All,

I believe a magazine disconnect that renders a firearm inert with the magazine removed is an abomination.

Is it possible to rectify the situation with the third generation guns, specifically the 6906?

For the record I like the magazine safety. That said, here is a video on YouTube of how to disable the magazine safety. Also for the record this is not my video, because once again the magazine safety does not bother me at all. Also I don't care to debate the subject with anybody.

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Can open, worms everywhere.

Yes, it can be done, same as with the previous generations of the S&W metal receiver pistols.

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VCDL, GOA, NRA

I love to debate the subject and this area of this site is the perfect place to do that.

I think it’s funny that someone who christens the mag disconnect safety an “abomination” would target a 6906 when there are a gujillion other handguns in the world without this feature, but we obviously don’t all see things the same way.

There’s two models that I have (five total pistols) where this feature drives me to drinking — my 52’s and 952’s. Because these target pistols do not employ a thumb decocker, there is no damn way to lower the hammer without a magazine. What makes these even more mystifying is that my 745’s, 845’s and 945’s and also my PPC-9 do not have the magazine disconnect.

WHY do these models not have the magazine disconnect?! Is it because they are target pistols and definitely not duty/service pistols? Hmmm… because that surely describes the 52 and 952.

Wacky, and does not make much sense. From my 52’s and 952’s I would definitely remove this feature EXCEPT that I will not do it because it requires removal of the rear sight. If it were simple parts tear down, I would do it.

I dunno.... I carried a 6906 and later a 3913 for work and used both for quarterly qualification. I never had occasion to have the feature "get in my way" (for lack of a better term.) The way we were trained was to never let the gun run dry - drop an empty mag after the last round is picked up into the chamber. (I'm a bit OCD, so counting my rounds down just came naturally. )I can't vouch for any of my coworkers, of course, but it was never a problem for me and I never tampered with it.

On CCW guns or SD guns I prefer a pistol not to have a magazine safety. If I need to fire a shot when performing a reload, I want that ability! If the magazine release is inadvertently pushed by a perp and the magazine drops, I still want the pistol to fire. On a target gun I don’t care either way as paper doesn’t shoot back.

When it goes in the closet, you can leave a round in the snout, and store the mag somewheres else. Gun is safe this way. I learned this from our departed comrade 18DAI.

When somebody is wrestling with you to take your weapon you press the mag release and he cannot shoot you. Without the mag release you still hold the slide tightly so that when he does fire, it only fires one and jams. No, the front sight will NOT slice your hand on the recoil. Total myth. Where do people get such ideas? You must control the muzzle anyway. Weapon retention training is a thing and with the disconnect safety there are certain options. Some use it and some don't. Too big a subject for here.

I have a 6906 that was first used by the Florida Dept of Corrections. It is marked from the factory that it will fire with the mag disconnected.

Kind Regards,
BrianD

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696-6906-457-38-3913-CS40-411

If you're going to count on that one shot with the mag removed you better make sure it doesn't also cause a jam. Some guns that can fire without the mag, fail to properly eject when the mag is absent, resulting in causing a delay in getting that fresh mag running.

My only issue with the mag safety is that it does make cleaning and function checking a bit more problematic. I could give an example but it would also entail confessing to an episode of crazy stupid/dangerous gun handling I'm still embarrased by some 40+ years later. There were no witnesses so...

I said I don't feel the need to debate the subject, but you certainly can feel free.

My only comment is that the combination of no magazine safety and having to pull the trigger makes Glocks totally dependent on the reliability of the owners to follow the proper sequence in field stripping to avoid a negligent discharge.

I know that S&W would remove it for agencies at the agencies request.

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Can open, worms everywhere.

I'm not going to debate the merits of the magazine disconnect either. I will say that both sides make equally good arguments. I will say that I do not make significant modifications to a firearm that I may have to use in a self-defense situation.

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VCDL, GOA, NRA

Mike, the video that Gary posted is generally good, with the exception that the guy doesn't actually show the removal of the sight to get to the magazine disconnect spring and part to remove it.

I recently did this with my 5906. The hardest part can be actually getting the rear sight to move if it hasn't been moved since the factory. I needed some healthy doses of Kroil to get the sight unstuck from the slide.

Once that was done, remember that the sight comes off left-to-right and goes back on right-to-left. The spring and disconnector you want to remove is on the left side, so you don't actually have to remove the sight entirely, unless yours is one of the guns that has a metal plate holding the springs down. Mine didn't have that, so I only needed to move the sight far enough to release the left spring and the disconnect, and then I pushed the sight back into place.

I have a 469 that I carry that needs this treatment as well.

If I recall, removing the mag disconnect on my Model 1006 entailed not only removing the rear sight assembly which was pretty easy as it has the adjustable "winged" sight, but also removing the slide mounted decocking lever assembly and firing pin. Once those parts were removed it was a simple task to remove the little nylon plunger and spring that made up the functioning parts of the mag safety. If I had to remove one of the Novak style rear sights to do it I'd probably think long and hard unless I had a sight pusher tool. (Which I do)

Personally I detest mag safeties although I see the arguments for both sides. At least in the case of the S&W automatics they don't adversely affect the trigger pull.

The only handgun I own that had a magazine disconnect is my FM High Power clone. I had an issue with it that required me to pull the trigger and magazine disconnect out to diagnose. When I re-assembled it after figuring out the issue I just left the disconnect parts out. I never thought they were a great idea but I understand that others might have a different opinion.

FYI, there is an in video link to a separate video showing how to remove the rear sight. Which is why he didn't show it.

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Can open, worms everywhere.

I think those metal plates were only on 45 ACP models.

I have three NYPD S&W third gens, 2 5946's and a 3953 TSW with the early 7 round mags. The disconnect is removed on the 5946's and you can fire with the mag out. For some reason, the off duty 3953's kept the feature. Wonder why the requirements for duty and off duty were different?

I like mag disconnects.

FBI-issued M1076s, and some local and state agencies that also issued the M1076, had the mag-disconnect feature removed at the factory. That requested modification resulted in S&W adding a warning to the left side of the slide on those guns that said: “pistol capable of firing with magazine removed.”

Back in the day, removal of the mag-disconnect feature on a 10mm 3rd Gen pistol issued to LEOs was considered a “tactical upgrade,” since during a gunfight you could still fire the chambered round while dumping one mag and reloading another.

My own 1076 that I carried for years, a former early 1990s L.E. gun out of a New Hampshire city PD (per Mr. Jinx’ historical letter), is set up exactly this way.

I love 3rd gen Smith & Wesson autos. I own several. I believe that the magazine disconnect is an answer to a question no one asked. If the magazine disconnect was such a good idea, why didn't Smith & Wesson keep it for the P99, SW, SD or M&P series?

My 4013 and 4053 single stacks have the plate also. Seems like maybe the 1076 and 1006 do also. Maybe it is the large frame. No idea why some have and some don't. It does keep everything in place while installing the rear site and prevents you from pinching a spring.

Rosewood

My 1076 doesn't even have the hole drilled on the slide. So it wasn't removed, it was never installed. It too has the warning on the slide.

Rosewood

I am on the fence on whether I like it or not, I see both sides of the argument.

Funny how folks that argue for it, never complain about all of the other guns that never had it. If it was such a useful feature, why don't modern guns have it?

Of all the handguns I own, the 3rd gens are the only ones that have the mag disconnect feature, and I own a bunch of different brands and models.

Rosewood

I would prefer if 3rd gens didn’t have the mag disconnect, but I tolerate it.

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213th FBINA

Reading this thread reminded me when about 15 years ago I drove down to my accountants office in South Beach Miami,
in the lobby waiting lounge I noticed a guy wearing a Metro Dade Fire shirt and a long leg brace, we chatted for a while like do you know so and so, how's the dept etc.
I then asked him..."What did u do to your leg?"
I was expecting a tore my ACL while whatever,
He said " I was cleaning my Glock .40 and removed the magazine but forgot I had one in the chamber".
Magazine disconnects are ok by me.
OUCH!

FWIW - like disconnects or not - I'll post my frequent reminder that any of the S&W 39/59 pattern pistols can be fired with the magazine removed.

I know of two accidental deaths when the users inadvertently discovered this.

Of course, the two digit pistols can inertia fire with the magazine removed.

Relying on the disconnect rather than unloading -- removing the magazine while leaving a round in the chamber -- was always a bad idea. I never saw it suggested after the mid 1970's.

Interestingly, some young friends still in the business report that they've never had weapon retention training, in the academy or later.

For the I WANT TO ARGUE ABOUT IT crowd it is interesting to note that the pistols that S&W sold to government agencies they would sell without the mag disconnect at request. Those sold on the open market were sold only with mag disconnects. I am also told (don't know this for a fact) that if you send your mag disconnect removed pistol in to S&W for service you will find the mag disconnect back in it when the gun is returned.

As soon as I see a mod to a gun requires beating off the rear sight, I decide I don't need the mod. I'll either put up with the offending feature or not buy it in the first place.

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Release the Kraken

You can get a sight pusher. Some are better than others. A good one enables you to change sights at a whim. A good one with precise measuring lines enables acute fine tuning of the sights. Like anything, it might pay to do some research before you decide on one. Pardon me if you already knew about this.

Kind Regards,
BrianD

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696-6906-457-38-3913-CS40-411

The only people I encountered got Glock Leg because they carried the pistol in sweat pants without a holster. When inevitably the gun slid down their pants leg their instinctive reaction was to grab the grip and stick their finger through the trigger guard. Ooops.

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Can open, worms everywhere.

You’re probably right. But the 9MM models surely don’t have that plate. Kind of stupid not to have it. They made things easier.

I agree, the 9mm ones do not (3913, 6904/6906). Thinking my double stack 4013TSW doesn't either.

Actually, I think not having the plate made things easier. Since the sight drifts off left-to-right, I didn't have to take the sight completely off to remove the disconnector. I just had to drift it just enough to expose that hole. I then removed the spring and the disconnector, and then drifted the sight back into place.

It was an option that S&W finally asked Walther to design for the SW9945, at least the "L" version. We were told about it in my last SW99/P99 armorer class, but they didn't have one to demonstrate and it wasn't included in the manual.

It's an option for the M&P, and it's an elegantly simple one.

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Ret LE Firearms inst & armorer

I’d add the option to my M&P pistols if I could.

I think it was after my second M&P pistol armorer class, at the end of '09, when I ordered a M&P 40C. I decided to order it with the magazine safety option (lever) just on a whim. Well, that slowed the process quite a bit. I was told to be patient, as the demand for the M&P's had far outpaced their ability to produce them.

It was in the Spring of the following year I called and asked when I could expect my order to ever reach the production. I was told that the production run slated for the mag safety inclusion was still a ways off, but if I was willing to take one without the mag safety feature, they'd pull one from a current LE contract to send me. Tired of waiting, I said go ahead. Thus, I got night sights and no mag safety.

If I'd thought about it, I probably could've asked for a sear housing block, already set up with the mag safety, from the parts bins brought to one of the armorer classes, and installed it myself. It wouldn't match the language on the slide about firing without a magazine, though.

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Ret LE Firearms inst & armorer

So your gun was disabled until you inserted the fresh magazine.

There were some reviews and studies done over the decades, and trying to find examples of instances where someone was unable to return fire because they were in the midst of a magazine replacement, and a magazine safety prevented them from shooting at that moment in time ... difficult to find, to put it lightly.

Now, a few examples could be found where a magazine had become unseated and rendered a weapon inoperable, but not where a cop had died as a result. It was something considered better addressed by making sure a holster design protected the mag catch from unintentional depression, and teaching cops to surreptitiously quick-check/tug on their primary mag.

It's been reported as having been observed to be more of a problem when a magazine floorplate might be damaged, and the rounds dumped out of a magazine (even without the user being aware of it), by the weapon having been turned into a single shot pistol. Bumping something too hard, like a veh door pillar (entry/exit), or even banging against a veh seat belt buckle, has been observed to cause issues which weren't noticed by some armed folks.

One study that was previously done by some large agency years ago (which I can't remember) was unable to find a case where a magazine safety cost a cop his/her life, but they were able to find a number of cases where a cop having been able to dump a magazine - and render the pistol easily inoperable - saved them in some fights over their weapons.

In other words, documented 'saves' could be found, but not instances where not being able to fire that one chambered round during a magazine reload cost lives.

Personally, as long as the design of the magazine disconnect/safety doesn't interfere with the trigger pull (weight), I've never cared one way or the other about them. My issued 3 gen S&W 9's, .40's and .45's all had them for many years.

Frankly, having watched more cops than I'll ever be able to count come through training and qual ranges, I'd be surprised that many even above-average shooters might be able to multi-task in some dire stressful situation, meaning interrupting the "must reload fresh mag" technique response midstream, to stop and shoot NOW, relying upon that lone chambered round.

Hell, most people have a hard enough time finding, grasping, orienting and securely seating a fresh magazine in a pistol with the slide forward in battery (which requires more seating effort, and confirmation of the magazine actually being seated securely).

Nowadays, unless someone lives in one of the nanny states (like mine, CA ) that imposes such things as a magazine safety on non-LE, it's increasingly difficult to find that option.

Tempest in a teapot. On the other hand, you can bet that if the commercial market suddenly demonstrated a significant demand for that feature, though, gun companies would find a way to meet that demand. S&W and SIG already have it, anyway, and engineers for other gun companies likely wouldn't find it an impossible challenge.

Suit yourself, if it's allowed by your local laws.

I'm certainly not removing the nylon ejector depressor plunger and its spring in any of my well-worn 3rd gen S&W's.

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Ret LE Firearms inst & armorer

I would never admit to doing so.

While teaching firearms to leos 1998-2004 ish, pretty much when 3rd gens fell out of favor, i would challenge the “ gun wont shoot with mag dropped” fight set up. Me and trainee on the range with gun down range, both with eye and ears on, both gripping gun. Id say drop mag ( after I just just enough pressure on trigger to engage sear). Mag falls i say will gun fire?
Trainee shakes head no, i fire the magless gun.
Moral of story to class, there are no absolutes.

Show me one instance where a person was killed or even shot because they were in the middle of a gunfight, had the presence of mind to even do a mag change in a gun that wasn't empty, dropped the mag, and was prevented from firing when they needed to in the second or two it takes to get the new mag in. I highly doubt any of us here even have the ability to do that under fire. I can surely show you cases where it has saved lives.

And even if they did, what are the odds the round you just fired under that amount of stress was not only a hit, but an instantly incapacitating one? Because if it isn’t, you now have an empty gun, but the slide is not locked back, meaning it takes two hands to get the gun back in action, instead of the one hand if the slide is locked back?

Won’t have to worry about that dilemma either way. I’ll be shooting to slide-lock with my most awesome FBI-style/no-janky-mag-disconnect M1076, loaded 9+1 with 200grn JHPs (@ or near 1200fps).

Should I opt to do a ‘tactical’ reload before reaching slide-lock, the chambered round will still fire, if needed, for the 0.5-1.0 sec during which the partially spent mag is removed.

There’s a reason this set-up on 3rd Gen guns (much like the ‘decock only’ mod to the slide-mounted lever) was called a ‘tactical upgrade.’

Sadly, YMMV with non-upgraded 3rd Gen guns.

I think I may understand the tactical reload differently than you do. Would you take a look at Mas Ayoob's instructional video on the subject? I will be curious how you see the subject differently than he does. If you are concerned about being ready to shoot during the scan/assess phase, then I suspect that you will appreciate the advantages in his approach.

He makes reference to something I personally consider to be very important, "You may want to move your position, and not be where you were when it started..."

Here ya go:

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696-6906-457-38-3913-CS40-411

Hahaha this is always a divisive subject. There are so many ways to make the argument and we typically hit most of them.

There's another angle that I think gets missed.

I think one reason that SOME really like the idea of a magazine disconnect is that in the real world, with generally reckless/careless/inept gun handlers, a magazine disconnect can, will, does and absolutely has prevented many negligent discharges.

Personally, I believe that if all semiautomatic firearms had them, there would be a (continued) dumbing down and growing idiocy in gund handling.

Of course, I've long felt the same with with pistol decockers. Mankind managed with single action and double action revolvers for a long time before mechanical decockers became popular and I was of the belief then (and still now) that manually decocking a hammer on a handgun was a necessary technique that a handgun owner needs to have in his mental/physical toolkit.

Flipping a lever on a handgun to lower a hammer has never been a feature that I wanted or really enjoyed having... with guns that you love, you learn to accept parts of it that aren't your favorite. I tried to address that in my post, #4 in this discussion.

The arguments for the disconnect are safety arguments, and the arguments against involve combat readiness. There is a tension between these two concepts and nothing that we have said gives any insight into how the proper balance between them may be achieved.

Jeff Cooper always spoke against depending on any kind of mechanical device for safety. But the mag disconnect is not done by me for me, it is done by administrators to control the ignorant. The Belgians requested it on their Hi Power pistols from Browning in 1926. People just BELIEVE that taking out the mag, unloads the pistol! The Germans rejected it. The latest version of the Hi-Power from FN does not have the disconnect thus improving the trigger they say.

I sometimes shoot with "the Boys" in my church. They told me last time that they saw Ed eject a round from the chamber, drop the magazine, point the gun at the wall, in a safe direction, and pull the trigger. BANG! Ed was the only one who was surprised. "Why did you do that?" the Boys asked. A man with 20+years of experience with guns had no answer. He did fix the hole in the wall, however.

Best Regards!
BrianD

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696-6906-457-38-3913-CS40-411

If anyone is missing their nylon plunger and spring I would be happy to send them one.

The hammer spur would have to be added back to some of those decocker guns so you have something to hold with your thumb.

I do consider that a mag disconnect would be useful in making your firearm safe around kids. Of course, you have to make sure the only magazine accessible is the one in your pocket. All other spares must be locked up.

Rosewood

I made my guns safe around my kids with an education program that began as soon as they could speak.

When my daughter was in kindergarten we were at a gun shop. One of the clerks handed someone a gun and my little one started yelling, "He didn't open the gun first!!" Embarrassed the clerk but the S&W rep who was there at the time was impressed and gave her a 686 pin that she still has 25 years later.

I had a gun shop clerk tell me that they didn't always open guns because they "knew" that the guns were unloaded. How does a five year old have a better handle on the rules than a "professional"? Regarding unloaded gun in gun displays, there's a video on youtube of a guy being handed a gun from a display case, it isn't cleared, and the guy blows a hole in his hand.

Inconceivable that there's no training on weapon retention. Sure they depend on the efficacy of their magic holsters to do that for them.

Mag out with chamber charged? While I have no knowledge of any agency recommending such, I can tell you the rationale for it. What happened was that we learned that the erratic behavior and poor accuracy of the 180 grain bullet in the 40S&W cartridge was due in part to the extreme fluctuation of pressures due to the seating depth and shortening however slight of the overall cartridge length. The shortening of the OAL was found to be caused by "administrative handling" of the pistol. The solutions which were applied include:
-manufacturers reducing powder charges to gain a margin of safety. This of course obviates the entire purpose for the cartridge's existence IMHO. This has been done across the board, no going back now, and may explain the current trend back to 10mm.
-never chambering a round twice, or three times or four, whatever the person thinks is too much.
-leaving the chambered round in, which is my solution.
-substituting the 165 grain load which has not been powder weakened though it is said not to have the terminal ballistics of the 180 grain projectile. This works for me as a solution because I get excellent accuracy with certain rounds like the Ranger Bonded 165gr.

Please correct me anyone, I am no expert!

Kind Regards,
BrianD

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696-6906-457-38-3913-CS40-411

This was something known to experienced users due to the way the trigger had already engaged with the sear under those specific conditions, before the trigger bar could change positions.

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Ret LE Firearms inst & armorer