Handgun Safety Modifications

Here's another important video from the Personal Defense Network. Next modification that we're gonna look at for our defensive firearm is dealing with the manually operated external safety. Now, anytime we start thinking about modifying a safety is what we don't want to change is the way in which the actual safety is operated or the ability of that safety to be operated. For example, when we talk about something like a 1911 grip safety that has to be depressed by a good firing grip before the firearm is able to be fired defensively or for any other purpose, we wanna make sure that we aren't talking about deactivating that safety. In other words, it used to be talked about in terms of pinning that safety so that it was always depressed and completely deactivated. And that's not something that I recommend doing. You don't want to take a firearm that's designed to have a safety that operates in a certain way and completely deactivated. If you don't want a grip safety, don't purchase a firearm with a grip safety. There are plenty of options out in the marketplace that's relatively easy to do. When we talk about modifying the safeties what we actually wanna do is make sure that in the context of defensive use, it is more efficient to both disengage and engage that safety. This Colt House is close to a standard as issued original equipment safety as we have represented here today. As you can see it doesn't stick out very far from the firearm. There's not a lot of actual purchase for my thumb when it comes to disengaging that safety or re-engaging that safety. And in fact, I can't reliably re-engage the safety without actually modifying my grip and moving my thumb back when it comes to my standard, one-handed shooting grip. And that's a big indication right there that I'm gonna want to modify the safety. Obviously I can come up out of the holster and snap it off very efficiently, but when it comes to getting back into the ready position I wanna be just as efficient with a single action trigger, getting that safety re-engaged. Maybe not as important in terms of defending yourself, but very important in terms of the operation of the firearm in a safe way, reliably during training, and of course in an actual incident. So what I'm gonna look at is modifying the safety on this 1911 or any firearm of this type of design so that it is both wider and maybe a little bit longer. Of course the length is gonna give us more leverage and the width is gonna make it easier to hit reliably both on the disengagement and on the re-engagement of that safety. The next one we'll look at is my Clark meltdown, Caspian framed gun. This you can see has a wider safety and a longer safety. So when I get my good firing grip it's much easier for me to make sure that I'm hitting that safety when it comes time to both knock it down, which disengages the safety. And when I come back into that ready position, put it back on much easier, much more reliable than I was dealing with on that actual more factory type original equipment safety on the Colt. Now, the next modification that we can look at is putting an ambidextrous safety onto a 1911. Now, this performance that are 1945, of course isn't a standard 1911, but the operation is exactly the same for all practical purposes. And this firearm actually has an ambidextrous safety. Now, if I'm a left-handed shooter I'm gonna operate the firearm in exactly the same way as I go out into a shooting position I simply push down with my strong thumb as I'm coming back into the ready position I push up with my strong thumb. The nice thing about this is if that left-handed shooter ends up needing to shoot in a right-handed way and that safety is on, we can easily take it off. Or if in the middle of a fight, we end up having an injury. Firearm goes down to the ground. I get the firearm back into this hand solve the problem I needed to solve. I can now re-engage that safety very easily with both hands. Ambidextrous operation for a defensive firearm can be very important in terms of the efficiency of that firearm. Now, this is a part that you're gonna wanna make sure that you really know what you're doing. If you try to install it yourself preferably I'd like to see you go to an authorized, certified, experienced gunsmith when it comes to installing any of these safeties. You may need to have modifications done to your frame, to your grip panels, to the slide, maybe even to the internal parts of the firearm, to make sure that all of these things are fitting the way they're supposed to. One thing you don't want to take any chances with is the operation of a safety. When it's engaged, you wanna make sure that firearm can't go off and you wanna make sure that it will reliably disengage that you can use the firearm when you need to. So this is obviously a wider safety that's gonna extend out and give you more length when it comes to actually being able to disengage it. And if we look at it with the firearm in hand what we're taking is the opportunity now to have this file firearm with a standard length and width safety, and replace it with this safety which is actually going to clearly come out and cover more surface area of our thumbs that we can disengage it more reliably. And that is exactly what we see here on this Caspian, is that kind of a longer and wider course. This one is even longer an even wider. You just wanna make sure that it's not coming off when you don't want it to come off and it's not gonna come back on when you want it to come on. And the fact is that's more a function of consistency of grip. So when you're actually shooting, you want to make sure that that strong thumb stays on that safety and keeps it down so that you're not worried about under recoil putting that safety back on, okay. Not very likely to happen If you have a good, consistent grip and these wider longer safeties allow you to have that consistent grip. This one of course is an ambidextrous safety which comes in two parts which are gonna be installed and into the firearm and give you that longer, wider safety that you can actuate with either the right hand or the left hand just exactly like we have on the performance center 945. When it comes to modifying the safeties. Remember what we're looking for here is efficiency. We're not trying to change the way they operate. We're certainly not gonna deactivate them. We just wanna make it more efficient. The next thing we're gonna look at is the grip safety. Now in the 1911 of course has a grip safety, browning high powers. The Springfield XD has a grip safety. What we're looking for here is a grip safety that isn't so large that it makes getting a normal firing grip uncomfortable or impossible, but also isn't so small that we might actually have a good firing grip that doesn't actuate the safety and deactivate it. So again, we go back to the Colt. While this is a beavertail grip safety that comes out here and helps us manage recoil more, get a good consistent grip that always comes in underneath of the beavertail. Of course, without the beavertail, that kind of high grip might get us in the wrong place normally. The Beaver tail tends to funnel us If we come to our holster a little bit high, get us into the right place. Good deep seated grip helps us manage recoil, comes back over the web of the hand. What we worry about here is that this is a relatively flat area. If we look at that grip safety situation we see that when we grip the gun, we might get into a position where we can take the safety off. We can pull the trigger, but the gun doesn't actually fire. Now, why doesn't that gun actually fire? The gun doesn't actually fire because this grip is a little bit loose and I haven't actually depressed the grip safety enough so that it will disengage and allow me to fire the firearm. If we take a look at both the Caspian and The Smith & Wesson 1945 we see this raised bump. That raised bump allows us to be more sure that when we get any type of grip that will allow us to reach the safety, reach the trigger that we have depressed this grip safety enough so that it will disengage. Okay, now the grazed grip, that actual bump is gonna be different on every different type of firearm. And of course on the meltdown it's been modified, but it still exists. That means I can get my hand around this firearm and get a good depression of that grip safety be able to use the firearm. Take a look at what that part looks like. I have one here. This one happens to be from Ed Brown Products and these striations that we have here, these grooves are actually called memory grooves. So something like that memory groove might be something you wanna look for when it comes to modifying your 1911 or other firearm with a grip safety in order to make sure that you are more reliably able to get that safety off with your strong hand weaken under dynamic defensive conditions. Check out more videos just like this one at the Personal Defense Network.