Revolver safety?

C

crobrun

New member
I'm pretty much a firearm newbie. I've done some shooting, and enjoyed it, but am not at all knowlegable.
With all that, I was talking with a freind, and he asked me if revolvers had safetys. I said "no", but I'm not comfortable with a blanket answer like that, so I figured I'd ask the experts.

Thanks,
Rob
 
By safteys if you mean manually operated mechanical devices to prevent the gun from fireing unententionally, then I can't think of any current models that do.

Almost all double action revolvers have some form of internal hammer block or transfer bar to prevent the gun from fireing if the hammer is struck when the cylinder is fully loaded.
And some single action revolvers also have modified or redesigned actions incorporting hammer blocks or transfer bars as well.

Taurus, S&W, and Rossi have gun use prevention devices (key locks) on their current manufactured revolvers, but no manual safetys.

As a matter of fact I can only think of a couple of revolvers that did have manual safetys. And they are long discontinued.
Colt .22 SA's and clones, had a push bar safety inside the loading gate.
A prototype HiStandard big bore revolver had one.
And some of the Webleys had safetys.
I'm sure there are more, but I can't think of them.

Hope this helps.

Joe
 
I get this question a lot when I teach the NRA Home Firearm Safety class. As Joe pointed out, there are very few revolvers that have manual, mechanical "safeties."

It is important to understand what a "safety" does and why it is there. The "safety" on a gun typically exists to keep the owner/operator of the gun from hurting himself or others when he carries or handles the gun. It does not exist to keep others from firing the gun. A "safety" is a mechanical device, and mechanical devices can and do fail, so dependence on a "safety" is a bad habit.

Most modern handguns are made intrinsically safe so that the trigger must be intentionally pulled to fire the gun. Virtually nothing else can make the gun fire -- not dropping it from a table, running over it with a truck, hitting it with a baseball bat -- nothing but pulling the trigger. That applies to revolvers and to semi-automatics. Argueably the most popular police semi-auto in use in the USA is the Glock, and they do not have traditional "safety catches" either. If your friend wants a gun that he can make safe from kids, relatives, or anyone who might pick it up without the proper knowledge, he should probably take a safety course, buy a gun lock or a locking case or safe, and store the gun unloaded and away from the ammunition. Whether it is a revolver or a pistol, and whether it has a mechanical "safety" really does not much affect its intrinsic safety.

Clemson
 
Here's an interesting manual safety conversion for S&W revolvers:

Murabito Revolver Safety

Seems like a solution looking for a problem to me.

Note: there is a link on this page to the Magna-Trigger conversion, which has been around for a number of years, and, unusually, is designed to prevent unauthorized use. IMHO, while this is a real problem, it is still looking for a better solution.
 
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Thanks All
A few comments
1) I can't believe I spelled safeties incorrectly. Sheesh.
2) I do understand the purpose of a safety. Best safety is between your ears (which puts me in grave danger, I think) :)

Again, thanks. I'm just uncomfortable making blanket statements.

Rob
 
The Interarms Virginian Dragoon had a base pin that could be slid back into another detent so it stuck through the back of the recoil shield and kept the hammer from coming into contact with the firing pin. Navy Arms uses a base pin that turns 180 degrees, placing an offset block on the opposite end of the pin under the hammer, blocking it in the quarter-cock position. Uberti uses a spring loaded pin and cam arrangement inside the hammer where when the trigger nose is in the quarter-cock notch, it pushes the spring loaded pin up and cams a block down to mechanically block the hammer in the quarter-cock position. Since this arrangement is an "automatic safety", maybe it doesn't count.
 
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