The best-and worst-rifle safeties

[Bushpilot]

IMO Winchester m70 or Ruger m77 three position is the best... Worst? Well I'm a big fan of the Garand but not such a big fan of it's (or the mini or m14's) safety, especially when I have gloves on.... When putting a gloved finger into the trigger guard to take the safety off it wouldn't be too difficult to hit the trigger... Same goes for old auto 5's

 

[Robert]

I lovey Winchester M70, my AR and my FAL with the extended selector switch.

Not a fan of the Garand style of safety.

 

[entropy]

Best? Any Remington 552/572/740/742, etc. safety. Like a 1911 or AR, I don't even have to think about it, and it's off when the gun comes up.

Worst? Mosin Nagant. But,

The second is the safety on Mosin Nagant. It may be just me, but I find that the safety on my two old hex receiver guns are almost impossible for me to engage. There must be a trick I have never learned. Granted, this is battle rifle designed for sustained fire under very adverse conditions. But I tend to get paranoid at the best of time.

Yes there is a trick. With the rifle at roughly port arms, (I hold it at about a 45 degree angle away from the body also) tuck the butt firmly against the inside of the elbow. Pull the cocking knob straight back as far as it will go, with the thumb and side of the index finger, while pulling forward with the other hand on the foregrip. Turn it to the left until it hits the receiver, and slowly let it forward.

I hunt with mine, and walk with the rifle tucked into the elbow, hand on the cocking knob.

 

[ClickClickD'oh]

The unsafe part is lowering the hammer to half cock after you rack a round in the chamber

If you do it wrong, sure. Wrong is coincidentally the way most manuals teach. The, "Pinch the hammer" technique. Instead of pinching the hammer, get your thumb between the hammer and the firing pin. Let the hammer ride forward on your thumb. Make sure you get off the trigger once the hammer is off the sear and on your thumb. Don't wear gloves.

Short of your thumb suddenly becoming insubstantial, your can't mess up enough for the gun to discharge.

It's the same technique I use on my CZs.

 

[JeffG]

A crossbolt safety on a Model 94 Win or Marlin 336 is, to me, just plain wrong. Learn to be safe......no crossbolt for 100 years or so,thank the lawyers for it!

A well fitted rubber "O" ring fits in the red groove to deactivate it.

 

[Mr. Standfast]

I think any trigger safety is a bad idea. It can only be as good as the engagement of sear to hammer or cocking-piece, which can wear. Break-open shotguns manage pretty well with them, but they are often used either alone or with strict rules of etiquette in operation, and they don't need as strong a mainspring as the hard rifle primer.

I would consider half-cock good enough for most hammer rifles, such as Winchesters. The half-cock is more substantial than the notoriously vulnerable one of the single-action Colts, and not even the intellectual classes fan Winchesters. I do find the current cross-bolt safety very irksome, because it is so unlike what I use on any other firearm, except the Winchester 1200 I used to have as my getting-wet shotgun. If they felt they needed something besides half-cock, a lever safety would surely have been better. The lever safety on the German ordnance revolvers of 1879 onwards simply holds the hammer on half-cock, neither up nor down, till it is depressed in a way far more natural than the crossbolt.



Here the lever safety simply engages with the hammer when it is down, as in my double-action .32 by Di Pietro of Palermo.

Rifle cocking-piece safeties are generally very good, if a scope doesn't make them difficult to operate. Both the trigger and side-swing cocking-piece safety of my Brno Model 2 .22, bought for £30 ten shillings and sixpence by lunching cheap when I was a student in 1970, are both unacknowledged homage to the Winchester Model 70. It is a thoroughly effective safety, and I can strip and reassemble the bolt in seconds with a pencil. But it violates one rule of safeties I consider important. It works in the opposite direction to most others I am used to, forward to safe and backward to shoot. There is surely an opening for anyone to make an after-market part which does it the other way about.

I agree about the M1917 and P14 Enfield safeties, which anyone would be foolish to replace. They are reliable and well-placed. When I fitted the Dayton=Traister trigger and speedlock kit to my P14, I found that the safety would no longer engage. It should engage with a tiny curved slot in the new cocking-piece, and I had to use a diamond burr to remove a tiny amount of metal from the lip of that slot, until the safety operated without the little click the original made, and still lifted the cocking-piece the tiny amount that is necessary for safety.

This last is very important with any cocking-piece or hammer safety. If the safety doesn't lift the cocking-piece, and the trigger is pulled, there cocking-piece falls a perhaps invisible amount to be held by the safety. Then there won't be room for the sear or trigger to move back into place. The rifle lurks in ambush, ready to fire as soon as the safety is removed.

You wouldn't be pointing it at anybody at that moment, would you? No, nobody would. But relying on safety alone is no better than relying on trigger alone.

 

[kBob]

Well I think the Rifle With The Worst Safety Award goes to the French MAS 36.

The best safety is between your ears.

-kBob

 

[Newtosavage]

The best type of safety for me is the center mounted thumb push, located behind the bolt. Savage uses it.

That is pretty intuitive. My O/U 20-gauge shotgun uses it as well. Very quick and out of the way.

 

[351 WINCHESTER]

A true safety will block the firing pin from making contact with the primer. Anything else is just blocking the trigger from being pulled. The hammer can still be knocked off it's notch & discharge the weapon.

 

[theotherwaldo]

The best safety is proper gun handling. Everything else is relying on machinery to always function flawlessly... .

 

[Infidel]

I really liked the safety on the M-14 (Garand type); I found it perfect for its context. I also liked Mauser wing safeties, and the Model 70 version was a Yuuge improvement in ergonomics, but my all-time favorite is the Sako 75/85 two-position with another little button to allow working the bolt with the safety staying ON.

I'd say the worst are any mechanisms where the rifle can fire without any trigger manipulation when the safety is moved to OFF, like the Remington. I don't have any actual experiences with that sort of mechanism, and I don't want any.

 

[DeepSouth]

Although I’m not entirely sure how it works, my favorite to use is on my mk3 Lee-Enfield

I’d also say no fan of the Garand safety, I find myself never using it.

 

[Offfhand]

Here is an interesting twist on safeties , that can be called a safety safety. That being a feature on high end guns like this Westley Richards double rifle that prevents the safety from being inadvertently disengaged by careless gun bearers. During the golden era of African and Indian hunting there were reports of rifles firing accidentally while being carried by gun-bearers, sometimes with tragic results. To prevent this, a safety bolt locked the safety in safe position. With the hunter then un-bolting the safety when the rifle was in his hands and shooting eminent. Which often causes me to wonder how often the hunter(s) forgot to un-bolt the safety at a critical moment.

 

[Mosin Bubba]

Lever gun cross bolt safeties.

It's interesting how some hate them, and others don't mind them at all.

If I compare a lever gun with only a half cock safety to an old design revolver with only a half cock safety, most people (in the 21st century and even back in the 20th century) would insist that the hammer on one of those type of revolvers rest over an empty chamber.

Why trust a half cock safety on a loaded chamber lever gun being carried, but not on a revolver with a half cock safety?

Now, if all these lever guns had a transfer bar, like a modernized Henry lever gun, I would consider that just as safe as a revolver equipped the same.

Great point.

Old West cowboys weren't exactly a bunch of nanny-state weenies, and even they didn't trust a half notch safety because they knew it was an AD waiting to happen. Yet people nowadays are convinced that adding an (optional) safety or transfer bar to a model 92 or 94 because "I don't need that lawyer crap. I just won't drop my gun!"

That's why we have safeties...

 

[Sistema1927]

Here is an interesting twist on safeties , that can be called a safety safety. That being a feature on high end guns like this Westley Richards double rifle that prevents the safety from being inadvertently disengaged by careless gun bearers. During the golden era of African and Indian hunting there were reports of rifles firing accidentally while being carried by gun-bearers, sometimes with tragic results. To prevent this, a safety bolt locked the safety in safe position. With the hunter then un-bolting the safety when the rifle was in his hands and shooting eminent. Which often causes me to wonder how often the hunter(s) forgot to un-bolt the safety at a critical moment. View attachment 785502 View attachment 785503

Seems like a solution looking for a problem. What would keep a gun bearer from unbolting the safety?

 

[entropy]

The lack of knowledge that it is there, and from appearances, it offers a positive lock for the tang safety which is much more likely to be inadvertently bumped off by a gun bearer. Another layer of mechanical backup. I've seen pics from safaris of the day, and the gun bearers apparently have no knowledge of muzzle discipline, and treat the guns like a pole to carry.

 

[Kendal Black]

I already voted. Garand the best, early type M1Carbine pushbutton safety worst evaaah. Think about that carbine safety. Briefly trained grunt: A. Tries to remove the magazine, instead goes off safe. (Possible bad result.) B. Tries to go off safe, releases magazine instead. (Possibly final bad result.)

Though I already cast both my votes, there is a certain logic to the military Mauser. If you just worked the bolt and cannot pull the trigger, the problem is before your eyes. If you cannot work the bolt the problem is next to the bolt.

 

[Geno]

I find M1911-A1, M1A, Savage, Ruger to be almost intuitive. Weatherby Mark V, and Winchester M70 not as much so, but great safeties! Glock always has concerned me, My least user-friend safety vote would go to the M870, oddly, my favorite shotgun. My favorite safety, AR platform.

JMHO,

Geno

 

[Ironhand54]

Well I think the Rifle With The Worst Safety Award goes to the French MAS 36.

The best safety is between your ears.

-kBob

Actually, if we are talking military rifles then the Martini-Henry could be said to have the worst since it has no safety at all.

IronHand

 

[Llama Bob]

even they didn't trust a half notch safety because they knew it was an AD waiting to happen

Uh, what? How do you figure that? In the JMB designed 1885 and lever guns, there's no way the gun comes off half cock. Drop it, whatever - no chance. That notch is huge. You'd have to shear the sear completely in two for it to fire.

I'd say it's trustworthy and has been trusted for over 130 years now.

 

[Llama Bob]

As far as best safeties, the Winchester M70 safety and some M98 variants with sliding 3-position safeties are high in my book.

As far as the worst, the M1 and M14 have to be up there for US arms. But of course the Remington 700 which has been responsible for a large and as yet not fully tallied number of deaths due to faulty design has to top the list.

 

[entropy]

Uh, what? How do you figure that? In the JMB designed 1885 and lever guns, there's no way the gun comes off half cock. Drop it, whatever - no chance. That notch is huge. You'd have to shear the sear completely in two for it to fire.

I'd say it's trustworthy and has been trusted for over 130 years now.

And, yet, I've repaired one or two that have done just that. Never say never. Mechanical devices can fail, even something that simple. Perhaps Mosin Bubba might have been referring to SA revolvers, which shear half-cock notches off rather easily.

 

[Llama Bob]

And, yet, I've repaired one or two that have done just that. Never say never. Mechanical devices can fail, even something that simple. Perhaps Mosin Bubba might have been referring to SA revolvers, which shear half-cock notches off rather easily.

Half cocks on some SA revolvers are not as robust.

I don't ask that a safety be undefeatable if large forces are applied to the gun to shear through a large steel part. That's not a failure, that's the physical destruction of the gun by outside forces. After all, any safety can be overcome by a few pounds of fource pushing it from safe to fire.

The novelty/lawyer levergun safeties are completely useless, except to people who sell parts to disable them.

 

[Llama Bob]

Incidentally, out of curiosity I looked what it would take to shear off the half-cock hooks or through the sear. The shear strength of 4140 is about 60 thousand pounds per square inch, and the cross section of both those parts at the relevant point is about 1/64th of a square inch. So that suggests that about a thousand pounds of force were required to cause the damage you described.

It seems to me that without the help of either a file or rust or some sort of repeated blows causing fatigue, it ain't gonna happen. Or i guess if an elephant stepped on the hammer.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

Mosin safety stymied me until I was told: pull back the striker with the right hand, rotate the rifle with the left hand.
I still tend to go French Lebel on it: empty chamber until actually shooting it; Muzzle awareness and trigger discipline while shooting; clear the rifle if not shooting. The Mosin safety as WHB Smith pointed out blocks discharge in four ways; it is still not convenient, but I am not convinced relying on mechanical parts that can fail is better than stictly following Cooper's Four.