Seemed like a good idea at the time - Handguns

Guns Magazine, August, 2002 by Massad Ayoob

In any sphere of endeavor, ideas come along that seem good at the time, but upon reflection don't pass the tests of real world logic and application. And the world of the gun is not immune to this.

Take the fellow who developed what he considered the best idea for coordinating a laser sight with a Glock pistol. His unit would attach to the frame in front of the trigger guard.

So far, so good. But the activation switch? He had supposedly figured out a way to turn on the laser by taking up the slack on the trigger. If the shooter decided to fire, he would only have to finish the trigger press...

Give a full body shudder to ya? Gave one to me too. The same was apparently true for every manufacturer to whom the inventor proposed the idea. Because (and thank Heaven) to the best of my knowledge, it never saw the light of day.

Who Needs A Safety?

Early in the 20th century, the Shanghai police decided to equip their personnel with Colt semiautomatic pistols (Good move). They then ordered the thousand or so armed officers to carry the guns with empty chambers, military style. (Considered ridiculous today, this logic seemed defensible by the standards of the time).

And then it was decided to pin the safety catch into the "fire" position, presumably on the theory that the cops would be too stupid to manipulate it correctly.

Was this a good move? Any time an armed officer perceived sufficient danger to draw the gun, he or she would chamber a round if there wasn't one up the spout already. If the gun was now cocked but could not be put on safe, a significant risk of accidental discharge had been created.

Some of the firearms training theories of the Shanghai Police during that period have survived to this day. Fortunately, pinning one's safety catch in the "fire" position has not.

Get It Out of the Holster How?

The unique Heckler and Koch P7 squeeze-cocker pistols are either loved or hated. When it comes to this controversial design, there seems to be little ground between advocates and detractors. One thing all who know the gun agree on is that you don't cock it in the holster - because you'd be pointing at your lower body a loaded, cocked and unlocked gun.

Shortly after the P7 was introduced, a holster maker brought out a rig designed exclusively for this design. The safety strap consisted of two tongues of leather snapped together at the back of the slide. No, it wasn't a "pull through". To release the gun, one had to squeeze the cocking lever on the front of the holstered pistol's grip. The prominent cocking indicator stud would then rise from the back of the slide and separate the straps from inside the holster.

The P7 owning community collectively blanched. Cock the gun in the holster to release it? Ummm... no thanks.

This scabbard did not remain on the market long, but will one day be a collector's item, along with the old Audley police holster and the California Clamshell. Each of these required the officer to draw under stress by forcibly punching his finger past the trigger to press the built in draw release button.

Lt. Chuck Higbie, LAPD ret., was still commander of the Officer-Involved Shooting Investigation team he founded when he told me how much he despised the clamshell, which had been an LAPD tradition before the advent of the auto pistol. Charged with investigating for the LAPD all accidental discharges as well as line of duty shootings, Higbie considered the clamshell an accident waiting to happen. And sometimes, the accident didn't wait.

To this day, we see pistols coming along with safety catches or decocking levers placed by their manufacturers in locations inaccessible to the normal human hand, particularly under stress. I'm sure you can think of two or three examples off the top of your head. How many people do you know who own those guns? Why are they unpopular? The correlation is clear. During this day and age, illogical ideas don't thrive in the world of the handgun.

The Good News

Why do bad handgun ideas tend to die natural deaths? Thank yourselves, brother and sister handgunners. It's because you are logical people. Countless essays on the gun culture - from the gun haters as well as from our side - have noted the high number of engineers and scientists drawn to firearms as a hobby. Gun owners tend to be logical people who believe in Frank Lloyd Wright's dictum: form follows function. It is your practicality and common sense that has made really bad design ideas so relatively rare in the handgun marketplace.