After ~700 flawless rounds through my 4 month old 9mm Shield, I had high hopes for a similar performance from my new 40c. It was fine except for the slide lock activating before it could chamber the last round in the magazine, but it only happened when said last round was an HST.

Here's what I was doing, I was just getting the feel of the new gun shooting some plain aluminium Blazer and some really shappy Fiocchi 165gr JHPs, I don't usually just blast away with hollow points, but I'd gotten 10 boxes for $100 so what the hell and I was loading the mags with the first and last round being Fed HST 180gr (the rounds that I want to carry) because I figure that any failures are more likely when the mag spring is at max and minimum pressure. Yeah, it would be best to shoot 3-400 rounds of HST to make sure, but I am a dyed in the wool cheapskate.

Anyway, I was shooting a mag of (mostly) the thumpin' Fiocchi and the slide locked back and I glanced at the chamber and saw, instead of the follower, a bright shiny HST round half way out of the magazine lips and almost touching the barrel's feed ramp. What the hell!

I hit the slide release and the round chambered nice as you please, so it wasn't technically a jam. I ejected it and loaded it back in the magazine and put another round on top of it to replicate the malf. I fired and the slide didn't lock back, tried again and it didn't fail, then I realized I was loading with the mild Blazer stuff and tried again with the Fiocchi and the slide locked back with the HST half out of the magazine.

All I can figure is that when I fire the snappy Fiocchi, the glass smooth nickel plated HST round is sliding forward by inertia and the edge of the fat HP bullet is bumping up against the tab on the slide stop causing it to raise during recoil.

Other than that, it performed perfectly (~200 rounds). I'd prefer to carry HSTs, but guess I could try something more pointed and less likely to trigger the slide stop. Or maybe rough-up the surface of the follower with some coarse sandpaper to better grip the last round.

Anybody experienced anything similar?

Try shooting something besides fiocchi. If that's what's causing the HST to jump forward. If it happens with other ammo then switch HST for something else like Speer Gold Dot.

Every gun is different, not two are alike and sometimes one just doesn't get along with a specific ammo manufacturer. It happens. Doesn't mean anything. Buy a different brand and carry on. Someone I know has issues with Speer Gold Dot and his Walter PPQ. The gun will shoot anything but that! Thousands of PPQs have no problem....his does. My Colt AR doesn't like Independence 556 55gr fmj. Shoots everything else fine except that. My other Colt has no problems with it. So I don't buy it

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I have a 40c with nearly 10,000 rounds through it, and it's never been picky about ammo, nor has it had a failure to feed. However, I have a Shield .45 that had failure to feed problems with a variety of ammo, and a Shield 9 that refused to feed HSTs reliably.

With my Shield .45, I put a drop of very mild car polish on a cleaning patch and rubbed it in to the lower feed ramp. I rubbed it off with another cleaning patch and a Q-tip. I also cleaned my magazines and worked the followers up and down to make sure they were moving smoothly and were not hanging up near the tops of the magazines. Finally, when loading a magazine, I was careful to insure that the rounds were fully inserted as far to the back of the magazine as possible. If they creep forward they may hang up on the feed ramp, especially hollow points. Doing those things cured my failures to feed in my Shield .45.

With my Shield 9, I simply switched to self-defense rounds that fed reliably. After much testing, I determined that Hornady Critical Duty rounds were the most reliable. However Speer Gold Dot and Remington Golden Saber performed nearly as well.

Since you're stuck with a whole bunch of HSTs, you don't have the option to switch right now, so polishing, cleaning, and careful loading will be your best bet.

Finally, although this doesn't help with your current problem, here's something to consider down the road. I've done some extensive testing of self-defense rounds, and I found that Speer Gold Dots (180g) shot the most accurately from my 40c. My target was a 4"x4" square set at 20 yards. I was able to hit the square with 52% of the 70 Gold Dots I fired. I was only able to hit it with 33% of the 90 HSTs I fired. Of course that's just me. You may get better results with your HSTs, but if you don't, check out Gold Dots. A lot of us on the Forum like them.

Good luck with your new 40c. Mine has been my EDC for the last two years, and I think it's great. It's not only a powerful self-defense gun, it's a surprisingly fun range gun as well. Once you get these early kinks worked out, I think you'll love it.

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What, me worry?

Shoot the pistol left handed. Particularly if you shoot thumbs-forward, you may be inadvertently hitting the slide release under recoil.

So did you try loading two HST's in a row on the final two of the mag?

I don't have a compact yet but the ONLY problem I ever have with my full size .40 was with some funky 170 gr Fiocchi load that my LGS had.

All I carry or load for HD is HST's in any caliber and have never had any issues.

one thing to note: I always mirror polish my feed ramps and also polish up the chamber too to ultra reliable feeding and I hadn't done that yet when I shot those fiocchis

doesn't sound like this is the problem in his case since its not happening at random... only at the one specific time.

Yeah, after I was able to replicate the malfunction, I used HSTs to test it about 10 times (HST feeding HST) but it worked fine. The HSTs seem to give a healthy push, not a snap so I figure it's probably OK to carry a full mag without any hot ammo. But I want it working perfectly!

I used Flitz on the feed ramp and got it bright and shiny and didn't have any actual feeding (or ejection) problems at all.

I figured the first unwanted lock back was me accidentally hitting the slide stop of a new, unfamiliar gun, so when trying to repeat it, I took care to have no appendages anywhere close to the slide stop.

Ok, so the problem seems to lie in mixing types of ammo in a single mag. Unless you tried loading all the fiocchi and it did the same thing.

In .40 I run the 165 gr. HST's for max punch and haven't had any issues with last round hold open.

If you run all fiocchi and it runs fine and then run all hst and it runs fine then I would suspect that it just happens to be a weird dynamic between recoil impulse and extraction and feeding of that particular combination. Just don't use that doesn't really mean there's anything wrong with the gun in my view. Could even just be those particular batches of ammo...

The Fiocchi works fine, it's just that I can't find any tests of the bullet effectiveness anywhere (I bought it because it was the cheapest brass factory 40 cal ammo I could find that day-$9.99/50). While HST has been tested by a lot of people and seems to be extremely reliable in both expansion and penetration along with Gold Dots, Ranger-Ts and the bonded Golden Sabers. I started trying out the HSTs mostly because they're the cheapest of the top-shelf ammo per round.

I think the Fiocchis didn't lock the slide back because it's got a rounded nose and a relatively small hollowpoint cavity, while the HSTs have a rather broad, chunky truncated cone at the front. When the top round is being mashed down into the mag by that rib (cartridge stripping rib?) in the slide, the edge of the HST's hollowpoint cavity is only about a mm from the tab that activates the slide lock and just eyeballing it, the rounded noses of the Fiocchis are easily more than twice that.

When I get the two boxes of Critical Defense ammo as part of the rebate I'll try them out with the Fiocchis, not because I'm thinking of using them together, but because it's the only failure mode I know about. Though I really doubt they'll be a problem because they're so pointy.

If I didn't agonize over spending money and penny-pinch my testing regime, I would probably never found out about this kind of failure and remained blissfully ignorant.

To each his own brother... I'm sticking with the HST.

If it comes down to it and you're still paranoid about it, try out some gold dots. They have a bonded bullet and just a slightly different tip profile...might be different enough. In gel testing they're very close to HST's. HST had a bit better expansion in the regular gel and denim but the gold dots hold up better after being shot through harder materials. Personally I'd rather have the expansion and reduce risk of over penetration since civilians won't likely have the need to shoot through barriers. If you did it would be pretty hard to claim self defense. In home gun... maybe a different story. That's just my opinion and choice though. The critical defense tests that I've seen in 9mm didn't impress me once I saw the HST tests. Still better than a LOT of other ones though.

Hell... for all I know, all these tests could be complete ********* but it's all I got!

Felt recoil doesn't mean ammo is hot or not. It's simply different powder and possibly ammo weight. The 40s&w is already operating at peak pressure there's no room to go higher.


HST energy. Velocity
Muzzle 408. 1010
25yards 384 980
50 yards 364 954
75 yards 346 930
100 yards 329. 908

Fiocchi only lists velocity at 1100 fps. It's 80fps more but a lighter bullet as well. 165gr vs 180gr. The HST is far from not hot. It's only slightly slower due to more mass but this is true for any caliber. The 155gr will have more velocity than the 165


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I'd stick with what's PROVEN to work. A few videos of Fiocchi tests doesn't prove or disprove anything. There is no info for older batches or newer batches. HST has a PROVEN track record of years of use. Not only in YouTube videos but also by civilian and LE.
. would you bet your life on a $12 dollar difference?

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Wow Arik! Just going by feel I figured these things were screamers.

On your comment about spending a little extra for the most proven bullet designs, I'm definitely going to carry only with high quality stuff (Standard pressure HSTs are in my 9mm Shield now) my quandary is how many types am I going to have to try and how many rounds of each am I going to have to fire before I'm sure of their reliability. If I hadn't experienced this type of failure, I would have just bought a 10 year supply (I burn my carry ammo annually) once I found a good deal and called it done.

I'm not your daddy or anything but if you burn your carry ammo every year then you might not want to buy more than a year at a time.... then your not just burning the same batch of old stuff. I assume that's the idea behind replacing the carry load annually? keep the primers and powder fresh?

Here's a couple good links for you if you haven't already checked them out for some good ballistics info.
Ballistics 101 | All the ballistic charts. Finally, in one place
Law Enforcement - Federal Premium LE, Speer LE, BLACKHAWK!, Eagle - Ammunition

LE. vista is only federal and speer but ballistics 101 has a lot more brands. Vista has info on all the fbi gel tests and stuff though

Here's what I do. It's by no means the only way but its probably more or less how everyone else does it.

So I'm a Gold Dot guy but only because they were out first. I read and watched a lot about them and they obviously worked as intended. I bought a box and they worked fine in my gun. Which by the way is typical but not guaranteed..... obviously. Just to make sure I bought a few more boxes and tried them as well. So that's what I carry. Later HST came out. I EVENTUALLY tried them too. Nothing wrong with options. But only after I did the same research. They look good in videos, cops are carrying them for a few years and they seem to work as advertised! So I bought some and.......

You don't have to jump on every HP out there. You see or hear about one and it peaks your interest? Find a place where you can rely on the info and research. I frequent M4Carbine and PistolShooters. Both places have industry professionals and guys who go through tens of thousands of rounds a year. Lots of testing and you not only get good info on ammo but gun as well. If you do sign up, word of caution. These are not your typical gun forums. It's more about quality and longevity so guys tend to stick with what's known quality. You won't see any ..."check out my new Keltec". It's more like. ....." Here is my HK after 6 months and 50k rounds". And I'm not exaggerating that one

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