Mystery of the Keyholing Springfield OSP

In several recent matches I noticed that my friend’s Springfield OSP pistol seemed to be occasionally keyholing the bullet. Since we were in the middle of a match each time, we could not investigate the issue.

However, in a subsequent practice session my friend noticed a bullet hole that appeared to be a keyhole. Ultimately, his Springfield OSP keyholed two out of approximately 300 rounds fired in the practice session. One occurred within the first five shots he fired that day and one occurred toward the middle of the practice session. In the first instance, my friend called all five shots in the center of a standard IDPA target; however the bullet struck the target in the head so it clearly was not flying true (see picture on the right).

The XD-M’s keyholing was inconsistent with one keyholing bullet spinning on the vertical axis and the other spinning on the horizontal axis. Each time the keyholing shot was clearly not a double hit because we accounted for every shot on the target (see pictures below).

 

So what is keyholing? If the rifling does not properly stabilize the bullet as it exits the barrel, the bullet will begin to wobble or it may begin to tumble end over end or sideways. When an unstable or keyholing bullet strikes the target it is often rotating/tumbling so fast that it will leave an oblong hole. We call this effect keyholing because the oblong holes sometimes resemble a keyhole.

In a firearm in good repair that is firing bullets designed for that firearm, the barrel’s rifling imparts a spin on the bullet as it travels down the bore. This spin stabilizes the bullet in flight and makes it travel with the nose pointed forward. The optimal amount of spin (also known as the twist of the rifling) is a function of the firearm’s bore diameter, the bullet’s length (a function of the bullet’s weight), and the bullet’s velocity (see the Greenhill Optimal Twist Rate Formula).

Keyholing can result from several causes. It typically happens because the barrel’s rifling twist isn't adequate for the weight, shape and profile of the bullet being used. If the bullet is not spun fast enough going down the barrel, it loses stability before reaching the target and begins to tumble.

Significant damage to the barrel’s muzzle can cause gas to escape past the bullet unevenly as it exits the barrel and result in instability. The barrel’s rifling may be worn out (shot out) and as a result it is not imparting enough spin to the bullet as it leaves the barrel. Leading in the barrel could cause the bullets to fail to properly engage the rifling.

My experience with keyholing firearms is limited to military M16’s with barrels that were clearly “shot out.” With these firearms almost every shot was rotating on the horizontal axis and the holes in the target were almost always oblong.

The pistol in question is a fairly new Springfield XD-M 4.5 inch OSP 9mm with approximately 10k rounds through it (yes, we tend to shoot a lot). The barrel shows no sign of any damage and the rifling is crisp so we do not believe it is shot out.* The Springfield XD-M barrels are 1:10 or one rotation every ten inches which is optimal for the typical weight range of 9mm bullets. There was no leading in the barrel—my friend is very thorough with his firearms maintenance.

The load he was shooting was an Xtreme 147gr plated hollowpoint 9mm bullet loaded with Winchester primers, 3.5 grains of Hodgdon Titegroup** assembled on a Dillon Super 1050. This is a load he has used for at least ten years and it has never presented any issues. He has not changed the load nor the loading process.

Xtreme swages its 147gr copper plated hollowpoint bullets so they are presumably very consistent in shape and weight. It is possible that Xtreme’s plating is uneven for some bullets; however there is no visual indication of this.

At this point, the actual cause of the keyholing behavior remains a mystery. The simplest explanation is that there were some bullets out of specifications. My friend purchased these bullets several years ago in a lot of 17k in a single container. Perhaps some of the “out of spec bullets” just happened to be in that portion of the container. Pure speculation on my part—we’ll see if the keyholing continues.

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* I have a Springfield 9mm XD with over 50K rounds through it. It is still acceptably accurate so we don't believe barrel wear is an issue.

** This is not loading data. Always check with the powder company or another vetted source for the proper loading data for a particular round.

Don't Get Shot: Intervening in an Active Killer Incident

Ronald Troyke Retrieving an AR15

On Monday 21 June 2021, Ronald Troyke decided he was going to kill police officers. Troyke left a note in his residence outlining his desire to “. . . kill as many Arvada officers as I possibly can.” Troyke apparently said something to his brother who called the Arvada Police Department (PD) and requested a welfare check. Arvada Police Officer Gordon Beesley and another officer went to Troyke’s residence; however, they were not able to contact him.

Twenty minutes later the Arvada PD received a call about a suspicious person in the Olde Town Square. The department dispatched Officer Gordon Beesley to that call and he arrived shortly thereafter. Officer Beesley got out of his patrol car and walked up an alley to the Olde Town Square.

Ronald Troyke arrived moments later and parked his pickup truck in a parking lot near the Square. Troyke got out of the pickup with a semi-automatic shotgun and ran toward Officer Beesley approaching him from behind. Troyke said something to Officer Beesley and when the officer turned, Troyke shot him twice, killing him.

Troyke then shot out Beesley’s patrol car windows and fired shots into the air. Troyke returned to his pickup truck and exchanged his shotgun for an AR15 rifle and ran back towards the Olde Town Square.

Private citizen Johnny Hurley who was shopping in a near-by Army surplus store heard Troyke’s shots and saw him pass by the store.  Eye witnesses said that Hurley exited the store and warned people at a near-by restaurant that Troyke was returning and to get inside. Hurley then ran to confront Troyke and shot him several times, killing him. Hurley then apparently retrieved Troyke’s AR15 and was holding it when a responding Arvada Police Officer encountered Hurley. When the officer saw Hurley holding the AR15 he shot and killed him.

Although the incident surrounding Hurley’s death is extremely unfortunate, I do not believe the responding officer involved in this incident did anything wrong. The Arvada officer responding to multiple 911 calls of “shots fired, man with a rifle, officer down” arrives at the scene to see a person on the ground with another standing nearby with a rifle in hand. The officer’s actions are perfectly understandable given the circumstances.

It is not unusual for Police through a case of mistaken identity to shoot private citizen “good guys” during a chaotic incident. Unfortunately, this tragic turn of events is often due to the citizen’s own actions. A private citizen taking down a depraved killer knows that they are the good guy and expect others to recognize them as such. Of course, the problem with this is exactly what does a good guy look like?

Johnny Hurley’s prompt action in stopping the murderer Ronald Troyke from killing more innocents is praiseworthy and I am in no way criticizing him. We will never know what led him to pick up Troyke’s rifle, perhaps he was trying to remove it out of Troyke’s reach. However, Hurley clearly didn’t understand how officer’s responding to the scene would view him.

So what should you do in similar circumstances? First, move to a good cover position ideally where you can see the bad guy as well as responding police. If no cover is immediately at hand, put some distance between you and the downed bad guy. If possible, you should chose a position from where you can see the police before they see you. You want to present a non-threatening appearance to responding officers; you absolutely SHOULD NOT have any type of firearm in your hand as the police arrive at the scene. Police often shoot the instant they say “drop the gun!”

If you have holstered your pistol but feel that you must have your hand on it due to the potential of a continuing threat of deadly force from the bad guy, slowly remove your hand the instant an officer arrives on the scene. If an officer you did not see confronts you and demands you show your hands, tell the officer: “I’m going to lift my hand without the pistol.” This is one reason I prefer carrying concealed is that as you see an approaching officer you can simply remove your hand from the pistol that is now concealed from view.

As soon as the first identifiable uniformed officer arrives he or she has command of the situation. Immediately obey the officer’s commands without argument or hesitation.

I have introduced police arriving on the scene (photo realistic targets) in some of my training scenarios and students often fail to immediately obey the officer’s commands and in more than one class actually shot the officer. When I asked afterward why they shot at the officer they either could not explain why, said they did not see the badge (some targets were in complete uniform), or said they did not hear the officers identifying themselves. All of which I’m sure was true. If you do not practice something, it is unreasonable to expect that you will suddenly perform it well under stress—even the artificial stress of a decision-based scenario.

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The SSD Short Range Match: An After Match Report

We held our monthly Sensible Self Defense Short Range Match on 13 June 2021 and the match went very well. We had 22 shooters with five shooting a second gun for a total of 27 scores. The match required a total of 81 rounds assuming no misses, so the shooters had to fire a minimum of 2187 rounds during the match. Total dropped points for all shooters for the match was 544 points.

We use IDPA classification standards to enable the shooters to make an apples-to-apples skill comparison.  IDPA-ranked shooter skill levels the this match were as follows:

   -- Novice: 6
   -- Marksman: 5
   -- Sharp Shooter: 7
   -- Expert: 2
   -- Master: 2 

We used 38 targets during the match and the targets had 153 shots outside the down zero resulting in a 7-10% miss rate (an exact figure is impossible given that some shooters missed the target entirely). Five shooters dropped fewer than five points total for the match and five shooters dropped more than forty points total for the match. One shooter had zero points down for the match.

In 2019 we adopted the Shoot Steel target for the Short Range Match as shown below (the picture on the head is a modification we often make). For scoring we count the B & C-zones (upper chest area) and head (above the shoulder/ neck line as down zero and the D zone is down three. We do not have a down one scoring area. A head shot requires the full diameter of the bullet to be inside the target or it is scored as a miss. Depending upon the course of fire, if the target has the face modification, the entire diameter of the bullet must be within the ocular and nasal cavity scoring lines (and not touching the lines) or it costs the shooter points (+1 second).

We cover all threat targets and occasionally non-threats with T-shirts or other clothing so the shooter cannot see the scoring rings, the taped holes from previous shooters, nor their own hits. If a threat target does not have the face modification, we cover the head with a mask. This requires the shooters to call their shots because they cannot simply glance at the target to judge whether they should reengage.

T-Shirt Covering Target

As I was recycling the targets from our June 21 match, I selected the best target (fewest points down) and the worst target (most points down) for comparison.  On the worst target I noticed something that I routinely see in our matches. In general, most of the shots outside of the “down zero” scoring area were shot low on the target. The worst target shown below had fourteen hits outside the down zero and eleven of these were low on the target.  You can also see that many of the down zero hits were also low on the target. In my experience, this is typical of shooters aiming for the proverbial "center of mass."

When the target is covered with a T-shirt, shooters aiming for the T-shirt's center of mass will likely hit very low in the down zero area with very little margin for error. If the shooter judges the center of mass from the top of the head to the bottom of the t-shirt they will hit the down zero. Experienced Short Range Match competitors have learned that they must aim just below the shirt’s neckline to reliably hit the target’s upper chest and score a down zero for the shot.

The concept of “aim for center mass” is very nebulous as the center of the available mass very likely will not represent where you need to hit if you are trying to stop a threat. "Aim for where you do CPR" is a much better choice. Square ranges and two dimension targets cannot adequately replicate real world three dimension threats. However, the t-shirts and Shoot Steel targets we use in the Short Range Match represent our attempt to train shooters to aim for a target area that is more likely to result in a threat-stopping hit.

 

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Come out and shoot with us on the second Sunday of every month at Cedar Ridge Range in San Antonio, Texas.

For more information go to: www.sensibleselfdefense.com

 

You Only Have To Go Unarmed Once

Inspector Ricky J. Parisian

Not long ago my wife asked me to go to the supermarket for some item. She noticed me take my S&W J-Frame .38 Special out of my pocket and begin putting on my SIG P320. She asked "Do you think you will need that at the store?”

I said of course not. If I actually thought I would need a firearm at the store I either wouldn’t go at all or I would take a rifle. A pistol is for an unexpected, lethal threat that you have to address right that moment. It is not the proper tool for a foreseeable fight. 

It does not matter how many firearms you have at home if you find yourself in a gunfight and didn't bring a gun--you may well die for the oversight. This is an example via Duane Thomas and Tom Givens:

From Jay Hohenhaus, 1994:  My neighbor Ricky J. Parisian was a NY State Trooper who worked with an organized crime task force in White Plains, NY. He was never unarmed on-duty.

However, he was unarmed when he was home in rural Oneonta, NY.  Rick made a habit of not carrying off-duty telling me that the New York State Police discouraged it.

One day Rick went to the grocery store to get chicken for a BBQ and a robber with a sawed-off, single-shot shotgun killed him.

YOU ONLY HAVE TO GO UNARMED ONCE FOR IT TO CATCH UP WITH YOU

He went to the grocery store on the Wrong Day, without his Smith & Wesson 9mm. A disgruntled ex-employee came in with a sawed-off, single-shot .410 shotgun to rob the store. This bothered Rick and he attacked the robber--UNARMED. The gun discharged during the struggle, killing Rick instantly.

Rick’s Tom Campbell-tuned S&W 469 was home in his sock drawer. He had never heard the mindset lecture and interpreted what came down from his leadership as discouraging off-duty carry. The New York State Police DID put on a nice funeral for him.

YOU ONLY HAVE TO GO UNARMED ONCE FOR IT TO CATCH UP WITH YOU

Note: I edited the story above for clarity.

Low Light: Using a Laser on Your Carry Pistol

A Low Light Competitor

During the Sensible Self Defense Academy Low Light Match in April 2021, I experimented the SIG P320 Lima Laser module (with a green laser) that I have on my everyday carry (EDC) pistol. There was a full moon so there was sufficient light to identify all of the targets without a hand held light. For the experiment, I wanted to see if I could use the laser system in low light as effectively as I could the red dot sight during daylight.

The match format was four stages, run twice with a total round count of 82 rounds assuming no misses. We ran all of the stages once during daylight, then ran the stages once again after the sun set. Two stages were home defense scenarios based on actual events that required movement and shooting from cover and two were standards stages, one focusing on running the gun skills and one focusing on reloading.

The experiment showed that yes, the laser system in low light was as effective as the red dot sight during daylight. The total time difference between my pistol daylight runs using the red dot and my low light runs with the laser was 0.29 seconds for the entire match. For this match at least, I ran the pistol with the laser as well during low light as I did during daylight.

Although I used the SIG P320 Lima system, I believe any laser sighting system with a grip switch would have worked equally well (see picture below).

SIG P320 Compact with Lima Laser Module

In a recent class I attended, master instructor Tom Givens of Range Master somewhat downplayed the need to practice under low light conditions stating that you are rarely in total darkness. That may be true for those who live in crowded urban areas or apartment complexes and is certainly true for many commercial parking lots. However, even though I live in San Antonio, Texas, in my neighborhood you can easily find yourself effectively in the dark when outside if there is no full moon. As a result, I find value in practicing under low light conditions. 

The SIG Lima Laser module provides another tool to help you effectively use your pistol to defend yourself and other innocents. A P320 with the red dot, iron sights, and the Lima module provides you with three independent sighting systems. Add a hand-held flashlight and you have the tools to address any lighting conditions you may reasonably encounter in a defensive situation.

Depending upon which study you believe, somewhere between 60 and 85 percent of all police officer-involved shootings occur during the hours of darkness. Although no such data exists concerning private citizen-involved shootings with criminals, since a lot of criminal activity occurs in low light conditions we can assume that there is a likely correlation.

The Sensible Self Defense Low Light Match provides shooters the opportunity to test their low light skills in a variety of scenarios. We will continue these matches later in the fall of 2021 once daylight savings time ends. If you find yourself in San Antonio, we welcome all safe and responsible shooters and would enjoy having you participate.

A Low Light Match With Home Defense Guns

Shotgun in a Home Invasion Scenario

The April 2021 Sensible Self Defense Academy Low Light Match provided an opportunity for all participants to practice their low light skills. Everyone had a great time and learned a few things as well. This match’s theme was home defense and I encouraged shooters to use their everyday carry or home defense firearms.

This match permitted shotguns, pistols, and pistol caliber carbines (PCC). We had six shotgun shooters, eight shooting pistols, and two shooting PCCs. The match format was four stages, run two times with a total round count of 82 rounds assuming no misses. Two stages were home defense scenarios based on actual events that required movement and shooting from cover and two were standards stages, one focusing on running the gun skills and one focusing on reloading.

All shooters shot the match during daylight, then everyone shot the match once again in low light after the sun set with both scores added to produce the final score for each shooter. The fastest overall time went to the PCC with a score of 62.69, then the pistol with a score of 85.53, and then the shotgun with a score of 93.30. There was a bright, full moon so there was some ambient light for the match's low light portion.

Three of the six participants who were shooting shotguns had some sort of serious issue with their shotgun on at least one stage. All stated that they used their shotgun as their primary home defense firearm and those who had issues admitted that they rarely practiced with it. The match once again drove home the realization of just how powerful the shotgun is in trained hands and just how easy it is to fumble the manual of arms without consistent practice—particularly under low light conditions.

The shotgun’s primary weakness is the number of rounds the weapon holds. From a home defense perspective, although admittedly possible, it is unlikely that home invaders will stand and slug it out with a shotgun-armed home owner. Five or six buckshot rounds will probably solve a home invasion problem rendering a speed reload unlikely. If faced with multiple home invaders who do chose to slug it out, the competent defender should load via the “shoot one – load one” technique using proper cover and movement as necessary if there is a lull in the proceedings.

Of course, in competition we are on the timer. This adds pressure to use specialized competition shotguns, specialized ammunition carriers, or other devices that may not be present on the gun (nor practical) if you must use the shotgun to repel boarders entering your home. For me, the “not present” issue is of concern. I want to train and compete with the same equipment I will have in a fight. Therefore, in shotgun matches I keep the gun in the same configuration as I have it in my home. Although I cannot load as quickly as another competitor who is using specialized equipment, I am practicing with my go to gun.

Even so, I was satisfied with my match performance, placing second with the shotgun and winning one of the stages with the fastest time. The stage in question was a standards stage that required no movement nor reloading. It simply measured your ability to run the gun. 

Steve won the shotgun division with a time of 93.30. Steve was consistent with his daylight versus low light shotgun stage runs with a time difference of 1.98 seconds. The time difference between my shotgun daylight runs and my shotgun low light runs was 2.99 seconds. Click here for the video.

I find value in practicing under low light conditions. The Sensible Self Defense Low Light Match provides shooters the opportunity to test their low light skills in a variety of scenarios.

If you enjoy reading these please subscribe. The link is on the upper right side of the page. All that will happen is that you will receive an e-mail when I post an article. Your information will never be distributed.

Come out and shoot with us on the second Sunday of every month at Cedar Ridge Range in San Antonio, Texas.

For more information go to: www.sensibleselfdefense.com