What's the Beef with Mag Disconnects?

[707electrician]

Great, so you are in a struggle, drop the mag and give up your gun and the perp beats you to death with it

[Tripper]

Officer knows he's losing control of his weapon.
Officer hits the mag release and drops the mag.
Assailant overpowers officer and takes his weapon.
Assailant points pistol at officer and pulls trigger.
Gun doesn't fire.

This is the most common use for the magazine disconnect. An example below.

http://forums.officer.com/t149529/

The irony is LEO get off roster which does not require mag disconnect
The number one gun used in law enforcement does not have that safety feature.. Only second class citizens must adhere to that requirement

[Tripper]

Oh
And I know a LEO who is alive today likely because his firearm did not have that feature
He wrote a thankful letter to the company that published it in a gun magazine

edit: I guess I sort of mis-spoke, he has since passed, but not that day.

his story was, in a fight, fell with firearm, butt of firearm hit something (like a curb) and popped out the mag.

[707electrician]

The irony is LEO get off roster which does not require mag disconnect
The number one gun used in law enforcement does not have that safety feature.. Only second class citizens must adhere to that requirement

This.

And...

Oh
And I know a LEO who is alive today likely because his firearm did not have that feature
He wrote a thankful letter to the company that published it in a gun magazine

I would love to see this article

[drifter2be]

Officer knows he's losing control of his weapon.
Officer hits the mag release and drops the mag.
Assailant overpowers officer and takes his weapon.
Assailant points pistol at officer and pulls trigger.
Gun doesn't fire.

This is the most common use for the magazine disconnect. An example below.

http://forums.officer.com/t149529/

I would put cash down that for every 1 time that scenario has happened there were at least 10 times that an officer was saved due to the fact that he could fire his gun without the magazine inserted.

Mag safeties are absolutely idiotic IMHO, every gun I have ever purchased that had one had it promptly removed within an hour of being pulled out of the box.

[TKM]

It is not unusual for me to drop a mag when doing weak hand drills.

It's even worse with the extended mag releases on my match guns.

An MD really limits my options at that point.

[BajaJames83]

Aside from what the other have posted.
My take on it is its just another mechanical device that can and possibly will fail on someone.

[SilverTauron]

Interesting.

Ive observed from personal experience that when a handgun fires a round without its magazine in place, it will either eject the case out the bottom or stovepipe.

I once mistakenly thought a handgun I bought was broken when it did the latter every time I fired it without the magazine, but further personal research bears out that this behavior is expected. As applied to a defensive situation,it would seem that shooting a gun without the mag in place would generate a malfunction;either the stovepipe situation which would need to be resolved before reloading, or a nasty problem of jamming a magazine into the gun with the spent casing still in the mag well, as the falling casing meets the incoming mag mid-reload.

It goes without saying that neither situation would be desirable in a combat situation.

[Turo]

Interesting.

Ive observed from personal experience that when a handgun fires a round without its magazine in place, it will either eject the case out the bottom or stovepipe.

I once mistakenly thought a handgun I bought was broken when it did the latter every time I fired it without the magazine, but further personal research bears out that this behavior is expected. As applied to a defensive situation,it would seem that shooting a gun without the mag in place would generate a malfunction;either the stovepipe situation which would need to be resolved before reloading, or a nasty problem of jamming a magazine into the gun with the spent casing still in the mag well, as the falling casing meets the incoming mag mid-reload.

It goes without saying that neither situation would be desirable in a combat situation.

My Glock 27 dropped the empty casing down the mag well every time there wasn't a magazine in it. But then the case fell out of the bottom of the magazine well, and I never had any issue with reloading a new magazine right afterward. It depends on the gun, and it doesn't make the magazine disconnect a good "feature" either way.

[NapaPlinker]

Theoretically, a magazine disconnect might prevent one from firing during a top-off or "tactical reload" of the gun. There is not a single documented case from LE or citizen-self-defense of this actually happening however.

There are dozens of cases where a magazine disconnect has prevented a gun from being fired, and saving the owner or an innocent from being shot. There are also several documented cases where someone ignorantly removed a magazine and thought the gun was therefore unloaded ... resulting in tragedy. So it appears that there is some utility to this feature.

I am of the opinion that this should not be a required feature, as there is more to safety than simply adding more crap to a gun.

I agree with you on this one. I don't know how many times it has to be said TREAT EVERY GUN AS IF IT WERE LOADED!!!!! Then the need for these features... well there wouldn't be one.

[leman77]

To each his/her own on this matter, but i'd like to share a story. I was at a shooting training day with my Glock 22. I loaded and holstered my weapon. When the range master yelled 'gun', i drew my weapon and started to raise it on target. As i was raising my gun, i see my magazine go flying outta my gun in front of me. I think 'oh crap', but i proceed to shoot a head shot with the round in my chamber. I quickly reload, then shoot 2 body shots. Moral of the story, had it been a real life situation and my gun had a mag disconnect, i would have considered myself dead. It was a big eye opener. Just sayin'.

[Don the savage]

So you are saying that a pistol is being taken away from you, you know you are going to lose it and you have the dexterity to hit the mag release in a non shooting hold and still lose the pistol to the bad guy? Thats an interesting scenario. Im sure its happened because anything can happen but im not sure its something to bank on.

[ZombieTactics]

So you think a mag disconnect would save someone who had their gun taken away from them? Do you know how one works? I don't think you do. Please, show us just one of the dozens of incidents you are aware of where someone had a gun wrenched away and then the mag disconnect saved them. That is complete BS. I also am starting to think you're either 12 years old or a troll.

Please come to visit me and I'll introduce you to my neighbor. She's a high-ranking officer with the CHP. She is tasked - among other things - with investigating every single case where a CHP officer draws their weapon or the weapon is drawn in the line of duty. There are no less than six incidents in the last 2 years (maybe more since we last talked) where CHP officers had weapons taken from them but were able to drop the mag at the last instant ... an attempt was made to use their weapon and it failed because of the magazine disconnect. This is one reason why a mag disconnect is a requirement for their issued duty weapon. This is not an idle request on my part . If you want to call BS on me I am prepared to back it up. Your move.

EDIT: For a little "light reading" check out this: http://forums.officer.com/t149529 (which I see neouser has also posted above)
Check out this pithy bit from the linked article:

I personally know 4 of our guys during my career who were saved by the mag disconnect. 3 of those were Troops and 1 was one of our dispatchers who was working part time at a small town. In 2 of the cases the Troops said that as they knew they were losing control of the firearm their thought was to hit the mag button. The other 2 said they don't recall hitting the mag button and it may have been hit accidently. In all 4 incidents after the bad guys had gotten their guns they had attempt to shoot our guys. Either way all 4 lived out their careers because the mag disconnect saved their lives.
In the 32 years that we issued S&W we did not have a single incident where the mag disconnect caused our person to be hurt or killed.

[$nake-Eye$]

If you think a mag disconnect is going to, one day, save your life then of course you should be able to buy firearms that have them, but this should not mean that manufacturers should be required to make firearms with mag disconnects in order to sell them to us peons in CA

[nick]

So, when one pushes the mag release, in order to disable his handgun, wouldn't the mag disconnect prevent the mag from dropping free? At least, that was my experience with my M&P 40 (which no longer has a disconnect).