[quote]Originally posted by Aaron:
<strong>The second part of my theory is that the 17% failure rate which Jim experienced is not far from the normal expected performance of the Luger pistol.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Aaron,
I have to say that my Luger shooting experience is considerably at odds with both Jim's experience and your theory.
After many shooting tests I have fixed on the cheap WalMart Winchester ammunition to shoot in my Lugers. In the 1500 or so rounds I have shot since then I have had maybe half-a-dozen fail to chamber or eject properly, something less than half a percent failure rate.
In the experience of many of us here it is faulty magazines which cause most of the problems in operating a Luger. That being said, however, Jim's discovery that the UMC ammunition was seated too deeply certainly sounds like the primary problem here. I experienced this same problem with some gun show reloads which were not crimped adequately and allowed the bullets to push back into the cartridge, they would not feed for beans. Of course, there is a potential for dangerous overpressure here, as well.
Jim,
Run, do not walk, to WalMart and buy some of their bulk-pack 9mm Winchester. If you have a gun shop nearby which might have a Mec-Gar magazine, you might pick that up too (or more than one [img]biggrin.gif[/img] ). When you shoot, be sure to do so with a firm hand--allowing your wrist to slack and the Luger to fly up under recoil will transfer too much of the recoil energy to your hand, and not permit the gun's action to work properly. I'm willing to bet that these measures will reduce your failure rate to near zero.
Happy birthday, and good shooting <img src="graemlins/beerchug.gif" border="0" alt="[cheers]" />
--Dwight