“Prioritize your passion. It keeps you sane.”
Criss Jami
UDs
Over the past fifty years, we’ve gone from double-action revolvers with long, 12-14lb triggers, to striker-fired auto-loading pistols with short, (sometimes as light as) 5lb triggers!
With a carry-pistol, that is intended as a piece of emergency-safety, personal-defense equipment, “perfect solutions” are unlikely. “Reasonable compromises” are the best we’re going to be able to do!
Since such a specific pistol, designed and intended for “serious purposes,” is correctly carried, loaded (round in the chamber) all day long, day-in and day-out, a trigger of “reasonable” length-of-travel and pull-weight is required for the sake of the safety of the carrier and of bystanders. We surely want all discharges on the part of such a pistol to be carefully aimed and “intended!”
Thus, a trigger that is “too short and too light” will make a disturbing number of UDs “reasonably foreseeable.” On the other side of the ledger, a trigger that is “too long and too heavy” will yield a pistol that is incompatible with any kind of relevant accuracy, nor speed.
So, our search for a “reasonable compromise” is never-ending! And “settlements,” arrived at by individuals for their individual needs, will invariably differ from choices make by police executives looking for “issue pistols” to be supplied to a large number of officers, of different sizes, genders, abilities, duty-arenas, and levels of personal interest. Accordingly, bring sheriff or chief of police is no picnic, as there is no chance you’re going to make everyone happy!
Statistics will clearly show that, as trigger pull-weights go down, qualification scores (on average) go up. When triggers get heavier, qualification scores (on average) go down! As noted however, popular pistols that are “easy to shoot” may be “a little too easy!”
With our modern generation of autoloading service pistols, a trigger pull-weight of 6-7 lbs is what manufacturers have decided is “about right for most people.” Most agree that a trigger pull-weight of less than 5lbs is too light (and thus too dangerous) for a serious carry-pistol. Likewise, a trigger pull-weight in excess of 9lbs most agree is needlessly heavy and gratuitously compromises the pistol’s utility (at least for some).
As I’ve testified under cross-examination more than once, “Counselor, ‘Guns are Dangerous.’ Your client needs to be more careful!”
In the end, guns are, and are designed to be, “deadly weapons,” so I’m not sure “safe gun-handling” is even possible. However, “careful gun-handling” surely is, and our equipment-selection and training philosophy must always tend in that direction.
With the current state of technological development, all UDs are probably not preventable, but the vast majority are, yet I don’t think it is possible to make the deadly weapons, that we all currently train with and carry, any more “safe” than they are now, without fatally compromising their utility.
Thus, risk will always attach to “having guns in your life.” Yet, risk equally attaches to “not having guns in your life” Perfection, like the speed of light, is legitimately pursued, but never reached!
“When all details fit perfectly, something is probably wrong with the story.”
Charles Baxter
/John
