The infamous 1911 grip safety or is it?

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WereWeasel

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Tonight a video popped up on my youtube feed featuring Pat McNamara and his 1911, this inspired me to do some dryfire drills; that in turn put pressure on my middle finger which caused me to look up undercutting the trigger guard; where there were several people mused that too deep of a cut would result in the inability to activate the grip safety due to too high a grip. Of course this lead to the thread I was reading to be derailed by the pinning debate.

...Now that got me thinking about have I ever had a ftf do to poor grip/grip safety. And no I haven't, I even tried tonight to induce it. The only way I can see it happening is if you do that finger flick thing to unholster the gun or you have small miss shaped hands.

Is it more of a myth than reality or a beavertail vs original style? If YOU (not hearsay) have had it happen how did it transpire? Looking back you notice something felt off before squeezing and has it happen since?

And no I'm not going to do the undercut.
 
the only way I can see the grip safety not working is if it was not fitted right..... or you are holding a gun wrong

and why would you pin a grip safety....... its a safety feature

When you do the undercut thing is when you get fed up with all the sharp edges , or a older gun that you want to refinish
 
I have wanted to love the 1911, honestly. I tried 3 times, and sold them all. Hence my preference for a Sig P220 . I know, it's sacrilege. But I so much do.

To compensate, there is no revolver I prefer to my custom shop Python.

Scales, balanced. Sorry to derail.
 
Looks more like a Mexican thing, I have never had a miss fire because of the grip safety in , what 60yrs or so.
I bought a custom built gun with a pin in one, soon fixed that silly idea.
 
I've never had an issue with not getting a good enough grip to engage the grip safety, and I've got undercut trigger guards on a few 1911's. A couple of them are only about .025" thick where the trigger track is, can't cut them much higher than that.
Kristian
 
I’ve had tons of issues. Most of my 1911s have the grip safety de-actived. If you were to poll most IPSC shooters, I think you’d find that many (even most) 1911/2011 guns have a non-functional (sear block removed or pinned) grip safety.

In one of the first designs (around 1910) of the pistol presented to the US Army there was no grip safety. It was the Cavalry that asked for a design change that “would prevent the pistol from firing if a trooper were to drop his pistol while mounted.” JMB (a f***king genius) added the sear blocking grip safety to meet the design change.

So - is it a safety feature? Sure. But did JMB think it was necessary? No.

And I’m a big Pat Mac fan... Love “Basic Dude Stuff”. But not many instructors (like zero of the competitive pistol instructors) support his trigger finger placement concept.
 
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A lot of aftermarket grip safeties have a raise section on the bottom of the safety that allows for a more positive grip for people with smaller hands.
 
I hate the grip safety on 1911s, and had more than one fail to fire due to inadequate pressure or improper grip/engagement. In particular late in matches as my hand fatigues. One of these days I am going to pin all my 1911s, but haven't yet.
 
The 1911 and the 'grip safety'....

I've had dozens of different 1911's in ~ 40 yrs of handgun ownership. Fired thousands of rounds thru them. Gotta say I've never had a grip safety failure. Maybe it's because I have hands on the larger side & always get a positive grip when shooting them?

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NAA.
 
NAA said:
I've had dozens of different 1911's in ~ 40 yrs of handgun ownership. Fired thousands of rounds thru them. Gotta say I've never had a grip safety failure. Maybe it's because I have hands on the larger side & always get a positive grip when shooting them?

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NAA.
Click to expand...

You clearly never shot a pistol match or train for self defense class.
 
1riot1ranger said:
Failure to engage the grip safety is far more common to those who adopt the thumb-on-safety high grip.
Click to expand...

I have small hands and short fingers and my guns are fitted with long triggers. I have always used the "thumb-on-safety" high grip. Never had a problem.

I have witnessed shooters inadvertently operating the safety because they did NOT hold down the safety with their thumb and had a p!ss poor grip on the gun.

I do not see anything in the IPSC Rule Book that says the grip safety can be pinned.
 
Apparently there has been a rule change and the USPSA allows pinning the grip safety. I presume that IPSC/Canada has followed suit.

"An ingenious solution to a non-existent problem."
 
As mentioned above if you ride the thumb safety as a lot of competition shooters do(myself included) you can put pressure up against the beaver tail. If it's a gun I plan to use in Ipsc the first thing I do is pin it.
 
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