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A theory on the 320 mechanical issues (youtu.be)

submitted 4 days ago by thundermoose@lemmy.world to c/guns@lemmy.world

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Pretty good demonstration of the mechanics of how bumping the slide can cause the striker to drop. The guy takes the gun apart and shows which components contribute to this malfunction. Worth a watch if you're curious what's happening internally.

It seems pretty clear that there are a lot of differences between P320s in the wild, so it's hard to generalize these findings well. This guy's gun isn't stock, and I personally have not been able to reproduce this behavior on mine (which is stock). It does seem more and more that the 320 design does not tolerate non-spec parts well, which is especially weird given the design was supposed to be modular.

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[–] thundermoose@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I've never heard that about the M9. I had one of the original M9s (think it was late 80s/early 90s) for years with probably 10k+ rounds through it and never had an issue. Anecdotal, I know, but given I've never heard of widespread issues with the gun I'm finding this claim hard to believe.

Do you have a link to a study/article about this? Curious if there's something I should be on the lookout for, as I am quite partial to that particular design.

[–] Death_Equity@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

GAO report on failures/defects

CNA study on soldier experiences with small arms, including M9 55% reported failure to feed, 26% stoppages(62% serious), and 46% lacked confidence in the reliability.

Our top tier soldiers don't want the M9.

Special forces switch to Glock 19/22 and SIG MK25(P226)

SEALs use Glock as SI

Then there are the anecdotal accounts of soldiers that didn't like the M9 that you can find all over the Internet.

[–] thundermoose@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

Thanks for sharing. That GAO report is pretty old, and seems to indicate potential issues with the first gen M9s. Not sure how much of that is still relevant today, I'm pretty sure my M9 was made after that report came out.

The CNA study is more interesting and relevant but kinda hard to interpret. There's a lot of externalities in there, apparently only 64% of soldiers were issued cleaning kits with their weapons, and 23% used nonstandard lubricant. The second one is interesting because later on the study found that those using nonstandard lube were 21x more likely to experience malfunctions. I honestly wonder if "nonstandard" lube was KY jelly for a lot of those guys; Army grunts are pretty famously stupid when it comes to gun maintenance.

Don't know that there's enough here to change my mind on reliability. Clearly the M9 was the least satisfactory part of their kit, but I'm not sure that it was due to a problem with the gun itself. Double-action is a legit downside, so I can't fault them for being unhappy with it; if they want to be able to draw and fire with a quick trigger pull, the M9 ain't it.