As mentioned in the thread on the HK VP9, my range test I pout 150rnds through it and it did auto forward a number of times. I’m pretty aggressive with my mag insertions and it stopped if I didn’t slap them home with force. I don’t mind auto forward, but it’s not considered a good thing by many. My M&Ps will do it too with a forceful fast mag insert. Maybe I’m just too aggressive. In Glocks, auto forwarding is user error according to Glock as they don’t auto forward. I kid, but Glock’s do it as well, some more than others.
It seems even the same model can be all over the place in terms of it’s perpencity to auto forward per comments in the other thread. Guess it’s another example of striker fired DA guns varying in their auto forwarding on mag insertion. It does not bother me or change my flow, but I worry it’s a negative to the longevity and reliability of the gun.
I think autoforwarding is a defect. i don’t think a firearm should ever do anything unexpected.
Having said that, I remember shooting my M&P 9 in a course with Louis Awerbuck and asking him his opinion of a firearm that auto-forwarded. He just shrugged and said “one less step, then…”.
eta:
The slide release on the VP9 is bigger and placed differently than what you’re used to. Be sure your thumb isn’t hitting it when you slam it home. Sorry if that states something that’s already obvious to you. No offense intended.
I personally like it quite a lot. To me it’s one less step to get back into action, and I have come to expect it. If it doesn’t happen, I just give it a quick rack, no problem. Awareness of what your gun is doing one way or another is required anyway so I don’t really see the complication.
Technically, it has to be seen as such as it’s not an intended part of the design. Some may see it as a “good defect” and some not, but a defect it is I’d think.
Spent the last two days with my father at the range doing some timed drills on steel. He normally shoots an M&P in 9mm that auto-forwards. But he brought his USP45 instead (it’s winter, so fat gloves need big trigger guards and tritium night sights are nice to have, although the weather was nice enough and we weren’t out long enough to need either). To say that his reload times suffered as a result is putting it mildly.
Considering some guns won’t auto-forward regardless of technique, and of those that do, you must be abrupt with the magazine insertion for it to happen (or apply extra force to the rear portion of the butt of the gun, or apply an upward and forward smack, etc.), it’s not something I depend on and I wouldn’t find it any kind of detriment if none of my guns did it.
I don’t see how auto-forwarding would have any negative impact on a guns longevity. I suppose the force some guys are slamming the magazines home could aggravate guns that are sensitive to over insertion. With respect to “reliability”, one instance that comes to mind is my old M&P9. With JHP, the top round would occasionally nosedive into the feed ramp when I induced an auto-forward. On other, more rare occasions, the slide would drop but no round would actually be loaded into the chamber, as if the slide was dropped on a magazine that wasn’t fully inserted. In that particular gun, it was more of a liability than anything and from reading around online, it wasn’t by any means an isolated incident.
Personally, I use the slide stop as it is a method that works 100% of the time for my purposes.
Perhaps I’m a pus when it comes to my reloads, but I cannot get any of my guns to auto forward with my particular reload technique. Having said that, I’d only consider the phenomenon useful if I could do it consistently with every platform that I own. I have no need for multiple reload techniques for different pistols.
I tend to pound the magazines into my Glocks, so all of them auto-forward. I cannot recall ever performing a press check and finding an empty chamber after auto-forwarding any of the Glocks I shoot.
I have one 1911 in 9mm that will auto-forward if I am aggressive with the reload.
I have had pistols that “always auto-forward reliably” cause a stoppage at inopportune times – like a USPSA match, on the Rogers School test, competing against Ernest Langdon and Bill Wilson. A number of highly regarded instructors have told me that they frequently witness stoppages auto-forwarding despite their students’ claims that “never has been a problem before.” While that might be just a red face moment in those circumstances, it could be really bad if you need a new magazine for real.
I have trained to insert the magazine so it does not auto-forward, unless I intentionally want to make it do so by putting some extra force on the rear part of the magazine as I seat it. Different platforms, and different samples of the same platform, are more or less sensitive to auto-forwarding. Bullet shape can also play a role in whether it causes a problem. A good reason to reload with the slide forward, which seems more doable with 17+/- round magazines than a single stack.
For those of you that have a gun that will “always” auto-forward; does the same thing occur reliably with a partially full magazine or nearly depleted magazine?
If auto forwarding ever caused a stoppage in any gun I had, I would be far more concerned. It’s never happened in the guns I mention in the OP. It did happen in my 1911s rarely. That is to say, auto forward was rare in my 1911s, but if it did happen, it did result in a stoppage. It was rare, and tuning the gun up cured it. If a stoppage was a common result of auto forward in the striker fired double stack polymer pistols being discussed in this thread, I’d likely never own one personally. That would be a show stopper for me.
It is not something that generally occurs with my pistols, nor is it something I like having them do as I do see it as a defect(IE the gun doing something that I have not made it do=defect/not good), but on the flip having had guns that will do it I learned to roll with it as it were, and of the guns I have owned only a few glocks were good for doing it on a regular basis. But is is not something that I could make a gun do on a regular basis and I am not dainty in my reloads. That said, with glocks in the past, swapping the OEM slide release for an extended factory model resulted in the number of auto forwarding instances reducing dramatically. Not saying that it is a cure, because it ain’t and I am far from an expert on the platform. But again, in what I have seen anecdotally it will reduce the numbers auto forwarding incidents.
1.) Auto-forwarding is NOT a good thing. There is no guarantee that the side picked up a round from the magazine. Think about it, if you are hitting the mag base pad with enough force to allow the gun to auto-forward, you may well impart enough force for the mag spring to compress allowing the slide to close over the top of the topmost round in the mag. I’ve seen this happen several times.
2.) Auto-forwarding is a matter of technique. You are inserting the magazine at an angle rather than straight into the grip. By impacting the grip with a forward motion towards the muzzle end of the gun, it allows the recoil spring to compress enough to allow the slide stop top drop (since there is no follower pushing up on it anymore) and the slide to travel forward. If your gun auto-forwards while you are using correct technique there is a mechanical defect. I can make the same gun function correctly or auto-forward at will just by varying my technique. Having said this I would never trust that a slide that had auto-forwarded had also picked up a round from the mag.
Side note: If your 1911 is auto-forwarding I would have the slide stop checked by a competent gunsmith. This should not be happening.
In the several years I owned that M&P, there was never a time that it didn’t autoforward. Yet over all that time, thousands and thousands of rounds, I don’t recall a single malfunction.
As to it being technique…I dunno. My technique caused the M&P to autoforward routinely, and in fact it’s a commonly reported “feature” of the M&P. My technique never makes it happen with either of two PPQs nor my VP9 (so far).