Failure Points

Caleb is very humble to post this video:

He’s running a Ruger SR9c Ok He’s Using the Gunblog 9 which is essentially a Glock 26, or a S&W M&P9c but with a Thumb safety (The M&P Pistols can have a thumb safety as a factory option, as well as the magazine disconnect that comes standard with all SR9 Rugers, and both features are completely absent from all Glocks)

He misses the thumb safety on his draw and the results are a VERY slow time from a shooter who a lightning-quick.

THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THE DAO* TRIGGER PULL ON A GLOCK OR S&W THAT REQUIRES A MANUAL SAFETY!!!

Of all the goofy stuff I see in the revolver world, be it the Chiappa Rhino or the Ruger LCR or the S&W Bodyguard 38 they are doing strange and goofy things with the tried-and-true revolver platform which is essentially unchanged for almost 100 years, but NONE of those things are adding a thumb safety.

I will also note that a failure to properly seat his magazine, or a slight bump to the mag release could also brick his gun (Not to mention any of these parts breaking).

I would not carry a Ruger SR9 or SR9c, nor recomend somebody else carry them. I also only recomend the S&W M&P pistols for personal protection so long as they were sold without, or had disabled, the magazine disconnect, and do not have the manual safety. I also refuse to buy the Massachusetts legal Kahr PM9.

Don’t carry a gun with unnecessary failure points.

* I understand that all of the above listed striker-fired pistols do not use a true double-action system.

** Please forgive the author for he carries a 1911 that has a SAO trigger and the necessary manual safety, but also a grip safety that is superfluous, or possibly would preclude the necessity of the thumb safety.

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0 Responses to Failure Points

  1. Motor-T says:

    Er… Caleb claims to be shooting his 9mm 1911 in this vid. I don’t think that he has been using the Ruger thumb safety. So… when he went back to the 1911 brainfade struck.

  2. Mike w. says:

    You know how much I dislike thumb safeties on anything but SAO’s, and mag disconnects are terrible. That said, I’ll deal with thumb safeties by not using them. I do own a gun with both of these crappy features, (FS22) and I do like the Bersa Thunder .380 as a inexpensive carry piece.

    • Thomas says:

      My Bersa Thunder got it’s Mag safety disabled and lives with a round in the tube and the safety OFF. Works fine like that, like a revolver on the first stroke and SA after…It’s the Concealed Carry special, and the way they melted the safety lever to be low drag and such makes it basically NON-FUNCTIONAL if you have sweaty hands. Worse than the regular Thunder safety. Took a bit of figuring to make the mag safety go away, but wasn’t THAT bad. Probably a liability issue, but so is most of the rest of my existence. Pinned grip safeties on the 1911s probably wouldn’t look good in court either…

  3. Linoge says:

    Heh. As I was reading this post, my fingers were warming up for a “Remind me what you carry, again?” comment. Good thing there was a disclaimer ;).

    This is honestly one of my concerns over procuring and carrying a 1911 – I am definitely of the “same interface” mindset, in that I should not have to think about what I am carrying, or how it operates, when I am forced to draw it. I do not want to pull out a 1911 and forget the safety, or draw my PPS and have my brain go into vacuum lock fumbling about for a safety.

    Train what you carry, whatever it is… and, regardless, it is better that it happened where it did, than somewhere where it definitely mattered…

    • ZK says:

      It’s a real concern, as this video shows. Most of the time, it’s either just second nature or a consequence of taking a good firing grip. But if it’s not second nature (because someone’s been shooting a different platform) and one doesn’t get a good firing grip (as Celeb says he didn’t here) then, oops. It’s happened to me on the range at least once.

      That said, I’d theorize that it takes a good amount of rounds through a different platform to cause this sort of issue. That is, it’s much less likely to be an issue if you shoot, say, a magazine a week (for each gun) than if you shoot a magazine through the 1911 followed by 500 rounds through the PPS (my hand hurts just writing that).

  4. ZK says:

    I compete with a M&P (a real one, not a horrible one with an awful thumb safety) but all my defensive guns are 1911s. This has led to the dreaded “Why isn’t my gun shooting!” safety brain-fart. It’s non-optimal, and something I have to train around. In the long term, I’ll get a 9mm 1911 and fix the problem technologically. But then I’d have to shoot Enhanced Service Pistol in IDPA, which is much harder to make Master in.

    And Caleb is shooting a 1911 unless Ruger now makes a 5″ stainless SR9c :-).

    No magazine disconnects, period. I’ve seen Master-class shooters fail to seat magazines during matches, and not get bangs before.

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