Maybe I'm wrong but it seems to me that there were more than "19 or 20" first person accounts in the ILF thread. You can discount peoples ILF complaints 'til the cows come home but I'm not buying into it. I'm not sure why it happened but my M60 "locked up" at the range so I'm certain that it can happen...
I was keeping count up to its being abandoned by the OP. The thread was full of contentious statements and vows for and against ever again buying S&W and plenty of hearsay. Osprey, the OP who 'stickified' the thread, set out criteria for posting ILFs and, like yours perhaps, there were a few that fit. The rest was noise and Osprey eventually abandoned the thread to become whatever it became.
Since Lee Jarrett took over the forums and changed servers, that thread is no longer available for whatever reasons. I, for one, was glad to see it go.
As far as discounting first person ILFs, I'm not doing that. I'm a believer. However, the number of first person ILF failures 'documented' in the thread was relatively small among the sample population comprising membership in this forum: average of, say, 35,000 members times five years is 175,000 members. With twenty qualifying ILFs during a five year period is an incidence among members of 0.01%. How many more than 20 would it take to move that decimal to the right?
During the five year period 2003 through 2007, according to
ATF Manufacturing data, S&W manufactured 805,966 revolvers – let's use that even though the period of the thread ended after the last year of ATF data. Projecting the forum's sample to that number results in 92 ILFs in a five year period. That's about 18 per year among all S&W revolvers, according to our less than rigorously collected data.
Evidently 18 ILFs a year is few enough that a recall is currently unwarranted. S&W has not issued a recall in what is a very litigious day, age, and circumstance.
S&W is not stupid as they would have to be to ignore a significant, avoidable problem. An ILF free rate of 99.99% is hard to improve upon but I'll wager S&W is attempting just that. That's not to say that there aren't ILFs. What achievable manufacturing standard can drill down to this level? I have no idea.
Conversely, ILFs are relatively easy to preclude following instructions posted in various threads on this forum. Those unwilling to take what appears to be a minuscule risk of an ILF who also want or need features in current production revolvers can disable the lock. For those whose deal killer objections include aesthetic and cosmetic reasons, well, buy pre-lock guns. Problem solved.
