When you carry a gun, you want to make sure that it’ll have your back at all times. By this, I mean that you’ve got 100% confidence in that firearm. Not 99%, and definitely not any lower.
But how can you tell if your gun is going to be 100% reliable, and isn’t in fact a piece of crap?
Without name dropping, let me tell you a little story.
My first firearm purchase was for concealed carry. It was a gun that I had my eye on for a while and upon reading and watching many reviews, I decided to pick one up for myself. It was an exciting time, but it soon turned bad when I started experiencing issues.
A long story short, here were the problems that I experienced out of the box:
- Failure to feed
- Failure to eject cartridge
- Numerous pins would slowly move out of place
I immediately contacted the company and they of course had me send it in for review. They fixed numerous things, I was told, and shipped it back to me.
On the second time around, I had the following issues:
- Failure to feed
- One pin was still sneaking its way to freedom after each shot fired
Of course, I informed the manufacturer of the continued problems and sent it back again. This time, they asked if I wanted them to try and fix it again, or simply replace it with a new gun. I opted for the new gun.
Not too long after, my new gun arrived.
I immediately took it to the range and quickly figured out that, maybe, I’m just having bad luck with this particular model. With the new firearm, I was immediately having the following issues:
- Failure to eject cartridge
- Pins still not wanting to stay in place
Ok, I’ve had it at this point. Now before anyone tries to criticize me, I did the following with each firearm:
- I tried many different types of new ammo to make sure that it wasn’t just an issue with a certain kind.
- I was not limp wristing or anything of that nature.
- I had other people try each firearm, and all experienced the same issues.
So, what’s the conclusion? Well, I’ve never carried the firearm. Even if it started working flawlessly, I still wouldn’t carry it. Never. No way.
Some will tell me that the firearm needs to be broken in and that’s fine, I guess. I’m not sure that I really believe in that, because I’ve had plenty of firearms that required no break-in period. They just simply worked out of the box and have continued to work since. THAT’S what a gun –especially a carry gun– should do.
My criteria for a carry firearm is as follows:
- It’s easily concealed for the person
- It’s a caliber that the concealed carrier is proficient with
- It’s a firearm that has never had any major issues
- And preferably, it’s a firearm that’s never had any issues
The nature of any technology is that it will likely fail at some point. Firearms are no different, and no one should expect that their firearm will perform flawlessly for life. It’s just not reasonable to think that it’s even possible.
But, with some common sense and knowing when things are wrong, it’s easy to determine whether or not your carry firearm is a piece of crap.
All you have to do is to ask yourself one simple question: Do I trust my life with this firearm?
