marlin button hammer block safety ... hate it or love it

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dogger1

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i know a lot of purists hate the hammer block safety on the marlin ...but last years deer season made me appreciate the marlin button safety. on two separate occasions guns went off from two seperate hunters as they were loading their winnies. we dont load guns until we get to the stand.sure enough just as i get to stand theres a single shot from a group member. we call in to see if he needs a hand and turns out when he loaded the gun and tried to put hammer to half #### his finger slipped and gun went off. weather was cold and wet. later in week same thing happened to another hunter. now i always put the safety on when putting to half #### or unloading . just gives me a piece of mind. the old savage 99 safety really dangerous as its just a slide that locks lever. and yes a safety is not a substitute for good gun handling in a safe direction
 
dogger1 said:
i know a lot of purists hate the hammer block safety on the marlin ...but last years deer season made me appreciate the marlin button safety. on two separate occasions guns went off from two seperate hunters as they were loading their winnies. we dont load guns until we get to the stand.sure enough just as i get to stand theres a single shot from a group member. we call in to see if he needs a hand and turns out when he loaded the gun and tried to put hammer to half #### his finger slipped and gun went off. weather was cold and wet. later in week same thing happened to another hunter. now i always put the safety on when putting to half #### or unloading . just gives me a piece of mind. the old savage 99 safety really dangerous as its just a slide that locks lever. and yes a safety is not a substitute for good gun handling in a safe direction
Click to expand...

"Purists" indeed don't care for the safety... but frankly it doesn't really get in the way. In fact, there are a number of people in the CAS world who like the safety just as a dry-fire implement.
I have no problem with levers that don't have a safety, and just the same don't mind if there is one. In fact, on one I have a safety delete kit but have never bothered to put it on.

As for hunting with a group and having a couple NDs... :eek
 
Lever action safeties get delete kits. If you can’t decock a lever without discharging it you are probably unsafe in other ways too.
 
An easy fix is to slip a 1/4" O ring in the grove over the red paint in the FIRE position, that way it won't turn itself on if bumped or touched. I've been doing this for years and it has always worked without any issues.
 
Mechanical safeties can be dangerous if one solely depends on them to make a gun safe as they are only as good as the person using them.Instead one should practice safe gun handling techniques at all times and treat guns as if they are always loaded and ready to fire
 
I have both. I like the safety and have zero issues with it as I'm used to disengaging a safety on my other rifles and shotguns anyway.
 
dogger1 said:
i know a lot of purists hate the hammer block safety on the marlin ...but last years deer season made me appreciate the marlin button safety. on two separate occasions guns went off from two seperate hunters as they were loading their winnies. we dont load guns until we get to the stand.sure enough just as i get to stand theres a single shot from a group member. we call in to see if he needs a hand and turns out when he loaded the gun and tried to put hammer to half #### his finger slipped and gun went off. weather was cold and wet. later in week same thing happened to another hunter. now i always put the safety on when putting to half #### or unloading . just gives me a piece of mind. the old savage 99 safety really dangerous as its just a slide that locks lever. and yes a safety is not a substitute for good gun handling in a safe direction
Click to expand...

I don't like the extra safety, having said that, Marlin did a much better job than "Winchester"/FNH/BACO did.

Where I find the push thru safety valuable is in teaching safe operation and gun handling.

Not everyone (especially today) is able to hand a 5 year old an (unloaded) Winchester 1894 and let them familiarize themselves with it with minimal supervision...
 
Have a 375 win Marlin without a safety and a 22 39a marlin with a safety and I freaking hate the safety on the 39a. All my other lever guns don't have safeties on them. The hammer block safety on the 39a doesn't lock the action or lock the trigger, all it does is stop the hammer from hitting the firing pin, which when you are more familiar with safety-less lever guns, makes it seem like there's something wrong with the gun itself (may or may not have spent an hour Gopher hunting thinking my 39a firing pin was broken. don't @ me ) Its not needed.

With all this being said, it CAN BE important IF the half #### notch is FUBARd, which can happen on older guns.

My $0.02 (or $3950.06 if you're from Venezuela)
 
rommelrommel said:
Lever action safeties get delete kits. If you can’t decock a lever without discharging it you are probably unsafe in other ways too.
Click to expand...

This isn't entirely fair.

I know elderly hunters who's fingers just couldn't manipulate the hammer anymore but we're otherwise perfectly safe. They switched to other guns when the recognized the problem and continued to hunt safely for years afterwords.
 
That’s why I had a probably in there. I do recognize that hand strength/dexterity/missing digits/etc are very valid reasons to use one.
 
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