Worst safety EVER!!!

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tark

tark

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Let's have some fun.

What is the WORST safety ever put on an automatic pistol? For the sake of argument, lets leave out guns with no safety at all, like Tokarevs.

Pretty much only two factors to consider:

1 ) Is it easy to manipulate and reach?

2 )Does it actually work safely and reliably?

I vote for the Japanese type 14 Nambu to take the prize in the first category.

And The Steyer-Hahn M-1912 for the second. When firing, the base of the thumb can nudge the safety upward until the gun stops. Pushing it back to fire will sometimes ( usually )discharge the gun. :what:
 
Here's the Nambu safety. It is in the fire position. To make the gun safe, the safety lever must be rotated 180 degrees so it points toward the rear of the gun. This requires two hands to manipulate. To make matters worse, the thing is located forward on the gun, right above the trigger! The whole thing was a train wreck!
 

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Cz-52s are pretty dodgey. The de cocker can miss and the slide release can release whenever it wants to. I’ll take the FEG Pa-63 any day over it.
 
I know we're in the handguns sub, but I'm going to throw the early (Pre-A) Winchester M52 out there.

The wing safety would crack the receiver if the gun was dropped on that side when it was in the "Safe" position, or if one forgot to switch it to "Fire" before attempting to open the bolt.. A large percentage, if not the majority, of those guns are cracked now to one degree or another. ☹️
 
The ar style lever was difficult for me at first. Coming from mainly shooting shotguns and hunting style rifles with crossbolts and tang style safties. I even put a crossbolt on my first ar cause the lever was so awkward to me. Now years later I'm fine with the lever. And I find myself flipping for the lever sometimes on my crossbolt and tang guns.
 
The worst that I personally own are the Beretta 92 and the third generation Smith and Wesson autos. I simply cannot reliably flip a slide mounted safety up without using my off hand and looking at the gun. It would undoubtedly get me killed in a real high stress situation. When I carried a 1006 I left the safety off, completely defeating the reason to have one.

The Sig P365 and Ruger Security 9 are not great either. They are tiny and easy to miss.
 
The 9mm Steyr-Hahn Model 1912 was one of the standard military pistols of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the First World War. It had a safety catch in about the same position as the Colt 1911. So what could be wrong? It was placed so the thumb of a medium to large right hand touched the safety when firing. And could nudge the safety up a little bit each time the gun was fired. Right up to the point where pulling the trigger disengaged the trigger from the sear, but left the safety keeping it in engagement with the hammer. When the user looked at the pistol to see why it had not gone off, he would notice the safety was part way to the safe position, and push it down to the fire position. At which point the gun would go off, and hit whatever it happened to be pointed at at the moment.

That is a VERY disconcerting thing to have happen. I know, because while I have never owned a Steyr-Hahn 1912, I owned a Norinco copy of a Russian Margolin 22 target pistol. The Russian Margolins did not not have a manual safety, because in the old Soviet Union, it was strictly a competition gun, kept at the range, and they saw no need for a safety. They just ordered the shooters to never have an accident. The Chinese added one to their copy for the American market, and apparently did not test it adequately, because it would do the same thing as the Steyr-Hahn safety.

So they are both my nominees for worst safety catch, because they have the same potentially lethal problem. I learned about the Steyr-Hahn's problem from an article by Richard T. Shimek in Guns & Ammo many years ago, which is why I understood what was happening with the Norinco Margolin when I got one.

This has a picture of the 9mm Steyr-Hahn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steyr_M1912_pistol
This has a picture of a Russian Margolin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MCM_pistol
This has pictures of the Norinco PS-01 Margolin copy, showing the manual safety: https://www.rimfirecentral.com/threads/norinco-pso1-pistol.70834/
 
Last edited:
Elkins45 said:
The worst that I personally own are the Beretta 92 and the third generation Smith and Wesson autos. I simply cannot reliably flip a slide mounted safety up without using my off hand and looking at the gun.
Click to expand...
Wasn't super fond of the M9's system at first; early after the issue, we still carried Condition 3 INCONUS. After 9/11, we chambered a round, de-cocked and then applied the safety. Downrange, we just chambered a round and de-cocked, carrying in a Condition 1 mode. I was actually issued a S&W 5906 in a past job for a bit, and didn't like carrying the pistol on-safe, having come up on 1911s. But fortunately, my thumb can reach the safety without changing my grip, just have to think about it.

So in no way do I consider the Beretta or S&W 3rd gen pistols' safety (frame-mounted, up to fire) the worst safety levers ever...

As @Radom Guy noted, the Beretta M1934 (and 1935) take that honor.

(I have zero experience with the Steyr-Hahn, Nambu, the Bersa 844 or any of the more obscure Russian and Chinese pistols.)
 
I had a Walter P22 that had lots of issues, but the straw that broke the camel’s back was when it started partially dropping the hammer when you took the safety off, didn’t do it every time but still.

Also if you want to use the safety, then the one on the S&W bodyguard 2.0 is awful. However if you want to leave it on fire and forget it has one then it’s great.
 
There is an “upgrade” to the 1911 lever, don’t remember which one, but it makes me bleed… nothing like ruining a good thing
 
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