I mentioned owning an XD40. When I took it to my second Front Sight experience, it was brand-new. Pulling back the slide was really difficult. Worse than that, I guess I wasn't gripping the weapon firmly enough because I kept getting fail-to-fire episodes.
At first, I thought it might be the ammo, because one of the presenters at Front Sight told us that Winchester White Box evidently had some bad runs and we should retain the boxes if we found bad ammo and report that fact to Winchester. Of course, I didn't pay attention until after the f-t-f's became more common. But by then, my used boxes were buried in the rubbish.
On this second visit, I had my daughter with me. She had an XD9 and had no problems. So I thought it was me and my lame grip after all. I didn't want to say anything to my daughter because I wanted her to have a great experience at Front Sight--and she did.
On our way home, we talked about it. She said she could see I was having f-t-f's from time to time, so when I told her about my frustrations, she said she some other other shooters had taped their grip safety closed. Well, I thought that was a bad idea because the grip safety was put there for a good reason.
When I got home I checked the XD forum and read many pro's and con's about the grip safety. Then I re-read Mel Tappan on "Survival Guns" and he recommended taping the grip safety because they were redundant.
Time to stop here, but I'll have more to say soon.