Another Notch against Magazine Disconnects

Old post on my dislike of Magazine Disconnects. I consider them a “Safety Device” that makes your gun MORE dangerous, and potentially something that could disable your gun when you need it most.

The idea that dropping the magazine on a gun makes it “Safe” encourages lax gun handling, and adds the bizarre scenario where one would take a “Safe” gun and insert an empty magazine (A step I might add is necessary in many guns equipped with this feature for things like disassembly and dry fire) and if you have not properly cleared the firearm (the whole argued reason why a Magazine Disconnect is a rational idea) your “Safe” gun will now fire a single round when you pull the trigger.

That and having your mag not properly seated, or bumped loose will now make your defensive gun a brick until you remedy that.

Now this:

YIKES!!! I haven’t spent much time rooting around in the guts of a hi-point, so I don’t know how easy it is to induce this malfunction in less extreme conditions. I have monkeyed around with the disconnect on an M&P and I will say that the disconnect is pretty protected from pocket lint and random debris….but if the gun was dripping with mud or grit (or snow in a cold environment) and the action is cycling I certainly could see sand, grit, or some ice gumming up that device….tho thinking about it, on the M&P it might be more likely to jam the safety OFF….that’s really what I did to disable mine, I removed the cam track that engages the trigger bar when the disconnect arm is moved by an inserted magazine, and jammed it closed with a sufficient spring.

Either way, we as gun nuts need to be sharing our knowledge about these “Safety Features” so that people can start thinking about them as terrible ideas, rather than good ones.

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4 Responses to Another Notch against Magazine Disconnects

  1. McThag says:

    My High Power and several of the .25’s have this bug.

    They retain them because they are part of a collection, not part of something for use.

    I did end up with the manual safety on my M&P9 though and Willard had me remove the magazine safety from his “new” M&P9.

  2. Loess says:

    The mag disconnect in a hipoint is super easy to remove. It’s just a flat spring behind one of the grip panels. I took it out of mine to do some testing in the ransom rest, and it was as simple as pulling it out.

    • Weerd Beard says:

      Good article, I hope everybody goes and reads it.

      I have 2 issues.

      #1 all your statements about administrative handling are correct. The argument of “just bye safe and you don’t need a magazine dissconect” are as glib as the nay sayers of the new Glock “Gadget”.

      That being said there are many administrative handling actions require the trigger to be pulled. A Glock (or my Colt 1908 which has a MD) needs the striker to be dropped to disassemble the gun. Yes guns like the M&P and the Ruger SR series have figured this out but many guns with a MD require inserting a magazine into a clear gun for administrative handling.
      Also if you do dry fire practice you can’t do it without a magazine in the gun.

      and of course this all creates the paradox of inserting an EMPTY magazine into a “Safe” gun and now having a gun that will fire when the trigger is pulled

      Yes all of this can be avoided with good gun handling, which is the whole point of your defense of the MD, so I’d call that point a wash, as it “Solves” some problems and introduces just as many.

      #2 where could you be in a scenario when a MD might brick a gun in common shooting scenarios.

      The simple answer is your holster gets bumped or squeezed in your day to day, and your magazine either is fully ejected, or just barely falls off the catch.

      a tap rack gets the gun running again, but now we’re dealing with all the reasons why condition 3 carry is a terrible idea.

      and of course there’s the exhibit we see in this video where foreign materiel jams the device.

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