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Musketeer,
You left out the part where the criminal, who had put the LEO down with a sucker punch, got so frustrated with the gun that he threw it into the officer's chest before leaving. So not only was he too stupid to work the gun, he gave it back to the officer when he couldn't figure it out. I can't remember the name of the ex-Chicago cop with the big handlebar moustache who lectures on security? Not a pro-gun guy. Nonetheless, he makes the salient observation that he's been patting people down for 30 years, and hasn't come across a MENSA card yet.
MasterPieceArms,
A lot of people (my father, for one) have hands whose palms form a recess or pocket right over the bottom of the 1911 grip safety when they grasp the gun for firing, so they find the trigger blocked. This is what Mete was referring to.
The grip safety is only extra protection against the gun discharging if it is dropped on its butt. It doesn't make it any more or less likely for a person whose hands depress the safety while grasping the weapon to experience a negligent discharge. Therefore, disabling it doesn't carry the same potential for a prosecutor to make a reckless endangerment case as defeating the thumb safety would do.
If you install a lightweight aluminum or composite trigger shoe with a skeletonized trigger stirrup, you gain some protection against the butt-drop accident anyway. I wouldn't feel concerned about installing a grip safety retaining clip or otherwise defeating the grip safety in the case that the gun was properly fitted with such a trigger and tested for unintended hammer fall. Installing the light trigger demonstrates intent to provide an alternative means of addressing the problem. Plus, you have an affirmative defense that the safety prevented the gun from working to protect you. Indeed, several of the professionals at Gunsite had grip safety clips in place when I was there (and their guns all had properly checked-out trigger jobs).
I can't put words in Countryboy's mouth, but unless you’ve had your head in the sand as liability suits have grown in leaps and bounds, you should know to take his warning seriously. In real courts of law, here's what will happen: You shoot Mr. Badguy in legitimate self-defense. No accidental discharge. The prosecutor learns your gun has defeated safeties and records the fact. He may wonder if your self-defense claim is an attempt to cover up a negligent discharge? He can't prove it clearly enough be confident of persuading 12 jurors, and if you're lucky, Mr. Badguy is well-known to local LEO's as chronic trouble. Maybe you even have witnesses to back you up? So the prosecutor declines to prosecute.
Think you’re off the hook? Heaven help you, because Mr. Badguy's extended parasite family wants to supplement their welfare checks in the amount of your life's savings and future income. Especially if Mr. Badguy survived and can lie about what happened. So they file a civil court case. Their Legal Leech uses discovery to read the case file and, lo and behold, finds a Christmas present: the prosecutor's record of the defeated safeties. Mr. Badguy's family steals a set of Sunday-best clothes and 20 pounds of Kleenex from Dollar General and show up in the civil courtroom to weep pathetically throughout the trial.
In civil court, unlike criminal court, jury decisions don't require unanimity. They only have to convince a majority of jurors your defeated safeties prove you are reckless and exhibit gross indifference to public safety and to the well-being of those around you. And, even if you did intend to shoot Mr. Badguy, they will argue the safety might have given you one more chance to change your mind at the last split second. You know the one. The split second that Mr. Badguy swears is the one in which he would have surrendered the shotgun he was only trying to scare you with. Never mind that this is ludicrous. You only need the bad luck to draw enough people on the jury who believe what they see on evening news; who’ve been persuaded a rifle by any other name is an assault rifle; who are convinced that carry permits can turn any state into a free-fire zone. Someone once asked: Do you really want to be judged by people too stupid to get out of jury duty? I like to think a sense of civic duty drives most jurors, but then, I’m an optimist. And you only have to get a bonehead jury once to receive a lifetime of misery.
So, you may be completely correct that safeties are redundant, but you are speaking from the perspective of the gun handler. The jury mostly will have got their gun handling “knowledge” from TV dramas, and in the end it is their opinion, informed or otherwise, that will decide the matter. It has nothing to do with gun technology, truth, gun handling skill, or justice. With the single exception of defeating the 1911 grip safety under the circumstances I described, I recommend for your own legal protection that you just learn to work the darn things expeditiously.
Nick
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