Just to expand on 101stAirborneVet’s answer on a pistol being “in battery” for boop -
To make an automatic pistol ready to fire, you insert a loaded magazine, pull back the slide all the way (which takes the pistol out of battery). On the way back, a round (assembled bullet+casing+powder+primer) is stripped from the top of the magazine, and forced into the back end of the barrel. When the slide is all the way back, you release the slide, and the recoil spring moves the slide assembly forward on the frame, and the barrel then locks into the slide ready to fire. There is a lot of detail left out, but that’s the general sequence of events. Once this occurs, the pistol is said to be “in battery”.
When the pistol is fired, the bullet exits the muzzle, and the recoil causes the slide to move backwards on the frame, and mechanism causes the barrel to unlock from the slide (now “out of battery”) so that the spent casing can be ejected on the rearward trip of the slide on the frame, and another round is stripped off of the top of the mag, slide reaches full rearward travel and starts moving forward, and then the barrel and slide lock up and go “into battery” to be ready for the next shot.
If something interrupts the rearward motion of the slide after the pistol is fired, it stops this from happening. It is possible that this happened with Zimmerman. Round fires, slide moves backward and the spent casing ejects, but perhaps the slide catches on an article of clothing instead of moving fully rearward properly and stripping that top round off of the magazine. Instead, the mag is left full, and slide / barrel / frame are left in an un-locked-up, out of battery configuration.
That’s probably a little difficult to understand. It’s the kind of thing that if we were sitting over the kitchen table with a firearm, I could show it and explain it in 10 minutes and you would understand it perfectly. Harder to do without props. There’s probably a YouTube out there that would explain it perfectly.
It makes sense. I appreciate it.
I was curious how much force it would take to stop the slide from going back, but didn’t even think about the cartridge being ejected. Was it? Did the slide return to battery? Getting stuck on clothing makes sense, too. I guess a lot of things can go wrong.
I really feel for Zimmerman. I can’t imagine close quarters combat like this. He had to be terrified. Trayvon may or may not have ended up hurting him badly, but how was he to know?
I really don’t get out to shoot enough. I have a great place to do it, but it has been too long since I have. Maybe, I will go out tomorrow. :-)