Drunken Employee Shoots Server

Target Practice writes "A drunken mortgage worker at RANLife Home Loans decided for unknown reasons to take out the company's $100,000 server with a .45-caliber automatic, blaming the damage on an imagined assailant who: mugged him, assaulted him with his own weapon, drugged him, and then broke into his office to shoot said server. According to acquaintances, he had threatened earlier that day to shoot the server and maybe himself."

Comments

Re:"Automatic" doesn't mean what you think it mean

[Shakrai]

That's not exactly what I meant. I meant what is it called when, upon firing the last round in the magazine, the slide stays back, allowing you to load another magazine, and then hitting a button to release the slide forward, chambering another round?

It's called a slide lock. When the last round is fired the slide comes back as it normally does but catches on a lock that is usually engaged by contact with the follower in the now empty magazine.

You can hit the "button" to release the slide lock as you describe but that's actually not the best way to do it. A better way to bring a pistol back into action after a reload is to pull back on the slide. This requires less fine motor skills than manipulating a small slide lock and also allows you to get the gun back on target faster.

Re:"Automatic" doesn't mean what you think it mean

[Shakrai]

Competition shooting != self defense shooting. If you are under attack you will experience the flight or fight response. Part of that response includes the degradation of your fine motor skills. Those skills are required to manipulate small controls like the slide lock. They are not required to grab onto the slide and bring it back enough to release the slide lock. You can also do this without having to change your grip on the gun.

Ever handle a Glock? Their slide lock is difficult to operate by hand under the best circumstances. Trying to do it while fighting for your life is going to be that much harder. Glock's own literature recommends the slide-pull method of releasing the lock. It's really the best method of bringing a semi-auto back into action after a reload. If you doubt this, take some force-on-force classes sometime and try it both ways. After your way gets you "killed" a few times you'll see that I'm right.