With very few exceptions, people are in fact stronger than the slide springs. Successfully racking the slide on a semi-automatic handgun is a matter of technique.
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The idea is to use natural leverage and larger muscles rather than relying on the small and weak ones in fingers and thumbs. Without instruction, most folks will hold the gun with their firing hand and pinch the back of the slide with their support hand thumb and index finger to pull back the side.
While the strong hand is perfectly capable of keeping the frame still against the spring pressure of the slide, those thumb and finger muscles are not exactly ideal for the job. You’ve got much larger arm and body muscles right nearby doing nothing, so why not use them? If you’re having difficulty racking the slide of your pistol, try following these steps.
First, take a firing grip with your strong hand, making sure that your FINGER IS OFF THE TRIGGER.
Bring it close to your body.
Next, flatten your support hand and turn it, so that your palm is facing the ground.
Instead of pinching the slide with thumb and fingers, we’re going to use the whole hand.
Extend your support hand thumb and jab it right into your sternum.
Move your whole flat support hand over the back half of the slide of your gun.
Close it so that your palm is on one side of the slide and fingers on the other. Now you’re grasping that slide with your larger hand and arm muscles instead of thumb and finger mini-muscles. Squeeze!
Keeping your support arm in the same place, push the bottom half (frame) of the gun forward like you’re going to jab the target with the muzzle.
See what I did there? Rather than pulling the slide backward, I’m tricking you into pushing the whole gun forward. This may seem like a minor distinction, pushing the frame forward as opposed to pulling the slide back, but I assure you, it creates a massive change in leverage. Just ask a tug of war champion whether it’s hard to hold in place or pull the opposing players toward you. In this case, you’re using big muscles to hold the slide still and even bigger muscles (shoulder and arm) to move the frame forward. As the politicians like to say, “Trust me!”
When you have pushed the gun as far forward as the slide will allow it to go, quickly release the slide with your support hand. Let the springs snap the slide closed. Don’t ever try to ease the slide back with your hand. Pistols are designed to work properly when the springs do their job with gusto. If you “help” the slide to close slowly and gently, you’re just asking for a malfunction.
A word of caution!
Be careful that you don’t do the side slide swipe. The Side Slide Swipe happens when a shooter tries to rack the slide of a semi-automatic pistol while disregarding the direction of the muzzle. Standing at the range, facing the target, the natural motion to rack a slide is (from a right-handed point of view) to point the gun to the left, grasp the slide with your left hand, and rack. The only problem with this method is that your gun is pointed directly at all the shooters to the left of you.
It actually takes a bit of effort and concentration to rotate your body so that the gun is pointed downrange while racking the slide.
