There’s a guy on the forums that I frequent that’s been having very chronic feeding issues with his Sig Sauer P250 .40 cal. He arranged for Sig to take a look at it and fix the issue, but Sig returned the gun, stating there was nothing wrong with it and that they weren’t able to duplicate the issue. He complained when it continued to have feed failures, so they suggested he replace the recoil spring. The gun owner was almost livid because he thought they should’ve done that when they had it (but remember, they couldn’t reproduce the issue). So, he replaced the recoil spring and shot 200 rounds through the gun with the new spring…the feed issues went away, but now he’s having an issue where the slide stays partially open after ejecting the round (he has to manually cycle the firearm).
Both the feed symptoms that he initially experienced and the resulting issue of the slide partially cycling after brass is ejected are chronic signs of loose holding or what’s called ‘limp wristing’. Limp wristing can be caused by a loose hold or insufficient strength when holding the firearm while shooting. Polymer guns are more prone to limp wristing than all-metal guns, since polymer can flex.
The gun owner swore that it wasn’t limp-wristing when he was having the initial feed issue and stated that he’s shot other .40 cal handguns without issue. He specifically mentioned a .40 Beretta M9, which is an all-steel gun, which would probably not have such issues. After he swapped in the new recoil spring, he then had the partial cycling issue, which is yet another symptom of limp-wristing.
The fix for this is usually to firm up your hold on the weapon, if possible, change to heavier grain ammo, or to get a different handgun. The P250 is a convertible gun. I believe a .357 P250 can be converted to .40 and vice versa…I’m not sure of 9mm. I think 9mms can’t be converted because there’s not enough room under the slide to accomodate the larger barrels…you’d have to get the slides for the .40/.357 for that to work. The gun owner might be able to convert it to 9mm but I doubt he’ll be willing to spend more money on a gun he currently can’t shoot without cycling issues.
More information on loose holding can be found here. The link to the forum thread documenting the issue is here.