Double Play!

[Muhr]

I purchased a new magazine for my 1911, but range tests showed that it twice failed to load the first round if the gun had a round already in the chamber. Before I put this magazine into my 'production' set of magazines I wanted to investigate and correct whatever was going on, so at home I decided to test manually loading both ball and my defense rounds to see if I could replicate what the problem was.

I enjoy a living space free of moving projectiles, so since I was going to be loading/reloading the gun and working the slide frequently I decided to remove the firing pin. I went about my investigation, was interrupted by a phone call... and you can probably see where this is headed.

I had to make a run to the store an hour later, loaded my trusty sidearm using the 'load one round from a "bad" magazine then insert a fully loaded good magazine' process, holstered it, and started to leave.

I got into my car before the cold chill hit... I returned to my workbench and found my firing pin lying neatly where I left it.

I ditched the 1911 as I was in a bit of a hurry and had no time to reinstall the pin, ran back and swapped to my bug PM9 in a pocket holster, I loaded it the same way as the 1911, and was off to town. That evening I discovered that I had forgot to load the full magazine after loading the chamber.

One mistake in a maintenance process (1911), and one mistake in hurrying instead of slowly doing what needed to be done (bug) resulted in something worse than being unarmed, being unarmed when I thought I was armed.

[AEA]

When handling a gun, it is always best if you complete the task you started before being distracted by anything else. It could cost you your life.