Pistol range week at a large agency's academy

[Bodhi]

I've got little notes about the range

I digress. The people who brought their own all had glocks. 19's and 17's. Only one gen 3, the rest were gen 4's and gen 5's.

Only a few of us had something that wasn't a glock.

We fired about 800 rounds each throughout the past 2 weeks. Some interesting things of note within our sample size.

One of my mags just fell apart on a day where we were dropping mags on concrete all day. The base plate must have came loose without me realizing it. When I went to eject the magazine, the base plate, a plastic retainer and the spring fell out but the actual magazine tube and follower stayed in the gun. That was strange. Reassembled it and never had an issue again.

The guy with the 226 had a similar problem where his magazine ejected and the detent that held the base plate in sheared off. Sig branded mags too. So the baseplate would come off fairly easily.

The training rounds (Orange tip, silver case) were constantly getting stuck in the gen 5 glocks. The only way they wouldn't get stuck is if the rounds had no dents or dings on them at all.

Type 3 malfunctions were interesting. An instructor showed us the "fastest" way he's found to clear them. His disclaimer was that it doesn't work with every gun, so you'd have to try and see what happened. Tap rack first obviously, but then you'll see what kind of malf it is. Hold down the magazine release and strip the magazine out with force, without locking the slide to the rear. Without pulling the magazine all the way out, about half way, slam it back in and you should be back in the fight.

This worked with the VP9 every time. The XD would lose the chambered round but not the first round in the magazine. Some people had to lock the slide to the rear first before stripping the mag, others did not.

The sig would lose at least 2, sometimes 3 rounds when attempting this. He'd lose the chambered round and the first two in the magazine because of the way the sig seats the first round.

, I used the ALS nub from OTdefense. I cannot speak highly enough about it. First day was a ton of holster draws from a safariland ALS 6xxx series. My thumb was sick of hitting that stupid slim ALS. Then I put the nub on, world's difference. Highly recommended. I also used a esstac 2" belt with esstac kywi pistol pouches.

Anyway, I just thought I'd share this tidbit. Someone had 3 failures with their glock today, he said light primer strikes. I didn't see the primers, so I cannot confirm.

VP9 was excellent.