Wife's pistol malfunction

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Fredkrueger100

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My wife, son and I went to the range earlier to practice. She has a Bersa Thunder .380 concealed carry model that I bought for her about a month ago. The pistol looks brand new but the guy I got it from said it was about 9 years old and hadn't had over 200 rounds through it. While she was shooting the slide would fail to go forward all the way and chamber another round. She would have to take the mag out to get the round out. She had three of these failures out of about 200 rounds. She was using federal American eagle ammo. She had two 8 round mags and one 7 round mag from her other Bersa. I don't know if it was the magazine or not. What could cause this kind of a malfunction to happen? I even loaded a mag up at one point because I thought she was riding the slide. So I thought I would do it to see if that was the problem. When I pulled the slide back and let it go the slide hit the round and stopped. It failed to push the round into the chamber. I tried to pull the slide back and let it go again to try and get the round to go in but it wouldn't. Again I would have to get the mag out, which was not easy. Then once out the round would fall out. But other than that the pistol fired well. Any thoughts would be much appreciated.
 

Jwryan84

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Clean it up good, buy new recoil spring to start. Would the round that hung up actually fire once you got everything taken apart?

Also did you try your HP ammo and make sure it fire flawlessly? If it's her carry weapon need to make sure it runs or not trust your life with it.
 

Fredkrueger100

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Recoil spring is the first suspicion for sure. Do it with all three mags?
I don't know for sure. I don't know what mag it was with. I should have paid more attention to that. Now I don't want her to carry this because I am afraid it might not work. She also has a ruger lcp I guess she can carry for now. I will get a new spring first.
 

druryj

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I don't know for sure. I don't know what mag it was with. I should have paid more attention to that. Now I don't want her to carry this because I am afraid it might not work. She also has a ruger lcp I guess she can carry for now. I will get a new spring first.


Good plan. Wolff springs makes the best. Gunsprings.com (I THINK). You might look online for some Fiocchi 95 gr FMF. Fiocchi is a little hotter ammo than Fed AE. My Walther PPK/S runs much better with the hotter Fiocchi. Lots of .380 people will say stick to 95 gr FMJ for self defense in a .380 anyway. I'm in agreement.
 

Fredkrueger100

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Good plan. Wolff springs makes the best. Gunsprings.com (I THINK). You might look online for some Fiocchi 95 gr FMF. Fiocchi is a little hotter ammo than Fed AE. My Walther PPK/S runs much better with the hotter Fiocchi. Lots of .380 people will say stick to 95 gr FMJ for self defense in a .380 anyway. I'm in agreement.
I have tried to get her to switch to a glock but for some reason she won't do it. In her lcp she does have fmj's. In her Bersa she has hornady critical defense HP's. But after today i am frustrated with the Bersa. Even though I like it and it shoots really well. I don't know if what happened today was the mag, the spring or maybe the ammo. She did have an fte while shooting the lcp. So maybe it was that. I want to run a bunch of self defense ammo through it but .380 is so ridiculously high it's hard to spend that kind of money on it. I just saw a 1,000 rounds of hst's was over $675!! Flat ridiculous. I don't understand why .380 is so expensive. That is another reason I think strictly using fmj's is the way to go. Besides the performance of it.
 

mr ed

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Not familiar with the Bersa, but if it has a spring and plunger type extractor. You might oil that and make sure its moving freely.
If there's junk in the spring and plunger hole it may not allow the shell casing to slide up easily causing a jam.
 

dennishoddy

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Clean the chamber and use a FMJ ammo. I don't know much about Bersa Ammo but some HP ammo doesn't cycle well in a lot of guns depending on the design of the HP before doing anything else.
 

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