tedburns, I don't know the nature of your problem, but you need to work it out, quickly. If you intend to be an active member of this forum, you need to be a bit politer to your fellow members. I see nothing, and I do mean nothing, that would warrant the responses I've seen from you.

And as far as other members trying to get you tossed from the forum is concerned, no one is doing any such thing. You don't need their help in that respect anyway. You're doing a fine job of it all on your own.

Please, will someone explain to me in detail the lock issue.
I have a S&W model 60 with the lock. I have ha no problems with the lock.
I personaly believe the lock is a good feature if it works properly and my lock seems to work the way it was designed.
I am for all the carry and right to own rights. But what is wrong with having a safety feature.
Lets be adults here. Kids can be curious. I Had a recent example in my own home where I had to discipline a grandchild. If the gun had been loaded there could have been serious consequences. I am all for serious safety measures.
I want my guns and I want to carry them, but what is wrong with a lock that works properly and the owner is in charge.

Gordo... there isn't a lot of detail to know.

Read, or even skim, this thread and you will see that having the lock in the gun opens the possibility of a malfunction where the gun jams. The liklihood isn't great, but it exists and some members of this forum have had it happen to them.

You can take your chances having a lock in the gun and you'll *probably* be ok.

Or, you can be completely confident that you will never suffer from a sudden jam of your gun due to a lock - by having a gun without the lock in it.

It really just comes down to this:

DO you want to leave open the possibility that your gun's lock will jam on you at the wrong time and perhaps always wonder in the back of your mind that it could happen -OR- dismiss the thought and possibility of a lock-related jam entirely by seeing that you have a gun without the lock? How lucky do you feel? ;-)

having watched this grow to 12 pages with no solutions in sight is frustrating...
consider S&W's screwups of the last 10 years , locks , crushfit barrels (4 out of the last 6 had 'ringed' barrels) , mim parts , poor QC (on my 60-15 the barrel was 20* to the left) , poor attitude from those employees that do ever respond to calls or letters etc...
maybe they should just buy taurus and complete their market suicide ?
come on S&W , i know you can do better , hell , even colt has cleaned up their act...
i've been buying smiths for almost 40 years now , i'd like to see new guns from them that i'd want without worrying about them getting me killed..

And as far as other members trying to get you tossed from the forum is concerned, no one is doing any such thing. You don't need their help in that respect anyway. You're doing a fine job of it all on your own.[/QUOTE]

Thank you Para for keeping this forum above the name calling ego vents found on numerous other firearm forums. Most of the time I can count on coming here for technical material and like minded firearm collectors. Other forums devoted to brand name handguns have turned into childish playground bully rant-fests. This one stays above the fray and I appreciate it.

I have 5 S&W's all different calibers and they have the lock on them, I have not to this date had a problem with any of them. I do read the forum to see if I can remove them so as not to have a problem. I check each time I go to the range to make sure they are unlocked but that is all I do to them.
I don't use these guns as my home defence guns they are just range queens, so I won't have to worry about it failing when needed.
If someone will post how to remove the IL that would be helpful.

quote:

Originally posted by cameron:
M29Hunter,
Do you think that day may actually come?
Much as I know the music scene in Chi-town is one of the very best;and I love to hear live music,I try to avoid states that disarm their citizens(D.C.,NY,Cali);ditto "Gun-Free Zones" like shopping Malls,schools,bars,churches,etc.
These places are just soft-targets for BGs.
c

On the contrary, the county where I live has gone from restricted licenses to full carry licenses.

Last Sunday I was at the range and one of our senior members "Mr.D" was showing off his new M642 Airweight. He had just bought it from the gunstore.

He fired 50 rounds that day. The ammunition was cheap Walmart FMJ's. The revolver functioned all 50 rounds.

This weekend I saw Mr. D again. He was packing a Taurus M85 ULB. He had come out during the week, fired 10 more rounds of factory ammunition, and then he could not pull the trigger anymore.

He could open the cylinder, he could not pull the trigger. He took the action lock keys and turned the lock mechanism. The revolver is still locked.

The revolver was not at the range, but it is my opinion that something in the lock mechanism has malfunctioned.

He is waiting for some shipping lable to come from Smith and Wesson. Needless to say his confidence in his M642 is at a very low.

He was saying good things about his Taurus.

Never heard anything bad about a Taurus locking up like the new S&W's. Maybe S&W should buy locking hammers from Taurus.

I don't carry revolvers for everyday carry,finding that 1911 semi-autos are more to my personal liking. Some folks who don't believe semi-autos are as fully/totally dependable as revolvers would do well to steer clear of this damnable,unwanted,unnecessary, "safety-lock" like S&W has decided to put into their,otherwise,fine pistols. I do carry a revolver in .44Mag.(new S&W 329PD) when I am out in the wilds;but it will not have the damnable safety-lock for the next outing. My 329 has not decided to "freeze" in the few(50) rounds I have put through it(it is not pleasurable to shoot many rounds in this gun);but for dependability's(life/death) sake it would be foolish to depend on a revolver(any revolver) with this type of,or ANY type of "safety",IMHO. Revolvers don't need no stinkin' safety. The true story on this will come out eventually;in the mean time,my suggestion would be to avoid revolvers with this type of "safety" like the plague/AIDS,and foul-smelling oysters.
To S&W I would say,great revolvers,really stupid safety. The S&W 1911s are great guns;it's pretty easy to negate the "Schwartz" crap,which makes them even better IMHO.
c

I stand by my previous opinion. As long as you are just shooting at paper targets or collecting modern Smiths as a hobby the internal Wiley Coyote "safety" is of no consequence. If one of these revolvers made it into combat or full time public safety hands there could be real liability Smith & Wesson would face. Any police or military directly ordered into harms way expect equipment to work as designed. That goes for ropes, radios, signal devices, medical equipment and firearms. As long as Smith & Wesson's legal department is aware that a handgun MAY be defective it should never be in the hands of anyone who could possibly need it to defend themselves. This "detail" should make it's way to item #1 of the legal and design teams.

Again, I wonder why S&W doesn't simply buy the license for the technology Taurus is now using. In addition I'm surprised that S&W allows their brand name put on a handgun with such a poor reliability record.

If a manufacturer of air brakes was this negligent they would be featured on 60 Minutes.

If a manufacturer of air brakes was this negligent they would be featured on 60 Minutes.[/QUOTE]
Good idea! Wish I had known about these "internal-locking" safeties before I bought a new S&W revolver. A media investigation might be a huge public safety boost.
c

Interestingly enough, although I haven't personally encountered anyone who has experienced an unintentional lock activation with the Taurus hammer lock (just as I've not personally encountered anyone who has done so with the S&W ILS), I have previously read of a couple of folks who have claimed to have had their Taurus revolver locks unexpectedly engage.

One of our new instructors recently bought himself a used 642-2 and has so far been pleased with its functioning. No unexpected locking. Another few of the guys who own and shoot ILS-equipped J-frames have likewise continued to receive normal functioning.

When I've asked S&W if LE agencies have been receiving J-frames with the ILS removed ... (I thought I'd read that the New Mexico State Police bought M637's for all of their officers, in addition to the new M&P357 pistols being ordered) ... I was told that the LE J-frames are being shipped with the ILS, just like any other J-frame normally produced with it.

While there have been some small rumbles of rumors of S&W supposedly being in the process of designing a different ILS for their revolvers, one which doesn't directly engage the hammer and isn't cosmetically distracting, as well as perhaps producing limited runs of revolvers without the ILS, it's still just rumors at this point.

Maybe S&W will become tired of losing some small percentage of commercial revolver sales. Dunno.

Personally, I'd welcome the opportunity to buy a S&W revolver without the current ILS design ... although my M&P340 centennial hasn't exhibited any indication of any ILS problem during the few hundred rounds I've fired it, which has included more than a hundred rounds of various hard-recoiling Magnum loads. Maybe an ILS which blocks the hammer strut, is concealed from view and isn't susceptible to recoil forces. I could accept that ... although for my needs I could certainly do without any ILS, since I store my handguns in a gun safe when not in use and take appropriate steps to make sure they aren't accessible to unauthorized persons.

S&W isn't the only manufacturer attracting some customer annoyance, though.
http://glocktalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=839354
http://www.stoppingpower.net/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=11118
http://glocktalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=756059
http://glocktalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=507673

It amazes me how many people nonchalantly say that they haven't had any indication with their gun "so far" that there is a problem with the lock... or their friend's IL-equipped guns haven't jammed yet.... as if that's any reason to assume that the gun won't jam on them when they need it most. That's like saying you've never crashed your car before while drunk driving so you're not worried about it happening next time you drive drunk.

If you don't drive drunk, you'll NEVER have to even wonder if you might crash your car because you were drunk!

Just because your IL-equipped gun hasn't jammed due to the locky-springy mechanism yet, don't think that it can't or it won't.

Well, I've never intentionally meant to express nonchalance, or having an air of easy unconcern or indifference, when discussing my experiences with S&W revolvers with the ILS, or my observations of other folks who own and use them ...

I'm very serious about the reliable functioning of my revolvers, but that's because I own and use them as off-duty weapons.

Would I choose a non-ILS equipped revolver over an otherwise identical ILS-equipped model? Absolutely. Wouldn't require a second's thought. I've made no secret of my preference when this subject comes up while taking to someone from S&W, too. I'm certain I'm not exactly unique in this regard, either.

However, there are a number of folks who have expressed interest in being able to use an ILS to prevent unauthorized access to their firearms. Like it or not, this is an attractive feature to a seemingly growing number of firearms owners and enthusiasts. It's not an unreasonable interest and desire, either. I suppose the 'trick' is to design an ILS that only functions when desired by the owner/user, and never unintentionally engages, isn't it?

On the other hand, I've encountered actual functioning problems caused by other things which are totally unrelated to an ILS, such as the hammer's sear stubbing on the trigger or the trigger not consistently resetting in DA mode.

If some rumors turn out to have a basis in fact, DHart, then you may get your wish and see S&W drop the present ILS design for one of a substantially different design ... (and if this occurs, you'd think they'd adopt one which would be completely unaffected by recoil forces, impact forces, etc.) ... or offer a limited line of revolver models without any ILS whatsoever. A sudden market demand for S&W revolvers without an ILS might surprise them, or, conversely, a resulting demonstrated lack of interest in them might surprise all of us who participate in forums such as these.

Unfortunately, I suspect that the future of 'consumer safety-oriented' legislation regarding firearms, or simply individual state requirements, are eventually going to take us to a time & place where ILS's are mandatory on new handguns. I suppose we can worry about that when (if?) if occurs, though.