NYPD brass to cops: Stop using Kahr K-9 semi-automatic pistol as an off-duty gun

I bet Plaxico Burris carried a Kahr.

Typical government answer to blame the hardware for a software problem.

If you're used to shooting a 12#-14# pull and you pick up a smooth 6# or 7# pull I bet you it feels like 2#. That can explain a lot of NDs, IMO.

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You have a good point there. Training guys on a 14 pound trigger means they get used to their gun behaving a certain way. Put another gun in their hands that doesn't behave the same way and you could have problems.

Sure it's the finger on the trigger that's the problem, but the 14 pound trigger lets you get away with a lot more poor handling.

So, the department reacts the only way it can because it SURE can't undo the choice of brick trigger Glocks, that would be politically embarrassing.

There are Kahr K9 pistols for sale on GB with what they are calling "NYPD trigger pull", 1/2 inch travel as opposed to 3/8 inch on all other Kahrs.

Ah,more BS from the brass.Pretty well explains the Glock NY#1 and NY#2 triggers.These white shirts never were the real police and just used their connections to move up the ladder.The file officers have to pay for their ineptitude.

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White shirts aside, it seems to me that the file officers are paying for their own ineptitude. They're the ones that cant keep their booger hook off the bang switch...

Sure it's the finger on the trigger that's the problem, but the 14 pound trigger lets you get away with a lot more poor handling.

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Agreed, and when you have more wiggle room for stupid stuff, you tend to do more stupid stuff.

For example, a co-worker worked at a facility that had a machine with an electric motor driving something with a V belt. In the time he worked there, no one got hurt due to that exposed belt. He later found out that no one had ever been hurt by that exposed belt.

He said it was kind of a running joke, OSHA or management made them put a guard on it to prevent an injury, and 6 months later, someone got hurt...

"They should have zero! "

You must live in a perfect world where people don't make mistakes.

gathert said:

Just be glad they don't have to carry the Makarov pistols. Those things have a 25 lb double action trigger pull. Its impossible to get it to fire with your left hand if you ever needed to in DA mode its so heavy. SA trigger pull is excellent however.

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uh, no. you're thinking of a p-64 or pa-63. both of those guns fire the 9mm makarov cartridge, but are not makarovs. actual makarovs have relatively light triggers.

hammerklavier said:

I'll bet what's happening is the NYC cops have become used to staging their triggers (even when just handling a gun) due to the high draw weight -- unintended consequinces.

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Perhaps. It's impossible to stage a Kahr. Doesn't matter how many times I shoot mine, I can never accurately tell where the trigger is going to break.

You must live in a perfect world where people don't make mistakes.

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'No tolerance' is the only correct attitude towards NDs. Yes there are people who have been shooting for decades who haven't had one.

The fact that mistakes happen may dictate a certain tolerance towards a person who has had an ND, but the fact that mistakes happen should not be used to argue for greater acceptance of NDs as such. It's too important an issue, lives are at stake, and perfection IS possible--it's just a matter of the level of effort put into it.

growing up, it was my opinion that the NYPD was full of morons. now, it seems it's A FACT.

"but the fact that mistakes happen should not be used to argue for greater acceptance of NDs as such"

Who was arguing for greater acceptance? Must have been someone else, it wasn't me. I was talking about the statistical insignificance of 35,000 police officers having a small handful of incidents with one gun model.

How many ADs did these same officers have with Glocks and other guns during the years under discussion? Were other guns banned?

Who was arguing for greater acceptance?

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Someone else said "they should have zero", you quoted them and countered that said person must "live in a perfect world where people don't make mistakes". Why say that unless you are arguing against zero tolerance for NDs?

NYPD Spokesman: "We don't understand it... no matter how heavy the trigger pull on our guns is, we keep having these accidental discharges when our cops pull the trigger on these guns. All our guys are doing is pulling the trigger, the gun seems incapable of differentiating when the officer means to shoot and when he's just, you know, pulling the trigger. We strongly suspect faulty hardware."

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I just can't believe this. And this came from a NYPD official?. Impressive, at the least.

When I learnt about the NY1/2 triggers, it struck me. I can't understand why you would make it harder for an officer to hit where he wants to hit, by stiffening the trigger that much and then say it's because you want to prevent AD from happening. Glocks have the right trigger pull out of the box, IMO. It's amazing how stupidity can spread amongst those who have to take this kind of decissions.

But, you know, we have our share of it, too. Fortunately, the gun I'm issued at work (92FS) has her trigger pull as it came from factory, and it's a trigger I like. The bad news is that they keep issuing us with FMJ ammo and they do not want to even hear about issuing proper law enforcement ammunition, like JHP, despite all the advice and the requests our unions have given them. No way. The funniest of all is that this is happening in government agency, deployed in the totality of the nation's territory. Local police departments do use JHP. It's legal, no problem. It's just our big bosses who think we should be abide by the Geneva convention, but don't mind about overpenetration and ricochets. Who cares.

Nordeste said:

I just can't believe this. And this came from a NYPD official?. Impressive, at the least.

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No, that was me paraphrasing what the article said, they didn't actually say that.

No, that was me paraphrasing what the article said, they didn't actually say that.

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A fair number of people need to see that.

Alberforth said:

Someone else said "they should have zero", you quoted them and countered that said person must "live in a perfect world where people don't make mistakes". Why say that unless you are arguing against zero tolerance for NDs?

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It isn't practical to expect humans to never make mistakes. That doesn't mean we shouldn't hold people responsible for mistakes. I think all John is saying is that mistakes do happen and a statement that there should be zero ND's is just wishful thinking. Zero ND's should certainly be the goal, but the NYPD isn't infallible (nor am I, nor are you ) and I suspect any realist will admit that zero actual ND's across that large of a group is probably unlikely, if not impractical.

However, I think you're reading into his words that ND's should somehow be tolerated and acceptable and I think that's completely reading too much into it. Quite to the contrary, we hold people accountable in society for negligent actions all the time and there's nothing wrong with that. Penalties for making serious mistakes help motivate people to take extra precautions which can definitely reduce the frequency of serious mistakes like ND's.

"Why say that unless you are arguing against zero tolerance for NDs? "

You're out in left field. Let me quote the previous post so I don't have to type it...

"It isn't practical to expect humans to never make mistakes. That doesn't mean we shouldn't hold people responsible for mistakes. I think all John is saying is that mistakes do happen and a statement that there should be zero ND's is just wishful thinking."

And there you have it. People make mistakes. It doesn't matter what kind of gun they own, some people screw up.

A small handful of ADs out of 35,000 NYC police officers is to be expected. Train them all again and again. It won't stop humans making mistakes.

JohnBT said:

A small handful of ADs out of 35,000 NYC police officers is to be expected. Train them all again and again. It won't stop humans making mistakes.

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Then why is the issue at hand regarding NY and not police as a whole? Why haven't all departments outlawed Kahrs? No, wait, if it's just "human error" why haven't they been made illegal period?

Hate to say it but I was told BY a cop that they have more NDs than all civilians (reported) every year. I also heard this was true at Gunsite the many times I went there. Every LEO I talked to at Gunsite had had at least one ND and many had more.

Acknowledging that humans make errors is not the same thing as saying Kahr handguns should be outlawed. The above comments are directed to another poster's comments about there should be zero ND's and how that's wishful thinking but is an impractical statement.

I think, again, you're reading too much into the statement that humans are imperfect. A small number of ND's can be expected from a large sample size no matter what type of gun you're talking about. You can give everyone a firearm with 25lb trigger pull and a manual safety and mistakes will still happen. ND's aren't isolated to Kahr handguns - they can and do happen with 1911's, Glocks, and every other firearm that's out there. However, to say that they're statistically expected from a large sampling size of 35,000 police offers is not to say they should be tolerated in the sense that they aren't punished or that the firearm "guilty" of the ND should be outlawed.

Bozwell said:

Acknowledging that humans make errors is not the same thing as saying Kahr handguns should be outlawed.

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The gun community accepted that humans make mistakes a long time ago, hence the four rules we *should* all live by.

Try this. Shoot someone. Then when the cops come, blame the trigger of your gun. I'm going to bet that "sorry officer, but people make mistakes" is not going to get you very far. It's a BS excuse plain and simple.

We're talking about a law enforcement agency in New York here, this is just typical stupidity for them. That's alright, just more K9's for the rest of us.

Nobody should have a car accident.

If I hear that out of tens of thousands of people over a period of a few years, a few of them have accidents, this does not surprise me.

Everyone at fault for a car accident should be held accountable for the accident, and not blame the car for it, given that the car is in working order.

Cars should not be made illegal because of accidents caused by human error.

2WheelsGood said:

The gun community accepted that humans make mistakes a long time ago, hence the four rules we *should* all live by.

Try this. Shoot someone. Then when the cops come, blame the trigger of your gun. I'm going to bet that "sorry officer, but people make mistakes" is not going to get you very far. It's a BS excuse plain and simple.

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You really aren't reading my posts are you. No where have I said human imperfections should excuse mistakes (including ND's). No where have I said that's an excuse that should alleviate any liability for making the mistake. And most certainly none of my posts have suggested that we shouldn't follow gun safety rules.

Quite to the contrary, I've said multiple times that we need to hold people accountable for mistakes like ND's. This is true, even though (statistically speaking) we can surmise that these mistakes can and will happen over a large enough sample size, and thus it's wishful thinking to expect that ND's will never, ever happen no matter how large of a group we're considering.

If you actually think I was suggesting that "humans are imperfect and thus excused from all gun-related liability", I would encourage you to re-read my posts and perhaps a bit more slowly this time.

One can (and should, IMO) demand zero ND's. One cannot reasonably expect that result, once you get enough people handling guns. You can either get hung up on whether this is fair or not, or morally right or not. Or you can accept that in any endeavor, there will be non-compliances. Once/if you come to accept that, you can then make rational decisions about ways to minimize the negative consequences of those non-compliances. The technical term for reaching this state is living in the real world. A blind insistence that, because there should be zero accidents, one should expect zero accidents is called living in fantasy land.