Training Tip: How to Clear a Double Feed in a Pistol

15 Jan Training Tip: How to Clear a Double Feed in a Pistol

In this week’s blog post, Rob takes you through the steps to most efficiently and effectively clear a Double Feed… or more correctly a Failure to Extract, in a pistol.

A few things here:

1. Every handgun is going to be a bit different as to the indication of the presence of the failure to extract. Most commonly the trigger will feel “mushy” but in many handguns the striker will fall when you attempt to fire. Naturally the gun will not go off as you are in a semi-slide lock condition.
2. Removing as many excessive and waste steps is critical to clearing this malfunction under stress. Less is more!

Clarification on completely removing the magazine from the magazine well:

DO IT. In this class in particular one of the students, Mike, was running his 1911. The sharp angle of the feed ramp would cause the next round in the magazine to strip out and not allow the magazine to be inserted and seated fully. We tried a partial removal on the other guns present (Sig 226, Glock 21, H&K USP40) and had not issues with stripping a round. However, it is recommended that you completely remove the magazine as to make sure that nothing gets bound up and you have enough leverage to fully seat the magazine on re-insertion.

I hope you liked this post and if you could, leave us a comment with your thoughts below! I will be putting together MUCH more of these as we go…