Thecollector said:
And what was that talk about the full auto capability?
The excerpt says that the firing pin is stuck.
If the firing pin of a typical semi-auto pistol sticks far enough forward to project from the breech face, the pistol can theoretically slam-fire. This occurs when the projecting firing pin strikes the primer of the first cartridge as the chamber is loaded, setting it off without the trigger being pressed. This may cause an uncontrollable chain reaction in which the gun continues to fire full-auto with no shooter intervention until the magazine is empty.
This is a VERY dangerous condition for two primary reasons. First, the shooter can't stop the gun from firing; he/she can only wait until the ammo runs out, hopefully while maintaining control over the direction of the muzzle! Second, semi-auto pistols are NOT designed to fire this way, and typically fire slightly out of battery (i.e. the cartridge goes BANG before the breech closes all the way), potentially resulting in a case rupture and a serious kB!-
OR the pistol may spontaneously and violently disassemble itself.
This is the reason why almost all modern pistol manuals advise the shooter to check that the firing pin is not projecting prior to loading the pistol. Furthermore, most pistols are designed in such a way that it's extremely unlikely for the firing pin to get stuck in this position. (I don't know if the Sirkis is particularly prone to this problem.)
FWIW a slam-fire is similar to how a typical open-bolt submachine gun works; such guns often have a fixed "firing pin" consisting of a simple nub on the breech face. However, the trigger mechanism of most pistols holds the firing pin back while the bolt (slide) is
forward, whereas the trigger of an open-bolt SMG is designed to hold the bolt
back; this allows the shooter to stop the bolt from moving and thus cease full-auto fire when the trigger is released. A typical pistol's trigger can't control the firing pin if it's stuck or if the slide is prevented from going fully into battery. Furthermore, submachine guns are designed to prevent or at least contain case ruptures.
