Disabling a 1911 firing pin safety

Is it safe to do this? 

Yes, but only for a competition gun.  It would be foolish to disable any safety mechanism on any gun you might use for self-defense.  The DA and civil lawyers will have a field day with you.  Don't disable any safeties on a carry or house gun.  Ever. 


What's the problem?  

I've been having misfires on my S&W 1911 due to light primer strikes.  We tracked the problem down to the Schwartz firing pin safety.  This system consists of a plunger in the slide that blocks the firing pin unless it's levered out of the way by the grip safety.  The flaw here is that it's possible to activate the grip safety just enough to allow the trigger to release the hammer, but not completely move the plunger out of the firing pin's path, causing the pin to graze the plunger, losing enough momentum to cause a light primer strike. With my skinny hands, this happens a lot. 

How to fix it?  

Two steps.

1) First remove the plunger, spring and plate from the slide.  To do this, unscrew the rear sight and drift it out.  The three parts will come out of the top of the slide very easily.  It'll look like this:

Note the plunger is marred from contact with the firing pin. 

2) Modify the lever so that it doesn't get caught in the newly empty hole in your slide.  If you leave the lever as is, it's very possible for the tip to get caught in the hole (heh heh) during recoil, damaging the lever and hammer pin, and possibly other parts.

The stock lever looks like this when it's in its highest possible position.

 

Blacken the exposed part with marker, then do a detail strip to remove the lever from the frame.  Once it's removed, simply grind or cut off all the black part, plus a few 100ths more.  The idea is to make it so this part can never get in the way of the slide.  

Here's what it looks like in the frame after grinding and, of course, deburring.  

In it's highest position, the lever is just below flush with the frame. 

That's really all there is to it.  I want to really emphasize that if you're having problems with your S&W 1911 firing pin safety, the best thing is to call their great customer service department, and send it to them for adjustment.  Only disable the safety in this manner if it's strictly a competition gun, and you know what you're doing.  

USPSA single stack Smith & Wesson 1911

Here's my main gun for now.  It started as a stock S&W .45 1911, and I've been customizing it part by part for the past year.  I'm using it to compete in the USPSA single stack division.

Here's what I've changed so far.

• Smith & Alexander magazine well
• Hi-viz fiber optic front sight
• STI titanium trigger with short, flat aluminum insert
• Wilson Combat extended magazine release
• 14 lb recoil spring, 19 lb hammer spring
• Carbon Creations red grips

My next small project is to disable the gun's firing pin safety.  I've been having misfires when the grip safety isn't pressed all the way.  It's likely the plunger rises enough to just snag the firing pin and slow it down enough to cause a light primer strike.  I've been wrapping a ladies' hair elastic around the grip for a while, but this can't continue!

I'll post all the details and photos of how to remove the plunger from the slide, and grind down that lever so it doesn't get stuck in the hole when the slide moves rearward.

I won't be flying anytime soon

Even before the TSA started bombarding travellers with full-body X-rays, or the alternative punitive sexual molestation, I hated flying.  I can bear being on the plane for a long time, just as long as I have ear plugs, plenty to read, and the person next to me is not too gross. 

I hate flying because of the incompetent security theater of the TSA.  We will never catch a terrorist by making everyone remove their belt and shoes; it just wastes time.  Randomly sampling the crowd for extra pat-downs wastes even more time (think grandmas and 3 year-olds).  And confiscating liquids... sheer stupidity. 

It's been said over and over by security experts that the Israeli model works because they look for terrorists, not things.  I really do hope that we move towards this effective, inexpensive, low-tech way of spotting bad guys at airports.  All they do at El Al is talk to passengers, ask where they're going, if they have a one-way ticket, where they've been.  And it works.  The US should do the same. 

So, if you do fly a lot and hate the security theater as much as me, be sure to make your voice heard.  Opt out of the X-rays this Wednesday and embarass the TSA knuckleheads so badly that they're forced to smarten up.  It'll inconvenience a lot of people for one day, but it's for the greater good.

I'm also going to make a prediction about the idiotic reactiveness of the TSA.  Some lone terrorist, at some point, is going to try to take down a plane with a cavity bomb.  Then the era of probing airline passengers will begin.  It's the next logical step, and virtually guaranteed to happen.  Send the TSA a message this Wednesday that they've gone too far already.

PPC is hard

I shot a semiauto PPC match for the first time in a while this past weekend, and I really want to make it a point to shoot this competition any Sunday there's not a USPSA match.  After reading Brian Enos' book, I'm really convinced that if I ever want to be a Master shooter, I have to shoot accurately - one ragged hole at fifty feet.  I am not there yet.

In the first match I scored 432 out of 600, then 436 in the second - not good at all.  What really killed me was shooting lefty (my weak hand) from behind the barricade.  This is a problem I've been having shooting my 1911, but not revolvers.  With the semiauto, I need to put the front sight along the left edge of the paper for the bullet to even hit the paper.  Most of them end up being misses, some low and centered, some low and right.


I've asked some good shooters for advice on this one. One guy who has the same problem has been compensating by aiming at the target's right shoulder.  He's shot this way for years and scores high 500s in PPC.  He thinks that astigmatism is at least partly to blame, and there's not much that can be done other that to trust your new sight picture when shooting cross-dominant.  At least one other knowledgeable instructor agrees.  

I don't buy it though, and here's why.  Whether I'm shooting strong hand or weak hand, I'm aiming and seeing the same sight picture with my right (dominant) eye.  I squeeze the trigger, and when the shot breaks, the gun doesn't care which hand is holding it, so the bullet should impact the same place.  So there's something else causing the bullet to hit right of the target, and it can't be that my defective football shaped eyes see differently when shooting lefty - it just doesn't make sense.

So there are a few things that could be happening.  Most likely, I'm flinching without even realizing it.  I'm yanking the trigger at the last instant, or blinking and losing my sight picture right before the shot.  I am convinced this is the cause, so I'm dedicating at least 100 rounds a week to practicing left handed.  It's also possible that the gun is recoiling differently as the bullet is traveling down the bore.  Everyone's weak hand is, well, weaker than their strong hand, and I think it may be worth firming up my grip and seeing how that affects my groups.  But still, my trigger control has to be the dominant factor here.

If anyone has advice on this issue, I'd love to hear it.  I can't go through life with five or six misses on the third string of PPC! 

Another shooting in my neighborhood

I shoot at the range in Dorchester one or two nights a week. Sometimes I swing back to JP Licks on Centre St. to get my wife an ice cream.

Two days ago, at about 7:30 at night, a couple of thugs decided to have a shootout at the pizzeria across the street from there. Three of them have died, and one innocent person was shot in the leg, probably by a ricochet. There's no word yet about whether they were all properly licensed, but I'll venture a guess that they were not.

This all happened less than a half mile away from my house. It really drove the point home that there are bad guys out there, and a lot of them are armed. I don't want to the only sucker caught up in a bad situation without a gun.

It is scary how little control I would have in a situation like that. I'm across the street, my Ruger SP-101 tucked in my IWB holster, ten extra rounds of Speer Gold Dot 125 grain .357 hollowpoints in my left jacket pocket, coming out of the store with my ice cream, then all hell breaks loose. The only thing I could do is go for hard cover. The thugs are blasting away at each other with tunnel vision, without any care as to what's behind their target. Ideally I would run my ass out of there, and for thirty seconds be the fastest man alive. But then again, do I really want give up my cover when there are bullets flying?

There's nothing I can do here except wait it out behind the thick concrete planters by the sidewalk, hoping the gunfight doesn't come my way. But what if the shooters do come my way? At what point would I unholster my revolver? At what point can I use lethal force to protect myself against grave injury?

I have to admit here that I don't know. I really need to take a concealed carry course at GOAL, or maybe splurge on one of Massad Ayoob's courses. The possibility of me being caught near a gunfight is real, and I have to know what to do to survive. This isn't hypothetical stuff, it's real life in the city.

Or maybe it's time to get the hell out and move to New Hampshire.