Originally Posted by Larry1945

Okay, I have my Shield back with no harm done. Turns out it was an ammo problem, a terrible round courtesy of Freedom Munitions. I've included a photo of that round; if you enlarge it you can see the problem. For one thing, the primer is not fully seated - it's not flush to the case rim. Even worse, there is a small blob of what looks like solder right in the middle of the primer. The armorer wasn't sure, but he thought that when I pulled the trigger on this round the striker tried to do its thing but immediately ran into that blob of solder. Something about the poorly seated primer and that blob in the middle of it just locked everything up - the striker, the extractor and the slide.

He cleared it by standing the gun up with the barrel on the edge of his workbench, then hitting the back of the gun hard - really hard - with a big nylon hammer. It took two or three good whacks to break it loose. I tried that at home, but I don't have a nylon hammer that big and I just couldn't apply enough force to it. It took him all of about 5 minutes and he didn't charge me a dime. He looked at that round and just shook his head and laughed. I took six rounds of ammo with me so he could test fire the gun after clearing it, and they sailed through with no problems.

I've learned a couple of things from this experience: One, that's it for Freedom Munitions. If their quality control can't catch a round like that, I'm done with them. And two, I'm going to eyeball every round I load before it goes in the magazine. No more trusting factory ammo, from anyone.

So that's it guys; thanks to those of you who followed me along on this adventure and gave me your thoughts. I'm a couple of days older and a whole lot wiser than I was before this happened...