Carry pistol failure..

I was putting my S&W 940 (9mm revolver) into rotation so took it to the range yesterday morning. I fired 20 rounds, four 5-shot moon clips of Federal HST 124 grain +P and it shot great. I cleaned and lubed it in the appropriate places.

Before loading it, as I always do with revolvers, I checked the carry up on all five chambers, then after loading it checked that there was smooth cylinder rotation since moon clips can, if mistreated, get bent and cause drag. All was well.

Put it in it’s DeSantis Nemesis pocket holster in the left front pocket, and went about my day feeling pretty good about my latest carry piece.

Yesterday evening I pulled it from the pocket and pulled the trigger just enough to introduce cylinder rotation, and NO ROTATION.

I removed the moon clip full of live rounds and tried again. The cylinder would not rotate, though the trigger pull was smooth, and I could see the bolt drop and pop back up at the appropriate times. I pulled the trigger with the cylinder open by actuating the cylinder release, and saw the hand going through it’s proper motion, but noticed the tip of the hand that is supposed to engage the cylinder star was broken off!

This means that the revolver had silently malfunctioned by itself in my pocket after successfully firing 20 rounds that morning, AND being function tested before being put in my pocket and counted on to be my possible life saver.

And there was NOTHING I could have done differently to prevent it. One of my steps when I am cleaning a revolver is to put a drop of oil on the hand tip where it emerges from the frame and and actuate the cylinder to spread the oil onto the star, then wipe off excess from the star, so I know the hand was okay when I put the pistol back into service.

Very sobering discovery.

I called S&W and they are paying shipping both ways for return for repair.

Even though the 940 is no longer made, all the other Centennial line is, so this there must be many thousands out there.

I’ve had a bunch of S&W revolvers,,models 28, 29, 25, 686, and 36, and never experienced a parts breakage.

The fact that going out the next day, if I only had that 940 on me, and needed to use it in a self defense scenarios, I would have had only one shot, is the sobering part to me.

jar said:

Actually if it wouldn't rotate you would not even have one round. Remember that a revolver does not fire the round under the hammer but rather the round that turns into position. No turn, no fire.

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There was a live round under the internal hammer, and it would have definitely fired that round, just not advanced to the next round.

Jim Watson said:

One of those low probability - high consequence events.
Nothing to do but carry on and not worry about it, nothing you can do anyhow.

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Wise words, and exactly how I intend to proceed. At 69 yo, and shooting for 50+ years, this is only the second metal part failure that has rendered a carry firearm useless after, one actually, and this case would have been, the first shot.
Even if carrying another gun, which I always do, the surprise “what happened?” would certainly slow my going for the other.
Just going to continue the way I always have, and try to remember to make that first shot as good as possible.