5 May 04

Manual Decocking:

Last weekend we had a woman join us for a Basic Defensive Handgun Course in MI. She brought with her a S&W 3913LS ("Lady" Smith). The single-column 9mm pistol fit her hand well, and it was light enough for her to carry it comfortably in a belt holster (Comp-Tec "X-Draw"). She was accurate and enterprising, a good and determined student.

However, as with most people with small hands, she found the slide-mounted, two-stage manual decocking lever (found on S&Ws and Berettas) impossible to operate quickly and smoothly. Her master grip had to be radically compromised in order for her to reach the lever with her right thumb. In addition, because the lever is duplicated on both sides of the slide, pulling the slide to the rear invariably pushed the lever down, sterilizing the pistol. It then had to be pushed back up (in order to enable the pistol) via a separate motion of the right thumb. By the end of the program, she was doing as well as could be expected, but decocking was still too slow for her to pass the DTI Proficiency test at anything but the "Beginner" level.

No fan of manual decocking in general, I have come to particularly dislike slide-mounted, two-stage decocking levers, just because I see so many iterations of the foregoing. I recommended to this student that she acquire a S&W 3953 (self-decocking), or a Kahr P9. If she can get her hands around a double-col umn pistol, we can add the G19 and the H&K P2000 to that list. When she bought her 3913, she was told by the salesman that manual decocking was "no big deal." He lied! For her, the pistol turned out to be all but unusable.

A frame-mounted, single-stage, manual decocking lever, found on SIG Pistols, are surely an improvement over the S&W/Beretta system, but, even with that layout, most shooters still must compromise their master grips in order to access the lever. Now that SIG has the DAK trigger, I see no reason for them to produce their pistols (for serious use) any other way.

It is one thing to shoot twenty rounds through a pistol in as many minutes and then casually announce that you "like it." After a thousand rounds over twenty-four hours of carnassial, defensive exercises, negative issues with the pistol will make themselves clear, as they did in this case. With any pistol you select for carrying and serious use, there are going to be things you don't like. We all need to decide whether a particular issue is a "deal-buster" or just a nuisance. For this student, a slide-mounted, two-stage, manual decocking lever fell into the former category.

/John

5 May 04

From a friend in Washington, DC:

"Duncan Hunter, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee recently had a firsthand encounter with Pentagon bureaucracy. His frustration mirrors our own and leads us all to unhappily conclude that, so long as America has bureaucrats, we won't need enemies!

Seems that deployed troops in Iraq are crying for armored vehicles, and not just tanks and APCs. Even Humvees and Trucks need armoring. They are not armored now. The need is critical and immediate. Enter the Army bureaucrac y:

Armor plate is available in the system. It has long since been tested and approved, but, before putting any of it on vehicles, some nervous bureaucrat decided that first it needed to undergo yet another interminable series of ' tests.' So, while the issue is being internally 'debated,' the stee l in question sits around gathering dust. Vehicles in the combat zone continue to be unarmored. To their credit, Marines didn't wait around. A courageous procu rement officer took the personal risk of cutting through red tape and signing off o n the project. Marine vehicles, at least, are getting armor immediately.

We can't blame politicians. The problem is a fossilized military bureaucracy, where saying 'no' is always safe, while saying yes' carries with it great personal risk and no benefit. When something goes wrong, naysayers always have an easier time finding a place to hide than do innovators. So, the courageous are ever made into scapegoats, while weasels routinely weather th e storm and go back to shuffling papers.

Within the military bureaucracy, indeed all bureaucracies, we have this overriding, maniacal preoccupation with the utter eradication of risk and ri sk taking, to the point where everyone seems to have forgotten the original goa l, ie: WINNING THE WAR. Time for heroes to step up to the plate!"

Comment: If it is not too much to ask, perhaps, when the armor issue is settled, we can finally get an effective rifle caliber and maybe even a dece nt pistol!

/John

5 May 04

Comment of SA/DA autopistols from a friend at S&W:

"John- ask any gun company how well self-decocking (DAO) pistols sell to the general public. We can't give them away! I'm sure things are much the same at SIG. Glock and H&K sell them, because they don't offer pistols any other way. As you noted and I agree, DAO pistols make great carry guns, superior to any DA/SA system. No argument there.

Several East Coast states (Maryland is one) now require any new pistol sold to have a 'manual safety.' Police are (of course) exempt. Our DA/S A pistols qualify. Glocks and SIGs do not. This is one reason our management continu es to want to manufacture these guns. Apparently, neither Glock nor SIG thinks the lost business is worth worrying about. Actually, it probably isn't.

Our current-production SA/DA autopistols are precut to allow conversion to a spring-loaded decocker, ie: a single-stage, slide-mounted, decocking lever. We've sold many single-stage, manually decocking pistols to police. Up on t he slide, the decocking lever is not likely to be confused with the magazine-release button, as sometimes happens with SIGs where the two contro ls are right next to each other."

Comment: I suspect the two-stage, manual decocking lever, like the "magazine safety," is something all manufacturers wish had never been invented. I, fo r one, wish neither had ever existed. Label any contraption a "safety," and so me politician (who wouldn't know a gun from a waffle iron) will decide to mandate it. They care about their own safety, not ours!

With an item of emergency, safety equipment, like a pistol, that I carry routinely, the last thing I want on it is some confusing gimmick that will p revent it from working! Those of us who are serious need to have access to serious guns. We can only pray that manufactures, between meetings with politicians and other grasseaters, will think of us every now and then.

/John