Who is making fun of you?

Who are you fighting? Who here is failing to admit that the BG 380 appears to have problems? In this thread, between you and me, one of us has been talking about specifics and one has been belligerently yammering in cliches for which no detail is ever provided and promising to "fight", whatever that means.

What is wrong with the hammer, and why does it need to be fixed? We've been discussing a problem with a broken firing pin. The hammer is a separate part, and I've not read any problems with the BG 380's hammer.

Perhaps you should permit your skin to thicken a little bit so that you are better able to discern between principled, detailed disagreement and personal attack. Also, writing a clearer message with some context will help the rest of us understand whatever it is you're going on about.

I can't speak to UMC fired through a BG as I've only fired WWB, Federal, and Hornady through my EBLxxx all which have been flawless. My experience with UMC in 9mm and 40 has been horrible though. I bought several thousand rounds because I got and incredible deal and I get 2-5 fail to fires every 100 rounds. The guns vary from glocks, XD's, and M&P's that were 100% flawless for many thousand rounds with other ammo. My friend has had the same issue with UMC 45 in his XD, XDM, and two 1911's as well. I won't be buying any more UMC once this stuff is gone.

An ironic statement from a man who insisted we accept his error about how the BG 380 is fired because he's got a degree in mechanical engineering.

Let's review what I have done. I have...

... listed five specific problems of which I'm aware based only on my own experience and reading on this and other Web forums. Between the two of us, only one of us actually provided a detailed list of problems.

... discussed the criticality of those problems and any known failure modes.

... offered knowledge about what S&W has done to address these problems.

... pointed out that your assessments about the cause of the pistol's problems is unwarranted using your own criteria.

If this is ignoring postings, then you have completely lost any sense of critical thought and/or reading comprehension. But this would be consistent with nearly everything you've written on this topic, which seems completely detached from reality. In short, the quote above is par for this course when it comes to your input, which has likely detracted from the topic: problems with the BG 380, what S&W is doing about them, and whether we trust the gun as a viable defense weapon.

This is the context in which I write about the BG 380. As a BG 380 owner, I want to know if my gun will continue its service as a dependable carry gun so I'm interested in a detailed, dispassionate discussion of the problems and their solutions. Your context is difficult to understand at best. I'm never quite sure what you mean, except that you seem angry at somebody about something and want to fight, which is worsened when such behavior is refuted by detailed writing and clear thought.

Based on your writings here, if you were influential in the quality of medical devices, I would politely ask that my family not be subjected to any of your employer's products, not because they may not be useful, but because I would have no confidence in the presence of detailed, articulate thought required to ensure their quality.

I think the same line of reasoning is valid for the BG 380, in my opinion. If you don't trust the gun or the company, there multiple options:

(1) Avoid buying one.

(2) Sell it, if we've already bought one, and accept the loss of money between the purchase price and the resell price. This is called "cutting your losses" and is an accepted way of addressing mistakes.

(3) Dry fire it and shoot it to verify that the individual gun we own is reliable regardless of the other copies that may be having problems. As I said earlier, reliability is a machine-specific assessment. It is possible to have a completely reliable copy of a machine whose product is plagued with problems. (I once owned a 1985 Renault Encore, a car that anybody with any inkling about cars would rightfully describe as "problem-ridden". Mine was downright dreamy. It ran and ran and ran. Thus, my individual copy of the car was reliable, even if the model line as a whole was considered troublesome.)

(4) If the gun is troublesome, send it back to S&W. Keep sending it back so long as it has problems. If this isn't satisfactory, refer to (2) above.

If you own a BG 380 and you want to rely upon it, it is up to YOU to put the gun through its paces to ascertain its reliability. But this advice is not limited just to the BG 380. It applies to *any* gun upon which you wish to rely.

Can we behave like adults and continue this thread?

You might want to go take another look at these.
Terms of Service

I fixed my misfires by not shooting TulAmmo or other eastern European stuff

BuckeyeChuck had posted a nice summary list of known potential issues with the BG. I was wondering if anyone had a little more information on some of them?

(2) Laser assembly screw backs out.

Can anyone tell me, or better yet show me, which screw this is? Does anyone have a photo of this?

(3) Take down lever ejection. Failure mode is that the take down lever grooves escape their retainers and the pin flies off during slide cycling. The slide often winds up separated from the frame and a considerable distance downrange. S&W revised the take down lever design. It no longer ejects itself during firing, but it is *ridiculously* difficult to actuate until it's been cycled quite a bit, at which point finger force is sufficient to rotate the lever. This was a reliability problem.

How can you tell if you have the revised take down level or the original one? Is there a serial number sequence or a date of MFG after which the gun has the new version? Anyone have a photo of the new vs the old?

(5) Broken firing pins. The failure mode is obvious: the hammer strikes the land on the back of the pin and it fractures just forward of the land, near the firing pin block. However, the cause of the failure has not been positively identified, at least not outside of the hallowed halls of S&W.

Does anyone have a photo they can share of this? Where the fracture actually occurs?

For those of you looking for some nice videos of the exact problems described in this thread check these out . . .

This is the best video I found about the laser screw backing out.
Smith & Wesson Bodyguard 380 Problem Part 2 - YouTube

Here is one that actually shows the take down lever coming off during firing.
S&W Bodyguard 380 Takedown Lever Problem - YouTube

I haven't found one about the broken firing pin yet

I believe the answer to your problems seems to be Models 908 469 669 and 3913. I dont have any plastic guns so I dont know how to handle the problem. I sent one gun back to a manufacturer and after 8 weeks they sent it back with a note. "Cant find any problem." I take my guns to a reliable Factory Authorized Warranty Repair Station for warranty work now instead. But I do hope you fix or modify things to your liking. Id want my friends here to be happy with their stuff....H

__________________
US ARMY
Viet Nam 70-71

I realise that you will not believe anything that I say but here goes anyway: S&W sold my clip to me as a "Magazine" when I bought an extra FWIW. You guys are masters at finger pointing but still have not figured out why you can't dry fire this BG.380 pistol? I am still ill and have not had the time or energy to write to someone at S&W who may actually know about the MTBF of this pistol and why it can not be dry fired. Six months has passed and nothing has changed here, I see?


From S&W Website.

Product: BODYGUARD® 380 Magazine 6 RD



SKU #:

prod_397950000

Well look who's back!!

The BG380 uses a magazine. A magazine is a container for holding and feeding shells to the action. They have springs and followers and lips.

A clip is a shell holder used to fill a magazine. Clips hold rounds but do not feed them to an action. Revolvers sometimes have clips. A speed loader is a form of a clip, as are half moon clips.

I wasn't gonna say anything...

__________________
Jack C

Actually, when I was a young infantry soldier in the Army, in the early 1960's, even the US Army called the device that I kept my .45 Auto ammo deposited in, was called a "clip" universally. Soldiers in the US Army did not start calling magazines, magazines until the M-14 was being issued to troops who were going to certain areas of the world. I got my M14 issued as TO&E in Berlin at Check Point Charlie in 1962 on Guard Duty. The nomenclature for that device was a magazine from then on out. Prior to that the only firearm that I ever fired in the Army which had a magazine was the drum magazine for the M28 Thompson SMG.

None of you are probably old enough to even know that. Plus, I personally do not believe that anyone in my generation or older ever said the word magazine unless they were reading one, until about 1962. So, that having been said can we find a topic that actually belongs here, cut the ridicule and move on?

I like that idea.

Isn't/Wasn't a cartridge something you ripped the end off, poured in the powder, crammed in the 'casing' as a wad, and then seated the bullet?
Or is it a head?

Is it a crane or a yoke?

It was a head! It also was a yoke back then, but times change and I suppose that I should be more careful since everyone on these forums is more interested in terminology than in fixing mistakes.

After 40 years of having to be ultra precise in everything that I wrote and spoke as an engineer. It is time to relax since I am long retired and no longer sort fly scat from pepper for a living.

I just bothered to read your little poisoned diatribe and I am going to take umbrage with you, Buckeye Chuck, or whomever you are.

You do not know me from Adam but I will tell you truly this one time! That while I was in charge of manufacturing in a Medical Devices plant, we reduced the Product Complaint rate from 38 complaints per 10,000 devices to 3 complaints per 10,000,000 devices. Plus, we reduced scrap and rework by 98+%. Plus the plant won the national Malcolm Balderidge Quality Award which you probably are not even familiar with!

If I was you which thank god I am not, I would pray that your family members received treatment with one of my plant's devices and not those of my predecessors. You would be assured of 10,000 times the reliability and safety of my plant's devices over those of most other Medical Device Plants of that era. So, you had better wish your little Jelly Beans that your family would be treated with a state of the art medical device, like the ones that I was manager of, in an emergency in order to save their lives!

We also did this while increasing production from 100 million to 300 million infusion devices a year.

So still not knowing diddly about me, what is your claim to be such a paragon of wisdom about my expertise and skills? I guess that apparently you must be in possession of a crystal ball in order to assess my capabilities, especially knowing diddly about me!