Slide Mounted Safeties- ala PPK, Mak, Bersa, et

M

Memphis

New member
I had a Bersa 380 with a slide mounted safety. Several failures to fire per box of
ammo were traced to the safety partially engaging from the force of the slide blowing back. The safety lever would rotate down a little bit,
and the next trigger pull, the slightly rotated trigger block would impede the hammer
just enough to disallow primer ignition.
The safety would get whacked back in to safe
position- so this was difficult to diagnose.
I finally caught it misbehaving. Two smiths
tried to stop this from happening but were unsuccessful. Since then I have avoided handguns with slide mounted safeties- once bitten, twice shy... Have any of you had similar probs with this kind of safety design?
 
No, I have not had any such problem with slide mounted safeties in general. It sounds like that one gun had some fitting problems and if it was new should have been returned to the dealer before any work was done. While not super quality, the Bersas do not have that problem as a group.

Jim

Jim
 
I have never heard of that problem but I tend to avoid guns with safeties for different reasons. I like being able to draw my weapon and fire without having anything that I need to flick off. In a stress situation it could be a problem. For example, a couple of years ago a Cali parole agent was in a house and a guy came running out of the kichten with a knife. The parole agent drew his S&W auto and began pulling the trigger and nothing happened, he did a clearing drill but still nothing. The BG saw the gun, dropped his knife and surrendered. The parole agent looked at his gun later and realized he forgot to disengage the safety. I know this can be overcome with training, but why risk it.
 
I don't care for them myself. I've had a PPK/S and have a couple of Berettas so configured, and my principle objection is that they're clumsy. To me, it's unnatural to push up to release the safety, i.e. when I close my hand around the pistol's grip, my thumb comes down, not up. Sweeping the safety off a la 1911 or H&K USP is a much more natural (and faster) action than pushing up as on the Beretta or PPK. FWIW, I grew up with SIGs, so I favor the decocker (and rule #4 - keep yer finger off the trigger until ready to fire) over external safeties in general, followed by frame mounted. JMHO. M2
 
On the Makarov you push the safety down to fire and up for safe. If the safety gets a little loose you can easily tighten it up by removing the safety lever and carefully bending up on the spring. I've never had a problem with my Russian Mak.
 
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