Lawyer gun, shooter gun: do too many safeties make a gun unshootable? A top armorer proves you can have your cake and shoot it too

In shooter jargon, the word "lawyer" has become a popular modifier lately. As in, "lawyer trigger" to describe a heavy pull or "lawyer gun" for a pistol with an additional safety device some think is extraneous.

Well, we live in litigious times. Beretta just won the jury verdict in an alleged negligence case. Kenzo Dix, then 14, was tragically shot and killed in 1994 by the careless handling of a loaded, unsecured firearm. A lawsuit filed on behalf of his parents in 1995 by Handgun Control, Inc. took nine expensive, agonizing years and multiple trials to finally determine that Beretta was not negligent by not furnishing the pistol with an internal lock and certain other features. It has been said that a dime of every dollar you pay for a firearm goes toward the lawsuit reserve fund. No wonder manufacturers seem obsessed with safety devices.

I learned recently that a long-time friend, ace armorer and firearms instructor Rick Devoid, had been getting a surprising number of requests to install manual safety levers on the previously "slick" slides of S&W DAO (double action only) autoloaders. As readers know, Smith & Wesson offered the DAO to appease police demand from two directions: some departments wanted a long trigger pull for every shot because of liability concerns, and some instructors felt a single, revolver-like trigger pull was simpler for officers to learn than the heavy first shot followed by the light, easy release of subsequent shots in a TDA (traditional double action) pistol.

Now, S&W started the market for double action autos in this country with the Model 39 half a century ago, and from the beginning they got complaints that the safety/decock lever was too complicated to learn. When SIG overtook S&W and Beretta in the TDA market with a gun that had no safety catch per se--only a frame-mounted decocker--both optionally offered pistols that way, as well as DAO versions called "slick slides" because they needed no such lever at all. Beretta made a few hundred of their Model 92 DS pistols, DAO 9mms with a dedicated safety lever on the slide, and stopped when the market showed virtually almost no interest at all. Moreover, a great many TDA Berettas and Smiths are carried with the slide lever in the "fire" position, on the theory that the draw and shot will be faster when officers must react or die. Many police departments actually mandate that such guns be carried that way.

Thus, putting a manual safety on a DAO Smith was definitely swimming upstream against the trend. Indeed, DAO models by Beretta, Ruger, SIG and S&W sell primarily to cops.

I decided to get a DAO Smith to Rick Devoid and ask him to work his full magic on it, installing the manual safety and going beyond. Let me tell you why.

Safety Devices

While the first generation S&W 9mms (Model 39, 39-2, 59, etc.) could go off if dropped with a round in the chamber unless the gun was "on safe," that was fixed in the second generation. If your traditional style S&W auto has a model number with three or four digits (459, 4506, etc.) it is "drop safe" with an internal firing pin block even if carried with the lever in the "fire" position.

However, the manual safety has proven to be a lifesaver when a criminal gets the gun away from its legitimate owner and attempts murder with it. In the late 1977, I was given carte blanche by the Illinois State Police to study their experience with a 1,700-person force that had carried the Model 39 exclusively for a decade, I was able to identify 13 troopers who were alive because they had the S&W pistol, and would have been dead if they'd had their old revolvers. Four were firepower survivals in gunfights that took them beyond six shots, but nine were saved when a suspect got their 9mm away, tried to shoot them with it, and couldn't make it go off.

Some were saved when, perceiving themselves to be losing the struggle for the gun, they punched the magazine release. This activated the magazine disconnector, making it impossible to fire the chambered round once the suspect gained control of the pistol. The majority, though, were saved because their pistol was "on safe" when snatched, and their would-be murderer couldn't figure out how to make it work.

DAO

I chose was a Smith & Wesson Model 3953. DAO version of the Model 3913. It's a stainless 9mm compact that holds 8 1 rounds in a single-stack magazine. With aluminum alloy frame, this flat pistol weighs a comfortable 25.5 ounces. Introduced in 1990, a year after the 3913, the Model 3953 is standard issue for plainclothes detectives of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and an option for small-handed Mounties to wear in uniform. The NYPD and Chicago PD both limit their personnel to DAO handguns, and the 3953 is extremely popular with both agencies among detectives for duty wear, and for off-duty carry. It is a reliable and well-proven defensive handgun. As Illinois State Police proved with almost 20 years of using P 9mm ammo in their alloy frame S&Ws, their construction will handle the pounding of the hottest loads in its caliber.