No gun is ever going to be perfect, but I expect a high confidence rate from my EDC. If I had one with a significant amount of failures, I'd probably shop around for something else.FCH wrote:I am trying to decide whether a gun is reliable enough to be my wife's EDC and/or our nightstand gun. The gun in question is a Sig P938. When we purchased the gun new, it had some issues. We sent it to Sig and they significantly improved its function. We are now almost a year and over 1,200 rounds later and having some issues. Here are some recent range reports.
Starting with a just cleaned and lubed gun, my wife fired 7 rounds of Hornady Critical Defense 115g with no problems. Then she fired about 50 rounds of Magtech 115g and had at least 7 Failure to Extract (FTE). Dropping the magazine and racking the slide always extracted the spent brass. A friend said it felt like the brass was kind of sticking while being extracted. He took the gun home and cleaned it with an "extreme" solvent that he said strips all fouling.
The next range trip, my wife and friend took turns firing another 50 rounds of Magtech. The failure rate was even worse, 8 or 9 FTEs. I called Sig and they said they had been having problems with Magtech and suggested I try some different ammo.
The next range trip, my wife fired 7 rounds of Hornady and 50 rounds of Perfecta 115g with no failures. I fired 14 rounds of Hornady, also with no failures.
Since I was buying the Magtech in 1000 round case lots, I dug into my stash for a couple of boxes from an earlier batch. On this trip, my wife fired 100 rounds of Magtech with 3 FTEs. She also fired 7 rounds of Hornady with no failures. I then fired 21 rounds of Independence aluminum 115g with 1 failure.
One good note. We have never had a failure with Hornady but then we have not shot more than 100 rounds.
So here are the questions,
1. Is this gun reliable enough to be my wife's EDC?
2. Is this gun reliable enough to be our nightstand gun?
Now it could be that it's a grip problem. I have a couple of my guns that my wife had a hard time shooting until she learned how to hold them well. Too much give in her grip caused it to not cycle well after firing, and we'd get all sorts of issues.
If you can isolate that as a problem, and then train the problem away, then good!
For a gun that I carry, I may be more tolerant to FTE issues. I practice a lot, and can clear it well. But for my wife, I want 99.99999% uptime on her carry gun. I don't want her to EVER have to clear a jam.