How Often Should You Practice Clearing Jams?

[Castle]

There is no such thing as equipment or ammo that will not jam.

I've currently put approximately 40-45K rounds through a total of 3 different raceguns (an EAA based 9x21 gun, and two S_I guns). I've never experienced a jam in that number of rounds. I clean every 500-1000 rounds. I run grease on my raceguns - in fact, I ran SG Lite on my racegun recently in 40 degree weather - no problems.

You're making a rather bold, unsubstantiated statement here (as you have in other threads). Just because *you* haven't invested the time and money into equipment that won't malfunction doesn't mean that equipment is not out there.

I do not consider a gun that needs to cleaned every 500 - 1000 rounds as reliable. I would ask for my a refund if I had a weapon that required cleaning every 500 - 1000 rounds in order to be malfunction free. I routinely run my pistols to at least 5000 - 6000 rounds before I start experiencing malfunctions and will need to clean them. I know this because I have experimented and put the time, effort, and money into my equipment. The rounds you have fired through your three guns is about half of what I have shot through one of my pistols in a 4 year period. Who knows what the total round count for this pistol is for the 10 years I have been practicing and competing. I use grease as well for all initial lubrication jobs on my pistols.

If you shoot enough, eventually you will have a malfunction. I would rather occasionally practice it on the range or at home during dry fire, before I have to deal with it in competition or worse, real life. It does not cost anything.

[Castle]

Venry, Extremely well put! I keep one bad magazine for RIP drills as well.

Religous Shooter, and everyone else listening, you are a three gun guy, so there are malfunctions that can happen with the shotgun and rifle that are completely different and much more difficult to clear from the malfunctions that occur with the pistol. There are malfunctions with the rifle that will flat out baffle the senses if you have not seen it before, like the Bolt Override. It is easy to identify the problem, the hard part is knowing the quickest fix, then executing it quickly. This is where practice comes in.

Practicing malfunction drills truly only happens when you actually have an unexpected malfunction. So when we work on this during dry fire, or set them up on the range to happen, we are actually "Mental Blue-printing". Hopefully this makes us more prepared by seeing it once before, so we can be "snappy about it".

Again, back to your initial question on the frequency of training, I would practice this 1 out of 20 sessions. For me this is about 30 - 40 days. I only put about a total of 1 hour into pistol and rifle malfunction drill sessions. If you do not train as much, look at a bi-month or quarterly schedule. The hard part is the initial learning of the techniques. Once you make the initial investment in learning the techniques, maintaing them is easy. The pistol malfunctions are easy. The rifle malfunctions are difficult to set-up and make happen while you are shooting. So I set them up to visually remind myself what they look like and talk my way through them while I am clearing them.

Again, Bennie Cooley does the best job I have seen at teaching rifle malfunction remedies. In the past year he did an excellent article in Front Sight magazine on the 6 basic rifle malfunctions. I am sure he probably has some great techniques for the shotgun as well.

Again, if you shoot long enough you will have a malfunction. With all three weapon systems, sometimes it is not the quality, reliablity, cost, or maintenance of the weapon that causes the malfunction. Sometimes it is the shooting position or some other outside interference.

I hope this helps.