouled up, so I attributed it to fouling, but it would have as easily been fatigue leading to limp wristing. It's not normally my habit to do that with other guns, but I suppose it could happen. And I wasn't switching back and forth between guns, so I had nothing with me to compare it to.

Interesting. We have XDm's in 9 and .45 and have never had a FTF of any kind at all. While observing some large class CHL quals I noticed the XD and XDm guns tolerated limp wristing and riding the slide to rack them far more than I would expect, but they might have been mostly 9mm. Our 9mm have a lot more rounds through them than the .45 so maybe there is a difference in tolerance of limp wristing between the two?

TexasGal wrote:Interesting. We have XDm's in 9 and .45 and have never had a FTF of any kind at all. While observing some large class CHL quals I noticed the XD and XDm guns tolerated limp wristing and riding the slide to rack them far more than I would expect, but they might have been mostly 9mm. Our 9mm have a lot more rounds through them than the .45 so maybe there is a difference in tolerance of limp wristing between the two?

Thanks for the feedback.


Your .45cal XDm referenced above, is it a 3.8? or some other version?

We have four Springfield XD / XDm's... of the four, this is the only one that does this, and it's only with her shooting it.

She shoots the other three back to back with the 3.8XDm and no FTF (slide into full battery)
I shoot the 3.8 after correcting the FTF and have NO issues.

Bottom line, the only difference is, her and THIS gun.. Unless another reason can be discerned, weak grip is the only thing I can make sense of.

For the record concerning my post above, that is the ONLY time I had this problem, and the gun was REALLY dirty.

The .45 is a 4.5 inch. It has had the fewest rounds, but it shot a number of different mfg ammo without a hitch for both myself and two other people when it was initially tested out of the box. Yours is the shorter 3.8 though. This sounds like this particular gun is less tolerant of limp wristing for some reason. Do you know anyone with the same gun who will let you try using the other gun's slide assembly to see if that performs differently? That could help eliminate whether it is just that gun or that design in her hands.

TexasGal wrote:The .45 is a 4.5 inch. It has had the fewest rounds, but it shot a number of different mfg ammo without a hitch for both myself and two other people when it was initially tested out of the box. Yours is the shorter 3.8 though. This sounds like this particular gun is less tolerant of limp wristing for some reason. Do you know anyone with the same gun who will let you try using the other gun's slide assembly to see if that performs differently? That could help eliminate whether it is just that gun or that design in her hands.

We have two 3.8 XDm .45

I only had the new one out there yesterday..
And she has only shot a single box though mine..

So we will have to take both guns out next weekend.

Never the less..it was very repeatable on both sides of the issue... Her, FTF. ME same gun, same ammo, same mags.. no FTF.

Please post back to let us know if you determined whether it is that particular gun or they both do that. I would be very interested in knowing that.

Thats interesting. I had 2 FTF's within the first 100 rds fired through mine (using cheap ammo), and since then, it has been 100% reliable. I can remember once that it did not go into full battery, but as you pull the trigger, it would slide into place. I've shot probably 2,000 rds or so through it.

I had to work quite a bit with my wife to get rid of her limp-wristing propensity, I even set her up with a female shooting instructor for about a half-day training session when I got frustrated by not making progress with her. Best money I ever spent - don't think she has had any issues in the last several hundred rounds fired in any of our handguns.