One of the most common complaints among men and women who shoot a semi-automatic pistol for the first time is the jamming. The first round may shoot fine, but the second or third round may fail to cycle properly. When this occurs, you may have to pull the slide back to manually remove the jammed bullet.
It's frustrating to say the least when you spend more time adjusting the slide and removing jammed bullets than you do actually shooting. Many people automatically assume that semi-automatic pistol jams such as this are caused by a mechanical error, at which point they take their pistol to a local gunsmith. But a more plausible cause is a phenomenon known as “limp wristing.”
What is Limp Wristing?…show more content… It is most often caused by the shooter not gripping the pistol firm enough, or the shooter not keeping his or her wrist straight enough. As a result, the pistol's frame kicks backwards and upwards, preventing it from properly cycling the bullets.
To better understand limp wristing, you must first look at the normal cycling of a semi-automatic pistol. While there are hundreds of different semi-automatic pistols on the market, nearly all of them feature a two-phase cycling process: first and foremost is the rearward motion of the slide, which is triggered by the force of shooting. The energy produced by shooting causes the slide to travel rearward, at which point the recoil spring absorbs this energy.
The second phase is the forward motion of the slide, which occurs immediately after the slide's energy is absorbed by the recoil spring. After the spring has absorbed the kinetic energy of the shot, it pushes the slide back forward, ejecting the spent cartridge while simultaneously loading a new round into the chamber. If you don't hold your pistol with a firm enough grip, the frame will go up and instead of back towards your body when you fire, resulting in the energy being released upwards.
