Pistol Testing Methodology

Hey guys, welcome back. So, today I want to take a moment to explain the testing methodology that we've been using to test various handguns recently. I've seen a lot of comments on the videos that we've posted making statements or asking questions about that particular methodology. One of the statements I've seen made is that the tests aren't representative of anything real world and that the poster was saying things like, I would never purposely put my gun in mud, sand, water, dirt, whatever. And that kind of breaks down to really there being two different types of gun owners out there. There are gun owners that buy guns, take them straight home, clean them, admire them, put them in the safe. They may or may not take the guns out occasionally, shoot them at the range, shoot for groups, go home, q-tip clean them, put them back in the safe. They may show them to their friends as conversation pieces. They're very prideful of the ownership and I certainly understand that type of gun person. I call them gun collectors. I'm a gun collector myself in many regards. There are other people that view guns as tools. Tools that they use to defend themselves or their loved ones with. There are also people that carry these tools professionally. Police officers, military people, security people, things like that. For the collector, there's probably very little relevance to the testing that we're doing. You're right. You're probably not going to take your Legion out and throw it in the mud. You're not going to take your brand new VP9 out and throw it in the mud. You're not going to carry it. You're never going to find yourself rolling around on the ground with a bad guy trying to defend your life with it because you're not carrying it like you would carry a concealed weapon. It's because you're keeping it in a box, carrying it to the range back and forth and putting it back in the safe. So yeah, I can understand that. No, the tests have no relevance to you whatsoever and it's purely entertainment. I would say that the testing that we do, for the most part, is purely entertainment anyway because it's non-scientific, which I'll touch upon here briefly in a moment. So then there's a second type of gun owner, such as myself, that carries a handgun every day for self-defense. For me, I want to know how my gun's going to perform in the worst possible conditions. Right now, I'm standing outside where I have water and mud right here at my feet. When I go home, I'm going to have to clean my boots off because I'll track mud into the house. If Sam, who's behind the camera, decided to start beating on me and I thought, well, I have to defend myself and he had me on the ground rolling me around and I'm trying and punching me and I'm trying to get my weapon out, I may get my gun dirty. And so that's kind of how we've designed these tests. People have done tests in the past where, and myself included, where it's not very scientific. Not that any of these tests are truly scientific, but there's really no control over the elements that the firearm's being exposed to. We've thrown guns like the VP9 in the creek that's right over here by my right shoulder and the water that runs through there is kind of a nasty, gritty type of water. The water carries a lot of sediment, a lot of sand-type pebbles in it, and that's probably what ultimately choked the VP9. It just got a pebble in there and it wouldn't release. It wouldn't come out. So it wasn't just drinking glass water. It was the fact that it's really a nasty little creek that would probably choke an AK-47. So that's not very scientific. And so what we've done with the tests is tried to make them a little bit more controlled, a little bit more scientific. Now, to be truly scientific, I would have to have a sample set larger than one, and I've said that in the videos already. I would have to have a sample set of 10 or 20 or 30, but sadly I don't have the financial resources to go out and buy 20 Glock 17s, 20 PPQs, 20 Legions, and test them scientifically and try to control every little environmental exposure they may come in contact with during that testing. I just don't have the time, money, or resources in general to do that type of testing. So we're using a sample set of one. Now, the elements that we're exposing the guns to, and we're going to try to break the tests down into two basic components, an elemental test, and then what we call the gauntlet. The elemental test is something that we're trying to make it as real world as possible, okay? You're probably not going to get a grappling match with a bad guy rolling around the ground trying to fight for your life, going from water to mud to sand to dirt, right? It's probably going to be one element that's going to be exposed to, maybe water in a parking lot, mud on the ground, sand if you live in a desert environment or near a beach. You're probably going to only expose the weapon to one of those types of elements should you fall to the ground with a gun, fall out of your hands, whatever. So that elemental test is basically trying to test the gun's resistance to those different types of elements. We load the gun, make it ready, round to the chamber. We're not locking the slide open. We see a lot of that stuff on YouTube where people are taking the guns, locking the slides open, and packing stuff into the interior of the gun. And honestly, guys, that'll ultimately kill any gun. I don't care how reliable it is. So we've taken the guns, we're putting them one at a time into each one of the basic elements that we wanted to test for. So we start off with water, then we go to sand, then we go to dirt, and then we go to mud, rinsing the gun off at every step during the testing process. So, and we know that that actually works because most of the guns that we've tested have done fine in that elemental test with the cleansing between each step simply by dunking the gun in water. If the gun passes that, then we move over to what we call the gauntlet, and we just go from water to sand to mud to dirt without a rinsing cycle. We don't clean the gun. Now, this is not representative of anything that you might encounter in the real world. We're just trying to see if we can kill the gun. And with the exception of one pistol so far, we have managed to Now, several of the pistols have made it through the elemental tests without issue, only to fail in the gauntlet. We've only had one pistol make it through both the elemental and the gauntlet without a failure, and that was the AREX REX-01 pistol. So also along that line, we're not locking the slides back. We're readying the gun, putting it around in the chamber, putting a magazine in it, and we're just pressing it down into the different elements as if you were to fall on your weapon and push it into the ground. Again, as basic as you can ever imagine a test could be, but we've seen some guns fail it. But basically we're just trying to simulate whether or not you've pressed the gun into that type of element, pulled it up, and had to use it in a self-defense situation. So we think that the testing methodology is sound. It's kind of rudimentary, and I don't think, at least with the elemental test, isn't expecting too much from any particular firearm. The gauntlet is an extreme test. So that's why we've chosen the methodology, and that's why we're going to continue to use it going forward. Now, we will make subtle changes as we go along, and again, it's a lot of entertainment. It's as scientific as we can make it, but I would not recommend you guys buy or sell a gun based upon the results of this testing. It's non-conclusive. If a gun fails in these tests, it could have just had a bad day, all right? It may not be representative of 20 different sample sets in manufacturing, even in modern manufacturing, guns will have failures. They will have a gun that slipped through the quality control process that is out of spec, that isn't working properly, and that's to be expected of any type of manufacturing—guns, cars, airplanes, whatever. So this test does not take that into account. We have a sample set of one. So we don't want to condemn any particular firearm unless it just completely fails in a miserable way. We don't want to completely condemn any firearm, but even then, it's a don't recommend you guys go out and buy or sell a gun based upon the tests that you see here. This is somewhat informative. It gives you a good idea of how a particular gun may work in a real-world situation with the elemental tests, and just basically, it's for entertainment. So, I will put a link to this video in all future tests because I wanted to explain what our rationale was, why we've structured the tests the way that we have, so that you guys would have a better understanding. So, if you have any questions about the methodology that we're using, please post those questions or comments down below. We will read those comments. We try to stick around at least for the first couple of days after we post a video to read your comments and respond to them and to digest them. Also, if you haven't already, please swing by and check out Copper Custom. It's our online store. If you would like to support the Military Arms Channel, it's the best possible way to do so. Also, please be sure to check out Full30.com. It's Full30.com. We've taken all the web's best firearms content creators and brought them under one roof, and that is Full30.com. Thanks again for watching, everybody. Thanks for all the support over the years. We'll talk to you guys soon.