A few years ago, I had a phase 3 malfunction with one of my gen 2 Glock 19’s that could not be cleared except by having my friend hold the gun and me prying the casing loose. Four hands on the gun, neither of us little wimpy dudes, either. There was no play to be had with the slide whatsoever, the case mouth was firmly wedged up against the barrel hood. Took us at least a good five minutes and me tearing a fingernail loose in the process. I’d say it was pretty well jammed.

I’ve had a shell pop free of the magazine tube in an old Wingmaster 870 and wedge itself between the lifter and the bolt carrier. That killed the hunt and required me to trudge home and drive the receiver pins out and drop the trigger group to unlock everything. That was jammed as jammed gets.

I’ve had a shotshell that somehow got exposed to moisture and swelled that stuck halfway in the chamber of the same shotgun and no amount of violent mortaring would clear it. I had to put a dowel rod down the bore and drive it open with increasingly frustrated strikes with a dead blow mallet wearing all the protective gear I could layer on myself, praying I didn’t set the damn thing off. That thing was jammed.

People overuse the term, but to say it can’t be applied to guns is nonsense. There’s all kinds of malfunctions, and some of them result in a jammed weapon.