12Oct04

On the Steyr Pistol from a friend and colleague:

"A student brought a Steyr 40 to a course last week. It has a manua l ' safety button' mounted inside the trigger guard in front of the trig ger, which requires the shooter to push it up prior to persuading the pistol to shoot. The owner several times forgot to do this, which, of course, caused him to fail to fire when he desperately needed to.

The owner told me had gone to a Colorado Springs gunshop to buy a G23, but was talked into the Steyr by a sales clerk. The clerk glowed when describi ng the 'loaded chamber indicator,' the =80=98extra=E2=80=99 manual safety above the trigger, and the 'key lock' safety, which renders the weapon completely sterile. I suspect the 'great deal' was mostly an effort on the part of the clerk to unload this dog which had been, I'm sure, sitting on the shelf for a long time.

To make things worse, the new Steyr owner had purchased several hundred rounds of crap ammunition at a gunshow. Got a 'real deal' o n it too! It was all nearly useless. Out of the first one hundred rounds, sixty failed to f ire on the first hammer strike. He then switched to CCI, and had no further am mo issues.

This shooter discovered that 'LOADED CHAMBER INDICATORS,' M ANUAL SAFETIES, GRIP SAFETIES, AND KEY LOCKS ARE PUT ON GUNS PRIMARILY FOR THE BENEFIT OF T HE MANUFACTURER, NOT THE USER. All this time, my plain-vanilla G23 worked jus t fine!

He also learned that scrimping on ammo is an exercise in futility and frustration."

Comment: The foregoing is a typical scenario. We try to advise students to

bring to our courses reliable, plain-vanilla pistols, good holsters, and factory ammunition. An unhappy experience awaits those who don't!

/John