My home defense gun - a cheap pistol

[Grundy1133]

I hear bad things about taurus. havent experienced anything personally but someone i know had a taurus and the striker mechanism malfunctioned and fired even tho he hadnt pulled the trigger. scary stuff! that was enough to make me not ever buy a taurus lol. if it works for you and is reliable then i say keep on doin what youre doin

He said....

yeah. he told me the story when I was asking for suggestions on a good reliable gun.

[Liberty]

Taurus has received some deserved criticism the last several years, but they do make some good guns that have been well received. The 92 is pretty well made, reliable and safe.The judge and the curve were innovative and we'll received.

I almost bought a 92 at when I was in the market for a 92, when I came upon a very good deal on a Beretta, for a police package, 3 mags for $300. I have been pleased with my change of heart. There are some minor things I prefer about the Beretta though. Never mags. positioning of the manual safety, and the finnish. Still, I have seen very few complaints about the Taurus, other than customer service.

The only recommendation that I would make to the OP is to get some Megar mags. They tend to be more trouble free and more reliable with the slide lock.

[Keith B]

I hear bad things about taurus. havent experienced anything personally but someone i know had a taurus and the striker mechanism malfunctioned and fired even tho he hadnt pulled the trigger. scary stuff! that was enough to make me not ever buy a taurus lol. if it works for you and is reliable then i say keep on doin what youre doin

You can hear bad things about anything out there, doesn't mean it is so. BTW, I am not a Taurus fan.

well since i personally know him and he owned the gun and it happened to him i'll assume it is so... even if it was a freak occurrence, it is enough to make me not wanna buy one. firing without a trigger pull is kind of a big malfunction. a deadly one in fact.

Any gun manufacturer can have issues with a firearm failing to function properly. A lot has to do with quality control during manufacturing and tolerances, materials used, etc. Taurus did go thorough a time when quality control was not very good and the gun your friend has may have been from that era. Also, I always take anyone's report of a firearm being defective with a grain of salt. If you don't know that gun personally, then you don't know if it was possibly mistreated before he bought it used, maybe he has not maintained it properly, maybe it was shot 50,000 times and parts are worn, etc.

I had a friend that had inherited his father-in-law's Colt Gold Cup Match. He asked me to check it out before he shot it. I found that the grip safety was not functioning properly and the trigger was set EXTREMELY light. If you laid it down hard on the table it would drop the hammer!

There are a LOT of Taurus handguns out there and they tend to be decent lower priced firearms, but there can be some that malfunction due to various reasons. Keep your guns maintained and know they are functioning properly, no matter what brand.

[skeathley]

When a gun fires because the slide has gone to battery, that means either

1. the firing pin spring is broken/missing, and inertia drove the FP into the cartridge, or

2. the FP was stuck in the forward position. This is often caused by someone lubricating the FP (it should be dry), and heat baked the lubricant into glue. That can also lead to full-auto mode (slam-fire).

Neither of those is the fault of the mfg, although it could be possible for the spring to be left out during assembly.