Gun lock failure

American Handgunner, Jan-Feb, 2005 by Massad Ayoob

Integral locks trigger a primal fear among those who know their lives may depend on their gun: "What if it locks by itself?" I know cops who stopped trusting Remington 870 pump guns the day they started coming with a key lock integrated with the safety button.

For many years, these integral gun locks have upset firearms purists in the theoretical sense, but caused no actual mechanical problems. However, I've recently run across three cases where these devices failed during firing. Two spontaneously locked themselves during firing at a commercial shooting range, and one lock managed to depart from the gun while its owner was shooting it.

All three were ultra-light Smith & Wesson revolvers firing very hard kicking ammunition. At the Manchester (NH) Indoor Firing Line, reports owner Jim McLoud, a Model 342 Titanium AirLite being fired with powerful .38 Special +P+, and a Model 340 Scandium AirLite being shot with full power .357 Magnum ammo both locked-up tight. McLoud determined the parts in their integral locks had shifted under the heavy recoil and locked up. In Rochester, Indiana, detective Dennis Reichard was firing his personally owned service revolver, a Model 329 Scandium with full power .44 Magnum, when the lock's flag mechanism flew out of its slot in the frame alongside the exposed hammer. While the .44 continued to fire, Reichard was less than thrilled with his duty weapon literally falling apart while he was shooting it, and has gone back to his old all-steel Model 629 without the integral lock mechanism.

This is not necessarily an indictment of Smith & Wesson, nor even of the integral lock system that company uses. It may be more of a lesson that extraordinarily light handguns firing extremely powerful ammunition can be damaged by the battering of constant, extreme recoil forces. Still, it gives us pause.