[firestar]

I was talking to my friend last weekend about the Russian Makarov that he used to own. He said that he liked the gun but one time his brother pushed the safety up rather than down and the entire safety along with some of the small parts went flying across the room. He had to order a new safety and parts. The grips were on the gun at the time and the gun was set up just as it would be if it were going to fire.

How common is this? I haven't heard of this happening to a Makarov unless the grips were off the gun at the time. Will the safety on your Mak fly off if you press it in the wrong direction?

[who me]

Well if the safety is pushed past the "fire" position the saftey and the firing pin will come out. That's the way it was made. I don't know how any other parts would come flying out. :uhoh:

[sgtmaj13]

Safety went flying across the room??? The Mak safety lever can be push beyond the safe detent (for detailed disassembly), but is not under any sort of spring tension. The lever and firing pin must then be removed by hand unless he somehow was able to discharge the weapon with the safety lever in this position, in which case no doubt the lever and firing pin would have been launched. A visit to www.makarov.com will answer all your questions about Maks and tell you more about them than you ever thought you wanted to know. They're a great little gun: reliable, accurate, inexpensive to shoot, and still relatively affordable. Beware however as they can be habit forming.

[makdaddy03]

Never had a problem with mine.:)

[9x19]

There is no firing pin spring in a Makarov, but pushing the safety lever past it's decock (and on-safe) detent is possible... as that is how you remove it and the firing pin for cleaning.

Its difficult to believe your friend had any parts "flying" from doing so.

[PCRCCW]

Yesterday at the range with my sister, she just got a nice little circle 10 Bulgy, had a slightly similar thing happen. She was racking the slide and her hand slipped...bumped the safety..it came part way out. She yelled "Hey I just broke my gun....." No you didnt...I just pushed it in and turned it back down....there you go!
Now she knows how to dissasemble it further...........LOL :D
Your buddy can get all new parts from Makarov.com.....
It is hard to believe he had parts flying across the room...but you never know...maybe he has a ghost.
Shoot well

[firestar]

I'm not sure if the parts flew out of the gun but he did say that he had to buy some new parts along with a new safety. I think it broke otherwise why would he have to buy new parts? I need to talk to him again to find out exactly what happened. It still seems like a major flaw to have a safety that you can't push up without it flying off your gun.:what: Some safeties go up and some go down so I would think that this might happen to a lot of people if they were unfamilier with how they worked.

Didn't gun tests do a review of the Mak and they had a problem with them breaking?

[gbelleh]

Pushing the safety up to disassemble is something that is not too easily done by accident. You have to rotate the safety lever past the detent so that it's pointing straight up. Not like any other type of normal safety lever operation on any pistol I know of.

The safety lever & firing pin should never go flying anywhere. As others have said, there are no springs in the safety or firing pin. They could fall out, but certainly should not go flying!

If you didn't know...it would definately be startling if you accidently pushed the safety too far and your gun seemed to fall apart in your hands!

[Apple a Day]

Every Makarov I've seen or handled (including my own) have had pretty significant, noticable "CLICK"s when you move the safetly from the down, fire position, to the up, safe position. If you push up past safe it will decock- at least on a lot. I don't know if they all do... which might be the problem some people are having; trying to decock and instead popping out the safety. Mine will decock but I have never used that feature, preferring the old thumb-and-finger method.
If you push the safety up past decock then it will finally make it up to the point where the cutout on the side of the slide will allow you to pull the safety out. At this point the firing pin is free to slide out the rear. As folks have said, there are no springs to make things go flying across the room. You can shake a Mak and hear the firing pin dink back and forth. Yes, it has passed drop tests.
I don't believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or gun mag reviews. I have no doubt that people could have accidentaly detached the safety, though, if they aren't familiar with the gun.
Firestar, there's lots of cool stuff for Makarovs at Makarov.com. I bought a new set of grips, new recoild spring, and othe nifty stuff from them... not all of it strictly necessary. I dunno.