[Derbel McDillet]

Your concern at that time is making sure you don't want to break a magazine by dropping it on the floor? THAT is the thing you are worried about?

Not really. As I've said time and again in this thread is I may want to restore my pistol to its highest state of battle-readiness when time and situation permit. To quickly do this I simply perform a Tactical Reload and drive-on. No big deal.

I've never once seen a Glock magazine fly apart and spill its guts from being dropped to the ground, pavement or floor. Not once. Not ever. I've never even heard of it actually happening "in the wild".

As a former LEO my experience is different than yours.

Firstly, you are describing a process called "difference sorting" by which someone determines what something IS by its differences from what it ISN'T. That's not a normal, intuitive mode of recognition...

Obviously you haven't seen this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Bby5pOVZJ0

One learns to recognize "Orange" by being exposed continually to that color, not by being exposed to all the other colors and then concluding that Orange is "the one that's not all the other ones".

That's all fine and good but I prefer to use a robust technique that increases my probability of success in completing a task quickly in a variety of stressful and possibly unfavorable conditions.

Diagnosing stoppages is not a robust technique. Diagnosing stoppages increases the time it takes to cycle through your OODA Loop. Diagnosing stoppages diverts your attention from the danger.

Slide lock is encountered regularly, and it's easy to learn to recognize it intuitively.

An as I stated earlier, "slide lock" caused by a stoppage is not encountered regularly and one cannot learn to reliably discern the difference in "feel" because one doesn't acquire sufficient previous experience. In a battle for your life your attention is focused on the danger and the first cue that something's not right with your gun will be when it unexpectedly stops firing for whatever reason.

So, I don't know where this idea of adopting tap/rack on slide-lock as a preferred technique comes from. I would really like to know who teaches it.

Former Navy SEAL Jeff Gonzales, Trident Concepts - http://www.tridentconcepts.com/

Tap/rack is the immediate action performed whenever the gun stops firing. It's performed intuitively and takes about a second to perform. It's a conditioned response that can quickly clear a multitude of stoppages.

If tap/rack fails to get the gun running then I have one decision to make: Do I have to do something to keep from getting hurt or does the situation allow me to immediately progress to my next immediate action (Combat Reload)? That's the only decision I have to make in that moment in time.

With any modern gun in reasonably well-maintained condition, the standard malfunctions are pretty rare ...

Until you incur injury, fatigue, you're in a physical scuffle, or the situation isn't ideal.

I have no idea where the "stand there like a static cardboard target" comment comes from. I have to conclude that you have a very vivid imagination concerning those with whom you disagree.

So what do you do when you're in the open and your gun doesn't fire when you press the trigger? Do you stand there while you attempt to perform a Combat Reload (with the expectation that the problem is just an empty magazine) or do you quickly move off the line of attack?

That simple logic dictates that even in the case that you cannot recognize slide-lock, you are far more likely to gain an advantage by training to simply reload than to proceed as if there is a malfunction.

When reality doesn't meet your expectation (you have a stoppage other than an empty magazine) your OODA Loop resets and your attention is dangerously diverted to the gun.

But the simple fact is that people can and do learn to recognize slide-lock, as a part of basic instruction...

"Recognizing slide lock" is not a robust and reliable combative technique under stress in a variety of conditions.

That simple logic dictates that even in the case that you cannot recognize slide-lock, you are far more likely to gain an advantage by training to simply reload than to proceed as if there is a malfunction.

Combative manipulations may take a a little longer to perform but they're designed to be robust and reliable in a variety of conditions. It may take a little longer to do it right the first time but it takes a lot longer if you have do it over again (OODA Loop reset). Combative manipulations are designed to be performed quickly with a high chance of success.