Weapon Familiarization, Mechanism, and Field Stripping
This domain checks that you know the pistol you carry as a machine: its main assemblies, the cycle of operation, its passive safeties, and the operator-level strip and reassembly. It also checks that you know the boundary between what a guard may do and what only an armorer may do.
What you must know cold
- Main assemblies: frame, slide, barrel, recoil spring assembly, magazine.
- Cycle of operation in order: feeding, chambering, locking, firing, unlocking, extraction, ejection, cocking, and return.
- Passive safeties on a typical striker-fired pistol: a trigger-blade safety, a firing-pin (drop) safety, and a drop-safety on the striker. These are not manual safeties and do not replace trigger discipline.
- Field stripping (operator level): remove the magazine, verify the chamber is empty, pull the slide back slightly, release the slide lock, run the slide forward off the frame, lift out the recoil spring and barrel.
Worked example
During a strip, the recoil spring is reinstalled with its open end facing the wrong way. The pistol reassembles, but on the first rack the slide binds and the spring kinks. The reasoning: every part has one correct orientation, and the function check - rack the slide, dry-fire in a safe direction, confirm the trigger resets and the slide locks back on an empty magazine - exists precisely to catch this before the weapon goes back on the belt.
Traps that cost marks
- Stripping without a final chamber check; barrels cannot be removed safely from a loaded pistol.
- Confusing field stripping (permitted, routine) with detail stripping of the striker channel or fire-control parts (armorer only).
- Skipping the post-assembly function check.
- Assuming a weapon "with no safety lever" has no safeties.