Man got attacked by a 200 pound mountain lion while trying to save his dog that the lion was after.
His dog hid under his truck and the lion took him, but he was armed with a Glock pistol and tried to use it while the lion was chewing on his thigh. The Glock would not go off, he kept racking the slide to no avail. His son then shot the lion with his rifle and Killed the lion.

Some reporter knew a lo abut Glocks and stated it was because he wan not holding the pistol properly. This was reported on Riverton Wyo, tv news.

That would absolutely suck to have a lion chewing on you and you have a gun, but you cant get it to fire! Not sure why an improper grip would prevent a Glock from firing the chambered round at least, but I get limp wrist may prevent it from cycling… Maybe he didn’t have one in the chamber and couldn’t rack the slide enough to chamber one? Maybe an obstruction after racking that didn’t allow it to fully go into battery? Guess he lived and can tell the story eventually.

Kind of senseless to speculate about the Glock with such little information plus the man being attacked was in extreme stress of a type that very very few will ever experience. Good news is his son saved him. SigSauerP226 also nailed it with hard to blame his "grip" with the first round not even firing.

This (almost) same scenario played out with a Phx PD officer when Glocks were first put into rotation replacing revos.
Officer was in a contact battle with bad guy and gun would not fire!
He was jamming the gun into the bad guy and pulling the trigger but the jamming pushed the gun out of battery.

It won’t happen with a revolver but it WILL happen with every semiauto I own, 1911, SIG, Glock, Walther, S&W, etc.

ETA: as SigP226 noted, it ain’t the grip.
You don’t even have to be gripping the gun for it to fire if something gets jammed into the trigger guard and depresses the trigger tab…like the cinch lock on the bottom of your jacket if it has a draw string.

This is a good cautionary tale about knowing your weapons. Unless the Glock was defective (possible, of course) or somebody tried home gunsmithing on it (also possible), it should have fired when the trigger was pulled. Something prevented this. The 'bad grip' thing is, of course, utter BS. The theory that he pressed the muzzle putting the barrel out of battery is a good one, but there isn't enough info to really know what happened at this point.

This is why I suggest to new shooters they get a revolver as a first gun, and then 'work their way up' to an automatic. The simplicity of a revolver is a benefit - typically, you pull the trigger 5/6 times and it goes bang 5/6 times.

There is more that can go wrong with an automatic, and one must gain competency to be able to diagnose, troubleshoot, and rectify problems in the 'heat of battle.'

I wonder if it was a 1911 or maybe a Springfield XD? Those have the grip safety, and with those, a bad grip could indeed cause the pistol to not fire.

To the media, all semi-autos are either AKs or ARs. All semi-auto pistols are Glocks. . .

If the guy getting chewed had on of these, it might've mitigated the issue. But the issue there, is if it was a problem with being pressed out of battery, then it's a training issue. Albeit a difficult one to find fault, given the circumstances.

I'd expect better performance from a gun that's made of porcelain that can get through metal detectors and costs more than I make in a month.

quote:

Originally posted by Hound Dog:
To the media, all semi-autos are either AKs or ARs. All semi-auto pistols are Glocks. . .

This right here. It could have been anything, including a revolver. Lacking an article or direct statement from the mountain lion's chew toy himself, the absolute best we have here is total speculation about all factors involved.

racking the slide expecting the gun to go off in a panic. Realizing it and all your boooolets are laying on the ground when you finally pull the trigger????

There was a similar story here some time back involving a big bear, a guide, and a (bow?)hunter.

The bear got a hold of the guide. The guide lost hold of his un-chambered G20.

The hunter picked up the G20 but was not familiar w/ pistols so could not get a shot off.
(That's how I remember it anyway.)

As has been stated, every handgun is a Glock and every rifle is either an AR15 or a "long gun" (so they can sound cool).

Broken trigger return spring is the number one suspect when Glocks won't play along.

Nope. There's zero chance of an improper grip preventing a Glock from firing. This isn't a 1911 with a grip safety. You'd always be able to get a round off, though an improper grip can prevent ejection of the fired round or feeding of the next round.

Assuming the report is correct and he couldn't get even a single round off, there's some other culprit here. As others have already speculated, it could be:

A) Physical contact with the lion pushing the slide out of battery
B) Broken trigger spring resulting in a dead trigger
C) Not a Glock after all, and it actually was a 1911 or other handgun with a grip safety, combined with an improper grip
D) Empty gun with no rounds in it at all
E) Empty chamber, following by repeatedly short-stroking the slide, or an unseated mag, or some other issue*

*Funnily enough, at the police academy where I taught it wasn't uncommon to see cadets who experienced a stoppage to slap the side of their slide before racking the slide, while trying to clear it. Their hands would be getting ahead of their brains. They'd be Tapping and Racking, but not Tapping the right part. So if the issue was an empty chamber combined with a FTFeed resulting from a magazine that wasn't fully seated, you couldn't solve it no matter how many times you merely racked the slide. (Even if you slapped the slide first. ) You'd have to Tap to seat the magazine first to get it to feed when you then Rack the slide.

My money's on A) as the most likely explanation. Occam's Razor, and all that. The OP stated that the lion was "chewing on his thigh", which is well within arm's length, and in his panic he likely had the muzzle of that pistol jammed pretty hard into the side of the lion.

quote:

Originally posted by KMitch200:


It won’t happen with a revolver but it WILL happen with every semiauto I own, 1911, SIG, Glock, Walther, S&W, etc.

Time to buy a P38 or a P1

Another simple thought- magazine was not fully inserted so the racked slide kept running over the rounds in the mag without picking one up

quote:

Originally posted by Hound Dog:
This is a good cautionary tale about knowing your weapons. Unless the Glock was defective (possible, of course) or somebody tried home gunsmithing on it (also possible), it should have fired when the trigger was pulled. Something prevented this. <<snip>>

The first and ONLY thing that came to my mind, right or wrong, was that the dude didn't have a round in the chamber, and couldn't get one chambered under such extreme stress (short-stroking, dislodge the mag while trying to fight the lion and charge the weapon, etc.)!

If correct, this yet another example, though very extreme, of why you should ALWAYS carry with a chambered round! JMHO of course...

quote:

Originally posted by Vgex:

I often wonder about the validity of those pieces/parts, as they seem like a good idea for such an occasion,although very random. I imagine finding a holster for it could be daunting.

I couldn't imagine the terror that guy was going through. The Lord wasn't done with him yet.

quote:

Originally posted by patw:
I often wonder about the validity of those pieces/parts, as they seem like a good idea for such an occasion,although very random. I imagine finding a holster for it could be daunting.

I couldn't imagine the terror that guy was going through. The Lord wasn't done with him yet.

The device pictured was the first one I found I didn't feel the need to resize to post. If you were using the older pouch style holster, it likely wouldn't be a huge deal, as this one doesn't appear to be too crazy (I've seen some with comps and more aggressive stand offs). Likely a no go for polymer/kydex style holster, unless the holster designer themselves designed a holster to accommodate.

For 99% of people, those stand-off devices are likely useless, but in the event mentioned above, IF the issue was a direct result of being pushed out of battery due to contact with the threat, this or similar devices could mitigate this issue.

Unfortunately, unless the actual manufacturer of the pistol steps up and conducts an investigation, we will never know more than we do right now about the ACTUAL cause of the malfunctions. As mentioned before, it could have been a Glock, S&W Sigma, Desert Eagle, or anything under the sun. It would be awesome if the manufacturer made a statement they would conduct an investigation and publicize their findings like I've seen other industries do, but since they named Glock, there wouldn't be any benefit for them. If a smaller company had been named, or an American one, there's a chance they'd take this as an opportunity.