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Old 07-12-2012, 12:24 AM
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Fastbolt Fastbolt is offline
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Originally Posted by pyper22 View Post
why not just ask S&W, WHY, and see what their answer is. pyper
I did that very thing in an armorer class.

The answer was pretty simple ... and Capt Crunch nailed it earlier.

The anticipated military pistol testing being discussed back when the M&P 45 was in development specified a model equipped with one, and S&W pretty much built the M&P 45 so it would meet the anticipated specification requirements. (That's also why the M&P 45 had a different extractor pin, making it potentially easier for military armorer service & repair.)

Naturally, once a certain segment of the commercial public found out there was a M&P 45 made with a thumb safety, they wanted it.

Then they wanted the manual safety available on the other models. (Of course)

The sudden public demand reportedly caught S&W by surprise. They ended up having to revise their frames and sear housings to accept the thumb safety (which, as has been mentioned, blocks the trigger bar).

Of course, once it became a production feature ... then a certain segment of people complained about having thumb safeties.

They apparently listened to the market studies when they were designing the M&P Shield, and included the manual safety as a "standard" feature.

Naturally ... big surprise ... people are complaining about it having a thumb safety.

Hard to please everyone, isn't it?

FWIW, I have a pair of M&P pistols ... 1 w/thumb safeties & 1 w/o. Both work just fine for me.
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Last edited by Fastbolt; 07-12-2012 at 12:26 AM.
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