M&P 9 Pro Series CORE Takedown Question

[s&wchad]

I've owned an early M&P 45 for some time and never had an issue with takedown and reassembly. It didn't come with an owners manual and I never bothered downloading one. I just pulled the trigger to de-cock it before removing the slide.

I bought a used Pro Series M&P 9 CORE yesterday that came with everything, so I read the manual. It tells you to use the tool to move the sear disconnector down. I haven't taken it down yet. Can you just pull the trigger on these like the earlier versions?

FYI - This gun has a warning that says it will fire with the mag removed.

 

[Saudade]

Yes, you can just pull the trigger if you're sure it's cleared.

The "warning" just tells you it doesn't have the mag safety so you can pull the trigger and release the striker without having a mag in it.

The current manual says to use the frame tool (the part holding the backstrap) to depress the sear deactivation lever. You can use just about any other object to do that for those folks that prefer not pulling the trigger like a cotton swab, toothpick, tweezers or anything else you have handy.

Nice pickup!!

 

[s&wchad]

Yes, you can just pull the trigger if you're sure it's cleared.

Nice pickup!!

Thanks!
I make it a habit not to work on a loaded gun.

It hasn't been shot much and I thought it would make a fun range toy with the Leupold DeltaPoint. $575 seemed like a decent price.

 

[Super Trucker]

I was told by a local gun Smith that the tool/lever was put in to get more police contracts as a safety feature. Apparently the ND rate, during take down with glocks was high with police departments.

I remove the lever on all of mine and just pull the trigger. One less thing to malfunction in my opinion.

If it fires with out the mag inserted, that tells the buyer it dies not have a magazine disconnect. I was told this is another safety put in place for police. They can hit the mag release during a gun grab to make it inoperable.

 

[Beju]

I was told by a local gun Smith that the tool/lever was put in to get more police contracts as a safety feature. Apparently the ND rate, during take down with glocks was high with police departments.

It's been largely forgotten about since most it was pre-widespread internet, but there were a lot of negligent discharges when departments started switching to Glocks en masse around 1990. Officers who'd gotten away with sloppy trigger discipline (which was less drilled in to people to begin with back then) with comparatively heavy DA revolver triggers or manual safety semi-autos couldn't do so with Glock pistols with short, light triggers and no manual safeties.

If it fires with out the mag inserted, that tells the buyer it dies not have a magazine disconnect. I was told this is another safety put in place for police. They can hit the mag release during a gun grab to make it inoperable.

Magazine disconnect safeties weren't particularly unusual from the invention of the Browning Hi-Power through the S&W 3rd gen semi-autos. The decline is probably partly due to semi-autos becoming mainstream, and partly due to better holsters that were more precisely formed to the pistols and more difficult to defeat by a bad guy. Gaston Glock was a bit cantakerous about altering the pistols for anything short of a national army/police contract, but S&W was traditionally more willing to make variations for smaller agencies.

 

[Saudade]

My faux-CORE started out as a 9mm 4.25" full size 1.0 (mag safety). I was able to get the 5" Ported CORE kit for it. Back then, the 5" 9mm (and .40s) had different part numbers for the Mag safety and non-Mag safety models.

At first I wasn't sure why there would be a difference. How could the mag safety impact the slide? Turns out the only difference was that warning. The mag safety part number slide didn't have the warning.