But absolutely, let’s hit the range some time.
-
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Trigger upgrades in a SD carry gun
- Thread starter MRH
- Start date
So cite one.
I researched the ammo issue extensively several years ago when Ayoob first came out with this handload crap, and using several specialized search engines, found exactly ONE case where handloads were an issue, and in that case it turns out the reloader put too LITTLE powder in the shell, causing issues on the test that determine how far away you are when you fire a gun. I found exactly ZERO cases about people using "killer" loads. In fact even I was surprised how few hits there were in a national search on "handloads".
So dig into one of those articles and pull up a case.
This is turning into "my cousin knows a fellow . . ."
BTW there are still many small (maybe some large) PD that require that the officer furnish his own gun, usually from a list of acceptable guns, and usually in a common caliber so that ammo can be swapped. Most of these dept. can't spell "armorer" much less have one.
Also, some dept. let senior officers have some discretion about which gun they carry. Several years back, we had a Sgt. whose life was saved when a crazy was able to get the officer's gun, and the Sgt. was able to hit the mag release on his non-issue S&W semi. Sgt. would have been toast with the issue Glock.
Also, some dept. let senior officers have some discretion about which gun they carry. Several years back, we had a Sgt. whose life was saved when a crazy was able to get the officer's gun, and the Sgt. was able to hit the mag release on his non-issue S&W semi. Sgt. would have been toast with the issue Glock.
From the article I posted...
Expert Opinions
One of the best things about being part of the Armed Citizens’ Legal Defense Network is the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of its members, some of whom have worked for decades providing expert witness testimony on exactly these questions. Wanting this article to reach far beyond my own opinion as just one expert witness, I posted the question to several members of our advisory board.
Their thoughts on the topic follow.
JOHN FARNAM
At a 3-gun program here in Colorado earlier this week, a female student was with us, sporting an expensive, custom 5-inch 1911 from a well-known manufacturer, for whom I have a great deal of respect. However, the trigger, crisp and breaking-glass-like as it was, was far too light for a serious, carry pistol. It broke at 3 pounds, and I indicated to her that it was too light for a defensive pistol, in my opinion. She graciously accepted my comments, but she clearly loved her beautiful pistol!
She loved it a little less after a high-stress exercise in which she was required to transition from her rifle (which had just run out of ammunition), to her pistol, and engage a close threat. She smoothly made the transition, drew her pistol, and fired 3 rounds at the immediate threat.
The first 2 were carefully aimed and struck the target in the center, as planned and intended. The third shot was an AD (accidental discharge). The pistol was in full recoil from the second shot and it discharged while still angled upward. It startled her. The round struck the top of the berm, a good distance over the target. She recovered nicely and finished the drill. She transitioned back to her rifle, reloaded it, and then immediately used it to engage several more targets.
Afterward, I asked her about the AD. She was trying to catch the link after the second shot, and it just caught her by surprise. No harm done, but here is the point:
The industry standard for pull-weight on triggers of production pistols is currently 6 to 7 pounds. I think that is about right. I’m sure it’s too heavy in the minds of some, too light for others. While I think 12-pound triggers exhibited by the NY2 Glock Trigger Modification are needlessly heavy. I’m not comfortable with triggers any lighter than 6 pounds, owing to the foregoing.
I consider myself a reasonably competent operator, and I carry routinely. All my carry pistols comply with the foregoing industry standard. 3-pound, or lighter, triggers have no place in my life!
The term, “hair trigger,” has an inherently malignant and unsafe ring to it, particularly among the ignorant. It is predictable that a prosecutor or plaintiff’s attorney will use that term, ad nauseam, when doing his best to establish your “reckless disregard” for the safety of others, when he is able to show that your firearm has a significantly lighter trigger than it did when it emerged from the factory, a modification for which you arranged, not the manufacturer.
In addition, during a real fight, the fine motor coordination necessary to realize what scant speed/accuracy advantage of which a light trigger may be capable, will likely all be a moot point anyway!
My conclusion is that over-tuning of serious guns is folly, dangerous folly! When an out-of-the-box pistol has a trigger that is too heavy for your taste, the best strategy is to look at something else, rather than tinker with what the factory produced.
These comments on the subject were sent to me from a colleague:
“I put an aftermarket, 3.5 pound connector on my Glock, and really liked it. Then one day, shooting in cold weather, with gloves, I realized I could hardly feel the trigger. I have since come to my senses, put the original connector back in, and re-learned to use it properly.”
My friend and colleague, Pat Sweeney, puts it best, as he usually does!
“In writing ‘The 1911: the First Hundred Years’ I had a chance to handle some very early 1911s, pre WWI! They are startling, in that they all have (at least by some standards) ‘heavy’ triggers, 6 to 7 pounds, but crisp and clean. You press the trigger to take up the slack. The trigger stops. Keep pressing, and 6 to 7 pounds later, the hammer falls. You can put a lot of bad guys in the ground, with a trigger like that!”
You bet you can, and all with no ADs, even when in a cold, muddy ditch, at night, in the rain, with bullets whizzing by your ears. That’s what pistols are for!
MASSAD AYOOB
While more training helps with lighter pulls, it also makes lighter pulls less meaningful to performance, and I don’t see training making any difference on this particular issue in court.
Pull weight goes gun by gun, and seems to come down to manufacturer spec, common custom and practice, or both. If Walther puts a 4.5 [pound trigger] into their new striker-fired pistol and calls it good, the user will be more protected than if he put a factory-forbidden 4.5 in his Glock, and the same 4.5 pound pull is well within spec by any standard for the 1911. Go figure.
EMANUAL KAPELSOHN
I have worked in many cases, both civil and criminal, in which trigger pull weight has been an issue, including at least two cases in which the opposition sought to argue that a handgun had a “hair trigger,” a sensational term lacking any technical definition. I’ve also worked in a good number of cases in which the phenomenon of involuntary muscular contraction as a possible cause of unintentional discharge has been an issue, and I have written several articles and taught widely on that topic for over 20 years. I’m currently working on a police shooting case where the deceased had an AR-15 with a 2.5 pound trigger pull that seems to be the result of home gun smithing, to the point where the rifle is unsafe to use for that and several other reasons.
One can extrapolate from my Glock recommendations to other brands of striker-fired and double action only (DAO) pistols; a pistol with no manual safety, a healthy amount of trigger travel, and a pull weight in the range of about 5.5 to 8.5 pounds is fine for a defensive handgun of these action types. Single-action/double-action semi-autos with double action (DA) pulls of 8 to 11 pounds, and single action (SA) pulls in the 4 to 6 pound range are fine. Revolvers with DA pulls of 8.5 to 11 pounds are fine. The DA revolver’s SA trigger pull weight doesn’t concern me much, because I think revolvers should rarely ever be fired single action in defensive use, but 3.5 pounds is the industry’s minimum standard here. When I carry a revolver, it’s usually a double action only.
As to whether a highly trained individual can reasonably use a lighter, shorter trigger pull, my opinion is that almost none of us are as highly skilled as we like to think we are. Keep the game guns (and the tactics that go along with them) separate from the serious weapons.
About 400 years ago, Miyamoto Musashi cautioned us, “Weapons should be sturdy, not decorative.” Words to live by. I am willing, however, to have a trigger pull lightened, within reason, for use by an individual whose hand size and strength don’t allow a heavier pull to be used effectively. But before lightening the pull for such a shooter I would try to find a handgun with a shorter reach to the trigger, smaller grip circumference, etc., even as a custom option if necessary.
JAMES FLEMING
Network board member and trial attorney James Fleming did some research for us into court cases in which the question of light triggers arose. This is what he wrote:
Boy, is this not an easy question to work with. Good luck on the article. Gleaning nationwide cases, here is one illustrative case from California from 2008, a civil action:
Max Birchfield died after a handgun he was holding discharged, apparently accidently, and shot him in the chest. This happened in the bedroom of Leandra Sweatt, Max’s girlfriend, who had been given or lent the gun by her father, Charles Sweatt, to use for self defense. When he gave Leandra the gun, Charles knew it had a hair trigger-it could be fired with substantially less pressure on the trigger than an average gun of its type.
The court found–
“We will begin by assuming some outer boundaries for the sake of argument. We will take it as given that the donor of a well-maintained, properly functioning handgun with an average trigger pull weight has no duty of care to persons injured by accidental discharges occurring after the gun passes out of the donor’s control, so long as the donee is competent. On the other hand, we will assume for the sake of argument that if a donor of a gun knows it is defective and has a tendency to blow up in the user’s hand, causing injury, then he has a duty of care to persons foreseeably injured.
“The hair-trigger gun at issue here is somewhere between these outer boundaries. According to plaintiffs’ expert, the trigger pressure necessary to fire the gun was less than one pound, which was less than half of the pressure typically required for guns of its type. In addition to saying, as we have noted, that this was similar to the amount of pressure needed to click a ball-point pen, the expert also opined as follows:
“That trigger pull is considered to be extremely light, and is dangerous in function. [¶] One pound of force could have been easily applied to the trigger of the weapon accidentally, e.g., one could have inserted a finger into the trigger guard area and applied that amount of force by brushing the finger against the trigger without an intent to discharge the weapon. (The trigger guard is a band of metal which encircles the trigger.) [¶] Also, a weapon which can be discharged with such little force is subject to other types of accidental discharge.
In effect, the light trigger pull renders the trigger guard less effective; a glancing blow, an unintentional touch could cause the weapon to discharge. Normally, the trigger guard will prevent many of those types of accidents.”
“Cases from other jurisdictions dealing with accidental discharges allegedly caused by light trigger pull weights can also help give an idea of how dangerous the hair trigger here was. In DeRosa v. Remington Arms Co., Inc. (E.D.N.Y. 1981) 509 F.Supp. 762, a products liability case, Judge Weinstein ruled that a police shotgun with a trigger pull weight of 4.5 pounds, which was within the industry guideline of 3 and 3.25 pounds to 6.5 pounds, was not unreasonably dangerous. (Id. at pp. 764, 768.) By contrast, in Hines v. Remington Arms Co., Inc. (La.App. 1993), reversed in part on other grounds in Hines v. Remington Arms Co., Inc. (La. 1994) 648 So.2d 331, another products liability case, the court held that a competition target-shooting rifle with a 2-ounce trigger pull weight was unreasonably dangerous per se. (Hines v. Remington Arms. Co., Inc., supra, 630 So.2d at pp. 813, 814.)
“All this, of course, provides only a rough approximation of how dangerous the gun was and leaves us with a judgment to make. Helpful for this purpose is the series of California cases dealing with when a vehicle owner who leaves the keys in the ignition has a duty to third parties injured by negligent operation by a thief or other unauthorized person who uses the vehicle. These cases provide a scale of degrees of dangerousness against which we can measure our case by analogy.” (Which is utter bull poop, of course, but is an example of how courts can twist reality to arrive at the desired decision. Car thief, and light trigger pull weight are analogous?)
Consider this from Louisiana:
Willy shot Taffy, his girlfriend, and tried to claim it was an accident. (Actually he shot her with a .40 cal. and then told her father she was “just faking it” as she lay on the floor of the garage bleeding out, so we are not dealing with a rocket scientist here).
“Again, the evidence established that Ms. Hargrove was in a defensive posture at the time of the shooting and that the bullet did not ricochet off of any other object or surface prior to hitting her, indicating a straight-on shot. Mr. Hargrove testified that Defendant fled the scene immediately, which further allows for an inference of guilt. Testimony was introduced to the effect that .40 caliber weapons generally have a trigger pull weight which greatly reduces the chances of accidental discharge and that, generally, an individual has to have intent to pull the trigger of a .40 caliber weapon.** Finally, Ms. Hargrove stated that Defendant ‘just shot me.’ This evidence as a whole indicates that the gun was not discharged by accident.
**Corporal Walls allowed that it would be possible for a .40 caliber weapon to accidentally discharge. He also noted, however, that “pull pressures” are normally assigned to triggers in order to prevent accidental discharge and that, absent another object having lodged on the trigger (such as a tree branch), an individual would “have to have intent” to pull the trigger of a .40 caliber weapon.
There are 3 or 4 others, all of them accidental discharge defenses. I found no reported appellate cases where any discussion on this issue occurred in the context of a self-defense case, nor would I expect to. In order to claim self-defense, you must admit that you purposefully shot an assailant. If you intended to do so, the pull weight of the trigger and the extent of one’s training are largely irrelevant. (“Pull weight schmull weight, it would not have mattered if it had a 15-pound trigger pull. I shot the SOB until he stopped trying to kill me...”) It won’t keep some enterprising prosecutor from bleating about it in court, creating an issue to confuse a jury already drowning in facts and bullets and blood, which is never a good idea. And there is no way of knowing how many cases at the trial level there are out there where this precise thing has happened.
So, personally, if anyone asks me, I tell them never to screw around with the pull weight on a self-defense trigger, or if they simply must, have it done by a professional gunsmith, and keep it within factory recommendations.
CLINT SMITH
Lastly, I reached out to my friend Clint Smith, of Thunder Ranch fame. When asked what the trigger pull weight of a 1911 should be, he responded succinctly, “4 pounds, clean break.”
Hand Loaded Self-Defense Ammunition
Although most well-educated armed citizens have over time come to understand the arguments against using hand loaded ammunition for self defense, the question still comes up from time to time. In over half of the firearms-related cases on which I have worked as an expert, I ended up doing some type of ballistic testing involving either a recoil/ejection pattern test or a gunshot residue/stippling test.
The protocols for these tests are outlined in shooting incident reconstruction textbooks, all of which indicate that the very same type of ammunition must be used to render the tests credible. If I am the expert witness on a case that requires ballistic testing, I hope that the ammunition needed is readily available. If you are using your own hand loads, any testing I might do would be suspect, because even if you supplied hand loads from the same batch as that of the subject ammunition, the question could be raised as to legitimacy of that testing. A skilled reloader could even fashion a hand load to show the same stippling pattern as that discovered as evidence at the scene, but fired from a different distance.
Consequently, it is very important for the paid expert of an innocent defendant in a criminal prosecution to be able to perform ballistic tests with the same ammunition as was used in the shooting. This is the real argument against using hand loads for self defense.
Summary
How can members of the Network prevent falling prey to the misleading and distracting accusations a prosecutor may make about their defense gun or ammunition? To summarize–
1) On a production gun (not a custom gun), leave the trigger pull weight alone.
If you want a lighter trigger, get a different gun, but don’t lighten the trigger below the factory settings. Smoothing the trigger pull and eliminating over travel should be fine, as long as you don’t lighten the pull weight.
2) If using a high-end custom pistol, a 4-pound trigger pull weight is the industry standard, and anything lighter could be argued as unreasonable. For folks like Scott, why not set up another Wilson Combat 1911 pistol with a 4- to 5-pound trigger and use that one for self-defense, and the other for the range? What a great excuse to buy another gun!
3) If you modify your gun it is best to have that modification performed by a competent gunsmith, one who will be willing to go to court and testify why he performed the modification. You had better be personally prepared to logically explain why that modification was done, too.
4) Never deactivate a safety device on a gun you use for self defense. If you just cannot live with whatever safety device you want to deactivate, then simply change to a different weapon type that does not have that feature.
5) Use only factory ammunition for self defense and buy it in sufficient quantity that if exemplars are needed for testing, they are available.
6) Leave the cute, custom paint jobs, engraving and cartoon logos off your serious self-defense guns. The place for those affectations is at the range, not in the courtroom.
In closing, when pondering any question about self-defense equipment, use your God-given common sense. When I was in a position to command law enforcement officers, I would tell them, “If whatever you are thinking of doing is possibly a bad idea, then it probably is a bad idea. Don’t do it.”
To apply that logic to self-defense gun modifications, I’d say, “If you have to ask whether a modification or alteration to your pistol will hurt you in court, it probably will.”
Expert Opinions
One of the best things about being part of the Armed Citizens’ Legal Defense Network is the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of its members, some of whom have worked for decades providing expert witness testimony on exactly these questions. Wanting this article to reach far beyond my own opinion as just one expert witness, I posted the question to several members of our advisory board.
Their thoughts on the topic follow.
JOHN FARNAM
At a 3-gun program here in Colorado earlier this week, a female student was with us, sporting an expensive, custom 5-inch 1911 from a well-known manufacturer, for whom I have a great deal of respect. However, the trigger, crisp and breaking-glass-like as it was, was far too light for a serious, carry pistol. It broke at 3 pounds, and I indicated to her that it was too light for a defensive pistol, in my opinion. She graciously accepted my comments, but she clearly loved her beautiful pistol!
She loved it a little less after a high-stress exercise in which she was required to transition from her rifle (which had just run out of ammunition), to her pistol, and engage a close threat. She smoothly made the transition, drew her pistol, and fired 3 rounds at the immediate threat.
The first 2 were carefully aimed and struck the target in the center, as planned and intended. The third shot was an AD (accidental discharge). The pistol was in full recoil from the second shot and it discharged while still angled upward. It startled her. The round struck the top of the berm, a good distance over the target. She recovered nicely and finished the drill. She transitioned back to her rifle, reloaded it, and then immediately used it to engage several more targets.
Afterward, I asked her about the AD. She was trying to catch the link after the second shot, and it just caught her by surprise. No harm done, but here is the point:
The industry standard for pull-weight on triggers of production pistols is currently 6 to 7 pounds. I think that is about right. I’m sure it’s too heavy in the minds of some, too light for others. While I think 12-pound triggers exhibited by the NY2 Glock Trigger Modification are needlessly heavy. I’m not comfortable with triggers any lighter than 6 pounds, owing to the foregoing.
I consider myself a reasonably competent operator, and I carry routinely. All my carry pistols comply with the foregoing industry standard. 3-pound, or lighter, triggers have no place in my life!
The term, “hair trigger,” has an inherently malignant and unsafe ring to it, particularly among the ignorant. It is predictable that a prosecutor or plaintiff’s attorney will use that term, ad nauseam, when doing his best to establish your “reckless disregard” for the safety of others, when he is able to show that your firearm has a significantly lighter trigger than it did when it emerged from the factory, a modification for which you arranged, not the manufacturer.
In addition, during a real fight, the fine motor coordination necessary to realize what scant speed/accuracy advantage of which a light trigger may be capable, will likely all be a moot point anyway!
My conclusion is that over-tuning of serious guns is folly, dangerous folly! When an out-of-the-box pistol has a trigger that is too heavy for your taste, the best strategy is to look at something else, rather than tinker with what the factory produced.
These comments on the subject were sent to me from a colleague:
“I put an aftermarket, 3.5 pound connector on my Glock, and really liked it. Then one day, shooting in cold weather, with gloves, I realized I could hardly feel the trigger. I have since come to my senses, put the original connector back in, and re-learned to use it properly.”
My friend and colleague, Pat Sweeney, puts it best, as he usually does!
“In writing ‘The 1911: the First Hundred Years’ I had a chance to handle some very early 1911s, pre WWI! They are startling, in that they all have (at least by some standards) ‘heavy’ triggers, 6 to 7 pounds, but crisp and clean. You press the trigger to take up the slack. The trigger stops. Keep pressing, and 6 to 7 pounds later, the hammer falls. You can put a lot of bad guys in the ground, with a trigger like that!”
You bet you can, and all with no ADs, even when in a cold, muddy ditch, at night, in the rain, with bullets whizzing by your ears. That’s what pistols are for!
MASSAD AYOOB
While more training helps with lighter pulls, it also makes lighter pulls less meaningful to performance, and I don’t see training making any difference on this particular issue in court.
Pull weight goes gun by gun, and seems to come down to manufacturer spec, common custom and practice, or both. If Walther puts a 4.5 [pound trigger] into their new striker-fired pistol and calls it good, the user will be more protected than if he put a factory-forbidden 4.5 in his Glock, and the same 4.5 pound pull is well within spec by any standard for the 1911. Go figure.
EMANUAL KAPELSOHN
I have worked in many cases, both civil and criminal, in which trigger pull weight has been an issue, including at least two cases in which the opposition sought to argue that a handgun had a “hair trigger,” a sensational term lacking any technical definition. I’ve also worked in a good number of cases in which the phenomenon of involuntary muscular contraction as a possible cause of unintentional discharge has been an issue, and I have written several articles and taught widely on that topic for over 20 years. I’m currently working on a police shooting case where the deceased had an AR-15 with a 2.5 pound trigger pull that seems to be the result of home gun smithing, to the point where the rifle is unsafe to use for that and several other reasons.
One can extrapolate from my Glock recommendations to other brands of striker-fired and double action only (DAO) pistols; a pistol with no manual safety, a healthy amount of trigger travel, and a pull weight in the range of about 5.5 to 8.5 pounds is fine for a defensive handgun of these action types. Single-action/double-action semi-autos with double action (DA) pulls of 8 to 11 pounds, and single action (SA) pulls in the 4 to 6 pound range are fine. Revolvers with DA pulls of 8.5 to 11 pounds are fine. The DA revolver’s SA trigger pull weight doesn’t concern me much, because I think revolvers should rarely ever be fired single action in defensive use, but 3.5 pounds is the industry’s minimum standard here. When I carry a revolver, it’s usually a double action only.
As to whether a highly trained individual can reasonably use a lighter, shorter trigger pull, my opinion is that almost none of us are as highly skilled as we like to think we are. Keep the game guns (and the tactics that go along with them) separate from the serious weapons.
About 400 years ago, Miyamoto Musashi cautioned us, “Weapons should be sturdy, not decorative.” Words to live by. I am willing, however, to have a trigger pull lightened, within reason, for use by an individual whose hand size and strength don’t allow a heavier pull to be used effectively. But before lightening the pull for such a shooter I would try to find a handgun with a shorter reach to the trigger, smaller grip circumference, etc., even as a custom option if necessary.
JAMES FLEMING
Network board member and trial attorney James Fleming did some research for us into court cases in which the question of light triggers arose. This is what he wrote:
Boy, is this not an easy question to work with. Good luck on the article. Gleaning nationwide cases, here is one illustrative case from California from 2008, a civil action:
Max Birchfield died after a handgun he was holding discharged, apparently accidently, and shot him in the chest. This happened in the bedroom of Leandra Sweatt, Max’s girlfriend, who had been given or lent the gun by her father, Charles Sweatt, to use for self defense. When he gave Leandra the gun, Charles knew it had a hair trigger-it could be fired with substantially less pressure on the trigger than an average gun of its type.
The court found–
“We will begin by assuming some outer boundaries for the sake of argument. We will take it as given that the donor of a well-maintained, properly functioning handgun with an average trigger pull weight has no duty of care to persons injured by accidental discharges occurring after the gun passes out of the donor’s control, so long as the donee is competent. On the other hand, we will assume for the sake of argument that if a donor of a gun knows it is defective and has a tendency to blow up in the user’s hand, causing injury, then he has a duty of care to persons foreseeably injured.
“The hair-trigger gun at issue here is somewhere between these outer boundaries. According to plaintiffs’ expert, the trigger pressure necessary to fire the gun was less than one pound, which was less than half of the pressure typically required for guns of its type. In addition to saying, as we have noted, that this was similar to the amount of pressure needed to click a ball-point pen, the expert also opined as follows:
“That trigger pull is considered to be extremely light, and is dangerous in function. [¶] One pound of force could have been easily applied to the trigger of the weapon accidentally, e.g., one could have inserted a finger into the trigger guard area and applied that amount of force by brushing the finger against the trigger without an intent to discharge the weapon. (The trigger guard is a band of metal which encircles the trigger.) [¶] Also, a weapon which can be discharged with such little force is subject to other types of accidental discharge.
In effect, the light trigger pull renders the trigger guard less effective; a glancing blow, an unintentional touch could cause the weapon to discharge. Normally, the trigger guard will prevent many of those types of accidents.”
“Cases from other jurisdictions dealing with accidental discharges allegedly caused by light trigger pull weights can also help give an idea of how dangerous the hair trigger here was. In DeRosa v. Remington Arms Co., Inc. (E.D.N.Y. 1981) 509 F.Supp. 762, a products liability case, Judge Weinstein ruled that a police shotgun with a trigger pull weight of 4.5 pounds, which was within the industry guideline of 3 and 3.25 pounds to 6.5 pounds, was not unreasonably dangerous. (Id. at pp. 764, 768.) By contrast, in Hines v. Remington Arms Co., Inc. (La.App. 1993), reversed in part on other grounds in Hines v. Remington Arms Co., Inc. (La. 1994) 648 So.2d 331, another products liability case, the court held that a competition target-shooting rifle with a 2-ounce trigger pull weight was unreasonably dangerous per se. (Hines v. Remington Arms. Co., Inc., supra, 630 So.2d at pp. 813, 814.)
“All this, of course, provides only a rough approximation of how dangerous the gun was and leaves us with a judgment to make. Helpful for this purpose is the series of California cases dealing with when a vehicle owner who leaves the keys in the ignition has a duty to third parties injured by negligent operation by a thief or other unauthorized person who uses the vehicle. These cases provide a scale of degrees of dangerousness against which we can measure our case by analogy.” (Which is utter bull poop, of course, but is an example of how courts can twist reality to arrive at the desired decision. Car thief, and light trigger pull weight are analogous?)
Consider this from Louisiana:
Willy shot Taffy, his girlfriend, and tried to claim it was an accident. (Actually he shot her with a .40 cal. and then told her father she was “just faking it” as she lay on the floor of the garage bleeding out, so we are not dealing with a rocket scientist here).
“Again, the evidence established that Ms. Hargrove was in a defensive posture at the time of the shooting and that the bullet did not ricochet off of any other object or surface prior to hitting her, indicating a straight-on shot. Mr. Hargrove testified that Defendant fled the scene immediately, which further allows for an inference of guilt. Testimony was introduced to the effect that .40 caliber weapons generally have a trigger pull weight which greatly reduces the chances of accidental discharge and that, generally, an individual has to have intent to pull the trigger of a .40 caliber weapon.** Finally, Ms. Hargrove stated that Defendant ‘just shot me.’ This evidence as a whole indicates that the gun was not discharged by accident.
**Corporal Walls allowed that it would be possible for a .40 caliber weapon to accidentally discharge. He also noted, however, that “pull pressures” are normally assigned to triggers in order to prevent accidental discharge and that, absent another object having lodged on the trigger (such as a tree branch), an individual would “have to have intent” to pull the trigger of a .40 caliber weapon.
There are 3 or 4 others, all of them accidental discharge defenses. I found no reported appellate cases where any discussion on this issue occurred in the context of a self-defense case, nor would I expect to. In order to claim self-defense, you must admit that you purposefully shot an assailant. If you intended to do so, the pull weight of the trigger and the extent of one’s training are largely irrelevant. (“Pull weight schmull weight, it would not have mattered if it had a 15-pound trigger pull. I shot the SOB until he stopped trying to kill me...”) It won’t keep some enterprising prosecutor from bleating about it in court, creating an issue to confuse a jury already drowning in facts and bullets and blood, which is never a good idea. And there is no way of knowing how many cases at the trial level there are out there where this precise thing has happened.
So, personally, if anyone asks me, I tell them never to screw around with the pull weight on a self-defense trigger, or if they simply must, have it done by a professional gunsmith, and keep it within factory recommendations.
CLINT SMITH
Lastly, I reached out to my friend Clint Smith, of Thunder Ranch fame. When asked what the trigger pull weight of a 1911 should be, he responded succinctly, “4 pounds, clean break.”
Hand Loaded Self-Defense Ammunition
Although most well-educated armed citizens have over time come to understand the arguments against using hand loaded ammunition for self defense, the question still comes up from time to time. In over half of the firearms-related cases on which I have worked as an expert, I ended up doing some type of ballistic testing involving either a recoil/ejection pattern test or a gunshot residue/stippling test.
The protocols for these tests are outlined in shooting incident reconstruction textbooks, all of which indicate that the very same type of ammunition must be used to render the tests credible. If I am the expert witness on a case that requires ballistic testing, I hope that the ammunition needed is readily available. If you are using your own hand loads, any testing I might do would be suspect, because even if you supplied hand loads from the same batch as that of the subject ammunition, the question could be raised as to legitimacy of that testing. A skilled reloader could even fashion a hand load to show the same stippling pattern as that discovered as evidence at the scene, but fired from a different distance.
Consequently, it is very important for the paid expert of an innocent defendant in a criminal prosecution to be able to perform ballistic tests with the same ammunition as was used in the shooting. This is the real argument against using hand loads for self defense.
Summary
How can members of the Network prevent falling prey to the misleading and distracting accusations a prosecutor may make about their defense gun or ammunition? To summarize–
1) On a production gun (not a custom gun), leave the trigger pull weight alone.
If you want a lighter trigger, get a different gun, but don’t lighten the trigger below the factory settings. Smoothing the trigger pull and eliminating over travel should be fine, as long as you don’t lighten the pull weight.
2) If using a high-end custom pistol, a 4-pound trigger pull weight is the industry standard, and anything lighter could be argued as unreasonable. For folks like Scott, why not set up another Wilson Combat 1911 pistol with a 4- to 5-pound trigger and use that one for self-defense, and the other for the range? What a great excuse to buy another gun!
3) If you modify your gun it is best to have that modification performed by a competent gunsmith, one who will be willing to go to court and testify why he performed the modification. You had better be personally prepared to logically explain why that modification was done, too.
4) Never deactivate a safety device on a gun you use for self defense. If you just cannot live with whatever safety device you want to deactivate, then simply change to a different weapon type that does not have that feature.
5) Use only factory ammunition for self defense and buy it in sufficient quantity that if exemplars are needed for testing, they are available.
6) Leave the cute, custom paint jobs, engraving and cartoon logos off your serious self-defense guns. The place for those affectations is at the range, not in the courtroom.
In closing, when pondering any question about self-defense equipment, use your God-given common sense. When I was in a position to command law enforcement officers, I would tell them, “If whatever you are thinking of doing is possibly a bad idea, then it probably is a bad idea. Don’t do it.”
To apply that logic to self-defense gun modifications, I’d say, “If you have to ask whether a modification or alteration to your pistol will hurt you in court, it probably will.”
I've tried to explain how high stress changes things, but I guess what you've "learned" on XBOX just can't be overcome.
cmshoot
teaches this stuff and has been there and done that. You might consider actually listening to someone that has that level of experience in the real world. I say listen to him because my skills aren't what they used to be. I just don't have time to put 30,000 rounds a year down range... anymore.
I do listen to people who do this for a living, and a lot of them disagree with him.
So it’s not a question of listening to experts... it’s that I should only listen to the ones that agree with YOU.
I am done, carry whatever you want...
So it’s not a question of listening to experts... it’s that I should only listen to the ones that agree with YOU.
I am done, carry whatever you want...
No, it's about this being a friendly debate until you decided to start insulting those you disagree with. Grown ups don't appreciate that or play those games.
Guess you missed this sentence:
FWIW, trigger pull weight of a stock Model 38 was a big issue in the Tex McIver trial, point being that even with a box stock gun, the DA can make an issue of the trigger pull. The arguments were reversed, with the DA contending that the trigger pull weight was too heavy for ol' Tex to have an AD.
So based on the argument that you need to do whatever is possible to avoid getting prosecuted or sued, the conclusion we get from the Tex McIver case is that you are better off to have no gun at all.
FWIW, trigger pull weight of a stock Model 38 was a big issue in the Tex McIver trial, point being that even with a box stock gun, the DA can make an issue of the trigger pull. The arguments were reversed, with the DA contending that the trigger pull weight was too heavy for ol' Tex to have an AD.
So based on the argument that you need to do whatever is possible to avoid getting prosecuted or sued, the conclusion we get from the Tex McIver case is that you are better off to have no gun at all.
Actually it wasn’t an insult but rather a question... when I say, if you can’t hit your target without upgrading the trigger, you could see that as a question... or not, depending on whether the shoe fits or not...
Your answer could be, “ I can hit the target but my double taps are half the time due to the trigger” or something like that and maybe it’s true. I don’t know.
But most seem to agree that in the typical 3-3-3 defense scenarios, it’s not the trigger that will make or break you, unless it is perhaps truly horrendous, at which point I would put the blame on the owner for buying and carrying such a crappy gun...
If I say, “if you do abc, then you xyz” and abc doesn’t apply to you, then neither does the conditional xyz.
In any case, you have your experts, the other side has theirs. Pick a side and enjoy.
Your answer could be, “ I can hit the target but my double taps are half the time due to the trigger” or something like that and maybe it’s true. I don’t know.
But most seem to agree that in the typical 3-3-3 defense scenarios, it’s not the trigger that will make or break you, unless it is perhaps truly horrendous, at which point I would put the blame on the owner for buying and carrying such a crappy gun...
If I say, “if you do abc, then you xyz” and abc doesn’t apply to you, then neither does the conditional xyz.
In any case, you have your experts, the other side has theirs. Pick a side and enjoy.
BTW, the article you posted is prepared by an insurance company trying to sell insurance.
Odd that they couldn't find one expert to counter the points of their corporate shills.
Odd that they couldn't find one expert to counter the points of their corporate shills.
