Maintenance for your firearms is crucial if you carry them daily.  We have all gotten a little spoiled with Glocks that can withstand thousands of rounds in torture tests without a malfunction, but the reality is if you have to trust a firearm for your profession or CCW, you had better keep them clean.

I was reminded of this because a good friend brought over a Kel-Tec that would not extract a live round.  The slide would only move about 1/4″.  He essentially had two choices at that point; fire the gun or find a good way to safely get the round out.

Firing the gun was not an option because of city ordinances, and getting the live round out was going to be tricky.  After consideration we came up with a viable solution.  We would get the extractor off of the case and try to pry the cartridge out.  What made it a little difficult is that the Kel-Tec doesn’t have a slide lock so it took all four hands that we had.

Once the case was out we took some measurements to see if it was an issue with the particular round, but it wasn’t.  A close look showed lots of pocket lint which caused the malfunction.  Evidently the lint got between the case walls and the chamber.  With a larger gun it probably would have been possible to leverage the slide, but the Kel-Tec’s slide is too small.

The bottom line is that if you are relying on a gun for your life, take the time to clean and lube every other week.  It takes no time compared to a lifetime of could have beens.