# Glock 19 locked up



## mueller (Feb 21, 2016)

Got a little range behind my house and took two mags out to shoot. Shot about 11 shots and then the gun locked up, the trigger was free could not rack the slide. Finally I gave the rear of slide a rap with the palm of my hand and it fired no probs. Ran another mag through the gun and no probs. Was using Winchester target ammo from WallyWorld. Anyone have this happen or an explanation.

Thanks
Mueller


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## pblanc (Mar 3, 2015)

I had something similar happen with my Beretta 92FS, a pistol which had functioned perfectly for years. In my case, the trigger would drop the hammer, but there was no ignition. I tried several hammer strikes with no effect, then attempted to eject the cartridge and the slide was locked up. It took a pretty good smack to release it. The round looked OK and was withing SAMMI specs for dimensions. The pistol had appeared to be in battery but there were no strikes visible on the primer, so I can only assume that the round jammed in the cylinder such that the pistol was very slightly out of battery. I was shooting Winchester 124gr NATO. Have had no issues with the pistol since.


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## DJ Niner (Oct 3, 2006)

mueller said:


> Got a little range behind my house and took two mags out to shoot. Shot about 11 shots and then the gun locked up, the trigger was free could not rack the slide. Finally I gave the rear of slide a rap with the palm of my hand and it fired no probs. Ran another mag through the gun and no probs. Was using Winchester target ammo from WallyWorld. Anyone have this happen or an explanation.


Most of the probable causes of this type of one-off stoppage are ammo-related. High primer, bullet seated out too far, case too long, dented case, damaged rim, rim too thin (causes the high primer during seating), case neck folded or bulged during bullet seating; any of these can cause a failure to fire due to the slide being slightly out-of-battery (not quite fully locked). Some would leave evidence on the fired case (folded case neck, or a too-long case, for instance); others would not (dented case, high bullet or primer, these would all be "corrected" by firing and leave no evidence).

It's a bigger pain in the butt, but if you really want to track down the cause, then you should stop, and do whatever is necessary to safely extract the loaded round from the chamber WITHOUT firing it, then inspect it closely (using calipers and/or the barrel from your disassembled pistol as a chamber gauge).

As ammo makers are pressed to hold down costs, it seems like "bad" factory ammo is getting much more common. It used to be that a heavy shooter would go years, if not decades between seeing a "bad" round of factory ammo; now I see "bad" rounds a couple times a year, either in my guns or someone else's at the range.


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## TAPnRACK (Jan 30, 2013)

^ This... I had a student experience 2 of these this week. Pain in the butt to fix, couldn't be bumped into battery... had to rip the slide back to eject the rounds. Takes quite a bit of strength to get the slide back. Both rounds had bulging at the top of the casing (neck).

Great explanation DJ.


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## DJ Niner (Oct 3, 2006)

4-5 years ago, I put up a discussion thread about faulty factory ammo, with some photos of same. The above discussion reminded me of the old thread, and here is a link to it if you want to see some photographic examples of "bad" factory ammo:

Link>>> http://www.handgunforum.net/home-de...factory-ammunition-check-your-ammo-folks.html

Take a moment to roll each round of ammunition in your hand and carefully/thoughtfully look at it before loading it into a magazine, cylinder, or chamber. There are some defects you can't catch no matter HOW hard you study each round, but many defects are easy to see, if you just make it a habit to look for ammo problems during loading or mag-filling.


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