The Firing Line Forums - View Single Post - Question: How common ar FTE's/Stovepipes/Jams in general?

RickB · March 12, 2013, 03:34 PM

The comment, "My gun has never malfunctioned" doesn't really mean much, unless you know how many rounds they've fired, what type of ammo, and perhaps, the level of maintenance the gun receives.
Someone who shoots 50 rounds of factory ammo every year, cleaning and lubing between trips to the range, is probably going to have a lifetime of reliable shooting, certainly moreso than someone who shoots 1000 cast-lead handloads every week.
A guy on another forum claimed to have shot over 300,000 rounds, through a half-dozen different guns, over a period of years, and he'd never experienced a single malfunction of any kind. I don't know quite how to react to that?
In my experience - ten-plus years of weekly USPSA, IDPA and 3-gun matches - any gun that can go 1000 rounds between failures, regardless of the type or cause, is a VERY reliable gun. There may be guns, somewhere, that go thousands, or tens of thousands of rounds without issue, but I have never seen one.
Moreover, I have never seen any one brand or type of gun display extraordinary reliability.

March 12, 2013, 03:34 PM	#10
RickB Senior Member Join Date: March 1, 2000 Location: Boise, ID Posts: 8,518	The comment, "My gun has never malfunctioned" doesn't really mean much, unless you know how many rounds they've fired, what type of ammo, and perhaps, the level of maintenance the gun receives. Someone who shoots 50 rounds of factory ammo every year, cleaning and lubing between trips to the range, is probably going to have a lifetime of reliable shooting, certainly moreso than someone who shoots 1000 cast-lead handloads every week. A guy on another forum claimed to have shot over 300,000 rounds, through a half-dozen different guns, over a period of years, and he'd never experienced a single malfunction of any kind. I don't know quite how to react to that? In my experience - ten-plus years of weekly USPSA, IDPA and 3-gun matches - any gun that can go 1000 rounds between failures, regardless of the type or cause, is a VERY reliable gun. There may be guns, somewhere, that go thousands, or tens of thousands of rounds without issue, but I have never seen one. Moreover, I have never seen any one brand or type of gun display extraordinary reliability.