Help me understand the flavors of striker fired pistols

[Walt Sherrill]

If you can call the positive sear engagement of the M&P double action... then you can claim the positive sear engagement and hammer camming of a CZ 75B with a cocked hammer DA as well...

In following up on this point -- using sear engagement as a way of determining action type changes the context. If positive sear engagement is a criteria, all cocked SA guns (like BHPs and 1911s) are DA, too... and that's a contradiction in terms.

My preference is to focus on the practical, since that is really what matters on a day to day basis. If it has second strike, think double action. If it doesn't, think single action. All of the variations are important to know about when it comes time to work on the gun, but when your shooting, it only really matters how the gun behaves.

Agreed.

Double-action has long been used to describe a dual trigger function: 1) readying the action for release (by charging appropriate springs) and 2) releasing the action. That's why SECOND-STRIKE function seems to be the key criteria when talking about Double Action. (True DA guns also tend to have heavier trigger pulls, as no part of the spring assembly is pre-loaded by the slide.)

For the newer action types, a different term must be used -- or we just throw out the old definition as being irrelevant.

Someone mentioned something like "Assisted Double Action" -- and that might be good, as it allows folks to understand that something about the action being described is different.

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[marine6680]

Second strike is really a training issue.

If you know your pistol does not offer second strike, then immediate action drills will correct the problem.

Some say that a round with a hard primer will go off with a second strike.

Others argue that a completely dud round will not go off with any further strikes.

Second strike will be argued to be faster than immediate action.

Taking the time to do a second strike on a completely dud round then needing to do immediate action will be argued to take even longer, and that someone may waste time thinking when the second, third or fourth strike fails. It will also be argued that a fail to fire is not always caused by the ammo but a lack of ammo in the chamber.

Haveing either a dud or a hard primer in good factory ammo is rare, and equally unlikely...


When it comes down to it... When you experience a failure to fire... The only thing you can say with any certainty is that the pistol failed to fire. You can not say what caused that condition, whether the primer is just hard, or the round is a dud, or that there is even a round in the chamber. (Unless you can see the malfunction due to it being a feed/extraction/ejection malfunction.)

So two lines of thinking will get you to the same conclusion...

That there is only one thing you can do that guarantees a ready to fire round is in the chamber... Immediate action.

That of the three causes of a failure to fire, only one can be solved with a double strike... Meaning 2 our of 3 chance that the solution is immediate action, so the odds favor immediate action.

In actuality, the likelihood that there is no round in the chamber is higher than the likelihood of a bad/hard primer... As the absence of a round in the chamber is usually human error of some kind.

Training to do appropriate failure drills is more important than second strike.

 

[Jim Watson]

Now we are into technique, tactics, and policy instead of mechanics.

I have seen a good number of reloads with high primers fire on the second strike. The first hit seats the primer, the second fires it.

I cannot recall a misfired factory load firing on the second strike. Seems that a dud is a dud, rack it out and don't waste time snapping on it again.

But wait, we have other worries. There are a lot of people still going by, even still teaching, the old hangfire drill. A click instead of a bang might be a hangfire, not a misfire. Leave the offending round in the chamber for 30 seconds to give it a chance to go off in a safe manner and direction instead of blowing the bolt at your head.
I have had one hangfire ever, about two seconds in a 12 ga reload. I am not going to operate on the basis that I am fixing to have another.

Then there is the stuck bullet "squib". What seemed like a misfire might have been a powderless or otherwise defective cartridge leaving its bullet driven partway down the barrel by the primer flash. A second strike will do nothing at all here, and a "tap, rack, bang" will lead either to a jam if the bullet is just in front of the chamber and prevents loading the next, or a ruined barrel (or gun) if it were driven far enough to allow the next round to be racked in.
I have had two of those ever. One was a factory load that had been exposed to smoke and water in a house fire. All previous rounds had either fired or misfired, this one had enough dry powder to get the bullet out of the case. The rest of that lot has been pulled down to salvage the bullets and brass.
The other was an unbalanced .38 Special handload, a light powder charge and a long OAL. The powder flash just did not get all the way down the case to the powder which was at the bullet base as the gun came up from the holster. Cure, seat the bullets deeper to give normal freeboard.
So those were flukes and I don't condition my reflexes for an assumed barrel obstruction.

 

[Worc]

Walt Sherrill Wrote:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Doyle
... For the practical application, which of the striker fired pistols offer true 2nd strike capability (i.e. a 2nd chance to pull the trigger and hit the same primer without having to rack the slide)?

The ones that immediately come to mind are the Walther P99AS, S&W SW99 (basically the same gun), Walther PPX, Canik TP9, Magnum Research MR9, SIG 250, Taurus 24/7 (which may depend on the model), and (ugh) the CZ-100. There may be others...

Both the Sig 250 and Walther PPX are hammer fired with DAO triggers and the PPX does not have re-strike capability.

 

[Walt Sherrill]

My error -- when reading through the specs I missed that the P250 had a SPURLESS hammer. (SIG like a few others has turned some of the owner manual info into sales screeds, with little real technical info available.)

I suspect the new SIG P320's striker spring is partially pre-cocked/tensioned, too -- like the Glock. Haven't found a good technical review of the gun, yet.

I also misread the Walther PPX specs...

What threw me off was that at least one site offering it for sale said it was STRIKER FIRED. I then read that Walther called it DAO and just now learned that the hammer spring is partially tensioned, like the some S&W 3rd Gen DAO guns -- so, as you write, there's no double-strike. (I've since gotten the parts diagram, which would have made some of this CLEAR.)

Mea Culpa.

 

[marine6680]

In following up on this point -- using sear engagement as a way of determining action type changes the context. If positive sear engagement is a criteria, all cocked SA guns (like BHPs and 1911s) are DA, too... and that's a contradiction in terms.

Which was my point... The m&p is SA plain and simple... S&W can claim otherwise, but the striker is fully cocked, but with a little positive engagement... Which apparently they are claiming as necessary striker tensioning.

The glock needs the extra tension from the trigger pull or it will not set off the primer. Hence the assisted double action moniker.


The sig 320 is also SA... All the striker fired pistols that are praised for their triggers, are SA.

I thought I did a review on the 320... I know I did one on sig talk. I've brought up lots of technical details on it... I know my detail strip post has function details.

Either way... It's SA... So is the VP9.

 

[Whirlwind06]

The sig 320 is also SA... All the striker fired pistols that are praised for their triggers, are SA.

So they are 1911's or Hi-powers, just packaged differently.

Funny that no one would carry a 1911 or HP without the manual safety on, even if it was a 1911 with a firing pin block (with a grip safety also). But if we can't see the hammer, a firing pin block and maybe a tabbed trigger is okay to carry. Not saying the a M&P or XD is unsafe to carry, just musing on how we get wrapped up in the semantics.

 

[Cyanide971]

Great discussion so far. I'm learning something. For the practical application, which of the striker fired pistols offer true 2nd strike capability (i.e. a 2nd chance to pull the trigger and hit the same primer without having to rack the slide)?

For this discussion, let's limit it to striker fired models and not DAO models with an internal hammer (i.e. older Ruger LC9, etc.).

CZ 100 and Walther P99 DAO/S & W SW99 DAO are the only striker-fire pistols I can think of that are true DAO where the slide cycling serves but one purpose of ejecting the spent case and chambering a new round from the magazine.

 

[marine6680]

Funny that no one would carry a 1911 or HP without the manual safety on, even if it was a 1911 with a firing pin block (with a grip safety also). But if we can't see the hammer, a firing pin block and maybe a tabbed trigger is okay to carry.

The difference is that a 1911 has a very short trigger pull, and typically less sear engagement area.

So total trigger movement is 10% that of a typical SA striker trigger.

External hammers can also fail by being struck... Not a common thing really, but possible. The exposed hammer is why you carry a SA revolver on an empty chamber. (well an old revolver)


It is a lot of things added together that cause the difference in attitudes.

 

[BigMikey76]

For the practical application, which of the striker fired pistols offer true 2nd strike capability (i.e. a 2nd chance to pull the trigger and hit the same primer without having to rack the slide)?

Taurus has put that capability into their current lines of striker fired pistols. I know that the Millennium G2, the 24/7 G2 and the 709 "Slim" all have SA/DA triggers, so they are cocked and ready to fire in single action as soon as the round is chambered, but they revert to double action when a round doesn't go boom. I have to say that I like the reversal of the traditional DA/SA that you get in hammer fired pistols, where the first pull is long and heavy. Having it start in single and only go to double in the event of a firing problem is nice.

Is this valuable? It's hard to say. I've seen studies and statistics to support both sides. Some say "A dud is a dud, get rid of it." Others say, "Hard primer rounds have a high probability of firing on a second strike." I personally don't have nearly enough money to spend on the amount of ammo it would take to do my own study, so I will probably never know first hand.