When I originally got the Honor Guard, I felt that I was getting a pistol that would change the game for manufacturers of small pistols. The pistol is modular and seemed to have everything I needed in a pistol from the size and the rough grip texture, to the orange paint on the front sight for fast acquisition. But there is one thing that this pistol gives be problems on that I just can not forgive. When I first got my Honor Guard, I took it down to my range with a bucket of my reloads and loaded up the two magazines that came with it. I was not sure exactly what to expect, but I had an expectation that this was gonna be love at first shot. OOPS! Sure, the first couple of shots went off, but then on the fourth shot, the brass got stuck. I had a legit stuck case issue. I had to get a punch rod and ram that case out. This was the theme for more than half of the rounds I put through the Honor Guard. Now, I know a few of you picked up the fact that I was shooting reloads through the pistol. Just to be clear, the reloads are the only thing that gave me issues. Factory ammo worked beautifully. But the reloads seemed to lack a full resizing. Now this had not been an issue in any other pistol, so naturally the Honor Guard didn't earn much in the way of slack. I shoot alot, and reloading takes my reloading costs by half so I can continue conducting reviews at a cost that doesn't drain my account so dramatically. In my basic understanding of how pistols work, I put a few pieces of evidence together to try to understand whether the chamber was just tight due to manufacturing specs being tighter than others, or if this barrel was not made properly. In several reviews, the Honor Guard was noted to have a similar barrel length to other more popular pistols, but it seemed to come out on top in muzzle velocity of almost all loads fired. Now this could be for a couple reasons since it doesn't employ any special designs like chamber steps or polygonal rifling that is designed to give a slight edge in velocity and consistency. So, how could Honor Defense be having their barrels made to pull this off? Well, after talking to the owner of the company, having a slightly tighter chamber is not a bad thing since many companies will make their chambers a little bigger to make them more capable of taking a wider variety of ammo, to include reloads. According to the owner, following SAAMI specs for a chamber can result in some cases of ammo sensitivity. I tried to get this fixed early and there was slight pushback, and it resulted in me altering my method of resized to fix the issue and make it work. Unfortunately, it merely resulted in periodic malfunctions to the point that it was hard to tell if they were legitimate issues, or just reload issues. It seems that all those stuck cases actually caused some damage to the extractor and I had to get it replaced. After replacing the beefy extractor, I tested it and it is good to go. Next step is asking for some replacement parts such as checking out a new barrel and getting a new spring for the sear since it seems that the old pistols had springs that were weak and caused the pistol to be less than drop safe. Being drop safe is a polarizing subject, but I am on the side that carry pistols need to be drop safe. What if you get into a physical hands-on situation and you take the altercation to the ground? you may smack the pistol real hard and set it off. The obvious risk is shooting yourself or someone/something that shouldn't be shot. This is a risk I am not willing to take. Many at the company stood up for the pistol when asked and mentioned their experience with firearms and not dropping them. But, as a civilian, it is a real issue since there are other situations when it becomes necessary. Such a big situation is when police respond to a shooting. You will be told to drop your gun immediately. If you do not, and if you do anything but open your hands, it is likely that you will get Swiss cheesed. And if the gun goes off, you may encourage getting shot out of flinching or the gun going off and hitting someone/something. All these examples are just my view and why I have certain issues with the pistol. other than that, I love the pistol and want to trust it to do it's job when the time comes. That requires it to be able to work with my reloads and be drop safe, which my pistol is not. We shall see if the company is willing to play ball and help me out. If not, I am not sure what I will do. This pistol has everything I want but isn't functioning to my standards. Usually that is fixed by the manufacturer wanting to please their customers. This may not be the case with this company, so I have to consider what will happen and plan for different outcomes. Is the pistol worth paying money for parts, or is it destined to be a safe queen or sold because it no longer has a use? It is all in the air at this point. I mean...what would you do?
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