“...Experimenting with my 1911, at half-cock, the slide safety will not completely engage. No experienced shooter ever uses or depends on half-cock. It’s a good way to break the mechanism. Not suggested. IMHO
I always carry Condition 1, with holster retaining strap between hammer and slide, snap-buttoned. For many years.
Suggesting you either review the above and modify your recommendations, or forgo instructing others in M1911A gun safety.”
The Original Colt’s Government Model (”M1911” and M1911A1” were US War Dept nomenclature) safety only blocks the sear, and is thus the least effective safety device now in use. Colt’s developed a passive firing pin block before 1940 but set it aside in the rush to arm for WWII. It was introduced into Colt’s guns on a production basis only with the MK IV Series 80.
M1911 and M1911A1 pistols do not differ in safety function and thus no differences in training exist. One presumes “1911A” was a mis-post, due to haste.
Colt’s original Government Models (1911-1970) and Mk IV Series 70 were built with a “half-cock” or sear capture notch on the hammer: if the hammer was at this position, no normal pull on the trigger would unseat it, the hammer could fall no farther, and it had to be manually drawn all the way back to engage its full-cock notch against the sear.
Many have assumed the half-cock to be a form of safety, but current training regimens discourage carrying such a sidearm with a round chambered and the hammer on the half-cock notch. Colt’s eliminated the half-cock notch in traditional form when it introduced the Mk IV Series 80; hammers from that point forward sported a mere step instead, explained as a last-ditch safety feature that would interrupt hammer fall if the user’s thumb slipped during manual cocking, thus reducing chances of inadvertent discharge. To the discomfiture of many new Series 80 shooters, if the trigger is pulled with the hammer on this step, the hammer will fall the rest of the way with a click. But it cannot develop enough momentum to drive the firing pin all the way forward to strike a primer with sufficient energy to fire a chambered round.
The Series 80 hammers are more durable and cause less sear breakage. Also, they are easier to make.
Sad to say, gunmakers themselves do not agree on terminology and are sometimes quite sloppy when it comes to parts naming. Remington itself used to market spare magazines under the title “Magazine Clip” - printed right on the bubble packs.
To aid in reducing confusion, here are the small arms definitions that used to appear in the DoD Dictonary of Military Terms:
MAGAZINE: mechanism that holds cartridges ready for the arm’s feed system.
The US M1903 rifle (”Springfield ‘03”) had an internal, non-detachable magazine. The M1911 pistol used a detachable magazine. A number of variants do exist: both the above examples are box magazines. Many 22 rimfire rifles have a tubular magazine, as do most repeating shotguns. The M1911’s magazine is of single-column type (rounds line up in one vertical column); the M1903’s magazine is of staggered-column type - the cartridges stack up in zig-zag fashion, stacked half side by side and half atop each other, and are stripped into the chamber by the rifle’s bolt from either side of the magazine. Most modern semi-auto pistols have staggered-column, single-position feed magazines: the rounds line up zig-zag lower down, but as they rise up they merge gradually into a single column, and hit the feed lips in the center, to be stripped into the chamber by the pistol’s slide. Beginning with the M1 Carbine, all rifles formally adopted into US military service have had staggered-column, dual-feed detachable box magazines.
CHARGER: a device holding several cartridges in a unit, placed temporarily on the arm while the user pushes them into the arm’s magazine; the charger is then discarded. Chargers were in common military use during the bolt action era (circa 1891 - 1950s); typically they fitted into small grooves atop the arm and the cartridges were swept into the magazine by a stripping motion of the thumb. Hence the term “stripper clip,” which is a more typical US and sporting usage. Charger-fed arms include the US M1903 and M1917 rifles, Austria’s Steyr M1912 pistol, and perhaps most notoriously, Mauser’s C96 “Broomhandle” pistol. The Broomhandle is nearly impossible to load without such a device.
CLIP: a device that holds several cartridges together in a unit, and is loaded into the arm as a unit, holding the cartridges in place for chambering by the arm’s feed system. When the supply of ready rounds is exhausted, the clip either falls out or is ejected automatically.
Clips are an integral part of the arm’s feed system and most clip-fed guns are reduced to single shots if no clips can be found. Some examples: German Commission Rifle G1888, Italian Modelo 1891, and most famously the US Rifle M-1 designed by John C. Garand.
Clips are typically of lighter, simpler, hence cheaper construction and can usually be discarded with impunity on the battlefield. Box magazines are more costly and troops today typically retain them, even in combat, except in the worst situations.
You're correct as well as being very generous--if I had thought about the A1 specification for a while, that might have been correct. But as is, it was posted with ignorance, I guess.
The remainder of your response is illuminating--pretty good right off the top of your head, I'm sure. Thanks!
I do own a M1911 frame, as well as a M1911A1, with all parts for .45ACP and Day Arms .22 conversion for both. But my street carry gun is a 1995 Mitchell Arms stainless frame and slide with bull barrel (fully supported throat); ambidextrous slide safety and other modernizations of the controls.
For that Mitchell implementation, a slipped hammer does fall on the "half-cock" detent, yet the trigger is not operable when the hammer is at half-cock.
Back in the day, I had basic training with the M1 Garand and M1 Carbine, having carried and cared for them both 50 years ago. Was familiarized with M1911A1 pistol and BAR, also. Discharged as Machine Gun Squad Leader Sgt E-5 USAR 31 Oct 62. (Still had a lot to learn about individual and crew-served weapons.) Fire direction specialist an Master Gunner for 81mm Mortar, in the 6 years. Still have an M1, all original parts matching, made about Jan 1943.
Later on, I owned and shot a M1903 Springfield Rifle (4-groove barrel) for quite a while. I received it almost like new, and loaded stripper clips for it from delinked cartridges from MG belts. Thinking on the old days, all the main body of your response had great interest for me.
Best regards -- (but still think Condition 3 is different than your primary comment indicates?).