Handgun Trigger Modifications

Here's another important video from the Personal Defense Network. One of the most popular areas for modification on any type of Marksmanship firearm is obviously going to be the trigger, the operation of that trigger. Which I often chalk up to tinkering. The fact is, when we're talking about a Marksmanship or a target shooting experiment, messing with your trigger to make sure that you get the crispest release possible, or even the lightest release possible as long as we aren't causing a safety issue and having inadvertent discharges or negligent discharges caused by a firearm that's been modified too much. We're not really gonna get into a situation where we cause a problem.

When it comes to a defensive firearm, however, we really don't wanna start messing too much with the way the firearm is designed, in the way it's supposed to be fired, the way it's actually supposed to be actuated. Now, some people will take modifications to make the firearm more consistent, some people will take efforts to do modifications that will actually increase the amount of pressure that it takes for the firearm to disengage from that situation where it's not firing and actually release the striker or drop the hammers that the round is fired. And in fact, many government institutions are infamous for mandating that firearms are higher in strength required to actually press that trigger and make the firearm go off. That may be something that you want to do, because you're more worried about the fight three, that aftermath of the use of firearm for defense. And you wanna make sure that you can show in a court of law, for example, that you did everything possible to make sure the firearm wasn't going to go off until you absolutely needed it to go off and made it go off.

Those are important choices and important considerations. First thing I wanna take a look at is this 1911, with what is a very standard type trigger. We take a look at it, there isn't anything done here, there's no drilling of the face of the trigger, it's relatively smooth here, there really isn't even anything done to the front surface of the trigger, where we might normally think about putting some serrations or something that's actually gonna give us some more grip or more tactile feedback on our trigger finger for a target shooting gun. With a defensive gun, a very straightforward trigger like this is gonna be just fine. Now I'm gonna double triple check that this firearm is clear, I'm gonna get it into what is a good firing grip, and I'm gonna do something that you rarely see me do, pull a trigger without the intention of the firearm going off.

So we know that nothing's gonna happen, you're gonna see that when I touch this trigger, there's a fair amount of take up, there's a little bit of what we call the take up here where the trigger moves just prior to engaging up against the surface areas inside the firearm. Then when I push back a little bit further, we're actually gonna go ahead and see that the hammer drops, and then you're gonna see that the trigger doesn't move very much. Now this is exactly how I'm gonna recommend that you set up your trigger if you do have an adjustable trigger on your particular defensive firearm. And when we do that, what we're gonna look for, is an adjustable trigger, like we have on this Smith and Wesson firearm, which has been drilled out so there's a little less weight there, we're moving less, there's less inertia to deal with, we do have these grooves on the front of the trigger face, that's gonna allow us more consistency, we're gonna know exactly where our finger is on the trigger. And it's gonna make it more reliable in terms of getting our finger to get purchased on that trigger in the midst of a dynamic critical incident, especially again with that sweat or maybe rain or maybe even blood in the situation that we may have to be defending ourselves with this firearm.

But one of the other things that this particular trigger gives us is the opportunity to modify the amount of travel that's actually involved in the trigger itself. So that once we've set it up, once we've made sure that the trigger is the appropriate weight. In other words, it takes the appropriate amount of strength and pressure to actually come back and fire the firearm. What we wanna do then is adjust that little screw in there, which we can see if we take a good look. And that screw allows us to adjust both levels of travel of the actual trigger.

Now again, we're not worried about specifically setting the weight. Okay? I'm really big on manufacturer's recommendations, and sticking with moderate or even slightly heavier weights for a defensive firearm. What we're talking about is modifying two aspects of the travel and movement of the trigger on this 1911 single action type firearm. The one aspect is of course the take up, the amount that that trigger is gonna move when you first touch the trigger before you actually discharge the firearm.

The second one is the over travel, the amount that the trigger moves after the trigger has been pulled and after the gun has gone off, and then you're gonna of course have to come back forward to reset that trigger while the slide moves back and forth while the gun actually cycles and then prepare for another shot. It's important to understand that we want some take up on defensive gun we don't want the gun going off as soon as our finger touches the trigger. We always wanna be able to touch and press to make sure we have that consistency. We've reached full extension and we then press as a separate movement. So we touch, we have that take up even on a single action gun, a slight amount of take up is what I recommend.

And then we're gonna press and actually have that firearm discharge. We don't want a lot of over travel we wanna make sure the gun cycles reliably we can get back into firing that multiple rounds during a fire or going back into stopping our shooting back into the ready position, safety on in that particular case. Now the Classic 1911 is a firearm where we have a lot of great gunsmith we have a lot of great options in terms of different types of triggers and different modifications. Let's take a look at something like the Glock firearm where we don't have as many options for modification. But there is one important one that we wanna talk about.

The Glock trigger, this is the Glock trigger, we're not really gonna worry about changing it the distance that it travels and moves, we're not gonna worry about changing it so much. But one of the things that we do need to talk about is a very simple modification, which requires again, a gunsmith, someone who's been through the armors course, to disassemble the firearm and replace the spring that actually controls the weight that it takes to fire the firearm. And what this spring does is actually affect the amount of pressure it takes to discharge the firearm. Now you may have heard of the New York spring or the New York trigger on a Glock. That's exactly what we have here.

We have one of the options for the New York trigger. Now a standard Glock comes with a trigger from the factory that requires about five and a half pounds of pressure to have the firearm go off. And again, all that means is, on a scale, if we take a look and make sure that this is a cleared firearm, there's no ammunition inside the chamber, no magazine with ammunition in it. If again, I touched the trigger and pressed the trigger, we can measure the amount of force it took to actually discharge the firearm. And what we're gonna find out is that it was about five and a half pounds, on a factory Glock.

It's certainly possible to get what's called the competition spring or a lower weight spring, a three and a half pound situation where we're gonna require less pressure to actually fire the Glock. Some people choose to do that with their defensive gun. I don't think it's a necessary modification. Although there's not really a huge amount of harm in doing it. Most of our guns historically have had something closer to that three and a half pound pressure when it comes to defensive firearms like the 1911 then that five and a half pound trigger that comes on the Glock.

On the other hand, many firearms that have been used for defense very successfully like this J-Frame revolver like other popular revolvers have had much heavier trigger pressures that were required to have them actually discharged. And a lot of people really like that heavier trigger in a defensive situation. And of course, a lot of police departments like the New York Police Department, which is the source of the name of the New York trigger for the Glock prefer to have that heavier trigger to make sure that we're not having either accidental discharges or negligent discharges the gun going off before or when we're not ready for it to go off. The fact is that the revolver has that much heavier eight, nine, 10 even 12 pound pressure that's required to have it discharge, some people want that in their defensive firearm. And that's why we have things like these New York trigger springs, okay, replacement spring that we can put inside of the Glock that's gonna change the amount of pressure we need to have it discharge up into either that eight pound range or even the 12 pound range.

Modifying the trigger is something that should be done by a professional gunsmith and done with great caution. You never wanna make it so that the firearm is likely to go off when you don't want it to go off. I really recommend concentrating on the amount of travel of your trigger or increasing the amount of weight it takes for your defensive firearm to be discharged when it comes to modifying the trigger. Check out more videos just like this one at the Personal Defense Network.