I remembered a couple of modifications I think are unsafe. I am not a fan of carrying a 1911 cocked and locked, nor am I a fan of extended safeties. This had an ambi safety and I took that off. But even with just one grip safety, I have found, given enough tries, you will find the safety bumped off when carrying condition 1. And the longer the safety, the easier it is, to bump the safety in the exact opposite direction you want it to be. A bud of mine is a Range Officer at a local indoor range. They see around 40-50 people per week day and 75-100 on Saturday. He commonly sees shooters struggling with their 1911's, not realizing they bumped the safety to "safe" while shooting the thing. You can find a lot of posts where owners who carry the things condition one found the the safety bumped to the "ready" position. It should be easy to understand that if the grip safety is pinned, and the thumb safety gets bumped to "ready", well the only thing keeping the gun from firing is the trigger.
Anyway, I consider the practice of pinning the grip safety to be highly risky. And yet, there are advocates for it.
Another modification that has proven itself dangerous is replacing the Rem M700 extractor with a SAKO extractor.
The Rem M700 extractor is relatively weak, it will wear in time, as do all push feed type extractors, and that will cause failures to eject. It will break if crud is allowed to accumulate underneath the thing, and it is surprising the number of people who never clean their guns. And would never think to get a pick underneath the extractor and clear out whatever is stuck under there. Mike Walker traded these things off to create a very strong action.
The bolt nose is shrouded by the barrel shank, and the receiver ring. The bolt nose will actually expand and fill the barrel shank in extreme over pressure conditions, blocking gas escape in the shooter's face. I have no idea when the idea of cutting the bolt face and adding a SAKO extractor started, but it has been decades, and it always was a bad idea. That SAKO extractor is directly in line with the receiver right lug recess, and if there is gas release, that extractor is blown out of the weapon. I have read of a number of shooters who lost an eyeball when that extractor blew out. And yet, the
smartest guys in the room keep on touting SAKO extractors on the bolt face. And, to show their magical thinking, once they became aware of SAKO extractors blowing out, they decided that M16 extractors were better because of their faith that mil spec means something. There is this reverence for "mil spec" boarding on mystical. This is a M16 extractor on the bolt face of a M700
I am sure the M16 extractor is a fine extractor, on a M16. And because the extractor in a M16 is mostly inside the carrier, which is inside the upper, it tends to stay put, even in catastrophic blow ups. But, you take that mil spec extractor and put it on a M700, I have no doubt that a good gas release will shear the pin and blow that bigger, heavier, extractor right through the shooting glasses of the guy behind the trigger.