Handgun Reliability

All the manufacturers make the claim. They all claim that you can trust your life to their pistols. Well, how does that stack up to our experiences? Can their claims be trusted? I decided to find out just how we perceive this reliability. So I conducted a poll on The High Road, which is a very popular firearms forum with many tens of thousands of users and shooters.

I have to provide some caveats for the poll though. It was COMPLETELY unscientific. It's results can't be relied on for much of anything. I asked the same question for each manufacturer and a specific "line" of their pistols. You can see the raw results of the poll below. You'll have to click it to view it properly.



Now, these results can be misleading unless you understand the questions, and the way I framed them. The questions asked are EXACTLY as you see them in the results graphic above. What is NOT mentioned, is that I did not define "serious reliability issues." So the respondents are using their own definition to formulate their response. Also, there's no accounting for "break in" or other factors which may or may not have been a factor in a respondent's decision on which box to check.



I decided to sort the data, and put together a graphic displaying percentage results per shooter. For each line, I totaled the number of respondents which claim to have either had no problems, or serious problems, and then derived a percentage. For example, we had 50 respondents claim to have Sig P series. Five of them claimed to have had serious reliability issues with them.

Again, there are controls missing which may skew perception. We do not know if those five people claiming to have had "serious reliability issues" owned ONE Sig, or FIFTY Sigs. Obviously, someone who's owned fifty Sigs, will have a much higher likelihood of owning at least ONE which had a reliability problem. So we cannot tie these results to the reliability rates of the guns. I repeat... THIS DATA LOGICALLY CANNOT BE TIED TO THE RELIABILITY RATES OF THE FIREARMS. It can only serve as an unscientific indicator of the shooter's experience. How many guns with which he has experience, is not known nor displayed. Once again, you'll have to click it to view it properly.

I don't know about you, but this is a bit frightening to me. Sig Sauer's marketing slogan is "To Hell and Back Reliability." Yet one in ten Sig shooting respondents claim to have had "Serious Reliability Issues." And my god, look at Kimber.

I'm not advocating that you make purchasing decisions based on this information. In fact, I highly discourage you from doing so. This poll was unscientific, it's data collection method had no controls. There was no entity verification. There was no verification that a respondent had even ever SHOT the firearms about which he responded.

But if nothing else, it's an interesting look into perception and reliability.