Second Range Report: Taurus PT111 Revisited; & 200th Post!!!

I’m rather late posting about my second trip to the range with my Taurus Millennium Pro PT111 9mm. I went the Friday before last. My parents were in town and I went with my dad, who wanted to shoot and zero his six-shot, single action, .22 revolver (that thing has almost no recoil, very easy to shoot, but also big enough and with a long enough barrel to still look imposing). Readers may recall I’ve been having some FTE problems with my pistol. I think I have that problem figured out.

I started out with 12 rounds of the good stuff, Hornady TAP FPD. The gun fired them flawlessly.

Next, I shot three mags (36 rounds) of WWB. Again, the gun fired them flawlessly, with the sole exception being an FTE on the second-to-last round on the last mag.

So, that’s only one FTE out of four mags (48 rounds), and that being on the 47th shot.

Possible reasons why the gun is performing better now: 1) Better ammo; 2) it’s getting broken in; 3) I’m managing the recoil better, thus bleeding off less of the energy in the cycling of the action; 4) I’m getting better at cleaning it.

I had more FTEs after that though.

I fired the remaining 13 rounds of Hornady next. No FTEs, but this time the slide failed to lock back when the mag ran empty; I’m thinking it is because the gun is getting pretty dirty by this point. 61 rounds so far, only 1 FTE.

All told I fired 25 rounds of Hornady, 124 rounds of WWB, the last 27 rounds of Speer Lawman, and the last 26 rounds of that crappy Russian-made Monarch, for a total of 202 rounds, through the gun. I didn’t keep count of the number of FTEs. The dirtier the gun got, the more I had.

I got a tip on the FTE problem from the owner of the range. He told me that Taurus semi-auto pistols, and I think he also mentioned Ruger, have rough (or tight?) action that causes that when they get dirty. (This may not apply to the new Taurus 24/7 OSS.) He advised me just to rack the slide and put a few drops of gun oil in key places then work the action a few times. That ought to help. I’ll try it next time.

So…my revised evaluation of the gun: It’s nice and compact, with good firepower, and is good for practice (including clearing and cleaning on the range), and it is still good for personal and home defense too. Why, despite the FTE problems, is it still good for personal and home defense? Because so long as it is clean, properly lubed, and loaded with decent ammo, I won’t have any problems performance-wise for the first 3-5 mags. Odds are I won’t need that many in personal and home defense situations. One can only carry so many mags on one’s person during everyday concealed carry. And I only own two at the moment in any case. Bottom line: I’m confident I can fire at least 3 mags through it without any problems. Particularly when the low price is factored in ($350 w/tax), I consider this gun a good buy (especially as a first handgun). Later, when I can afford it, (and my wife gets more used to the idea of my owning, shooting, and carrying on a daily basis, handguns), I’ll purchase a higher quality (and probably more expensive) handgun. My next gun purchase, though, will probably be a 20 gauge Mossberg 500 field/deer combo shotgun (26″ barrel with three different chokes, 24″ fully-rifled barrel for slugs), plus a turkey choke and an 18.5″ security barrel.

P.S. If anyone thinks I just shouldn’t accept the FTEs, that even a Taurus pistol shouldn’t be having so many, and I should send it to Taurus to get it fixed, feel free to let me know.