BACK TO THE BASICS: RECOVERY

In the past posts of back to the basics I have been discussing the 8 fundamentals of marksmanship.  Previously I covered:

Stance
Grip
Sight alignment
Sight Picture
Trigger squeeze
Breathing
Follow Through

Today we are at  #8 Recovery.  What I will cover here in recovery is Immediate action, remedial action and magazine changes

Your firing away at the range, or at a burglar and your weapon stops firing.  You squeeze the trigger again and nothing.  Your pistol looks like this:

You have had a misfire so as the word means you have to pull immediate action.  The key to immediate action is the word SPORTS

Slap up on the magazine
Pull back on the slide
Observe if a round comes out
Release the slide so it goes forward and picks up another round
Tap the slide to ensure it is seated forward properly
Squeeze the trigger and get back in the fight or hitting your paper terrorist

You have done SPORTS and squeezed the trigger and again misfire nothing happens now we have to go to remedial action.  If in a "Situation" you may have to transition to another sidearm.  If you are at the range go through SPORTS till the "O".  Pick up the round and look at the primer (The usually silver circle on the back of the round)  If it is dented it means that the round has not gone off and that the primer is or weapon is bad.  I would like to note that this is not always the case.  I had an Automag III that I couldn't fire military .30 carbine through and the primers were dented, however if I put them in my 30 cal carbine they would fire.  If I used commercial .30 carbine it wasn't a problem.  If there is no dent then more than likely you have a broken firing pin.  Other reasons for a misfire or non-fire are double feeds, failure to extract and failure to feed.

Next I will cover magazine changes.  Your blasting away, your pistol stops firing and looks like this:

You have ran out of ammo, so you have to do a magazine change.  Engage the magazine release, slide your non firing had down the pistol grip ensuring the magazine has fallen free.  Bring your non firing hand to your chest down to your belt buckle and slide to your non firing side till you hit your magazine pouch, pull a mag out (Have them arranged so that when rotated up the magazine will go right into the magazine well of the pistol), load the magazine into the magazine well hit the slide catch and re-engage.

Just to summarize this posting we have covered the final Fundamental of pistol marksmanship and covered Immediate action, Remedial Action, and Magazine changes.