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For the most part, I don’t care one way or the other, but I do have a few concerns that prompted me to vote “no.� Once again, you’ll see the attorney in me coming out.

Mechanical: If there is any possibility that the internal safety can fail and disable the gun when I need it, then I won’t buy it! The Springfield 1911 internal safety “seems� to be fool-proof, but they’re new so only time will tell. As dws1117 said, it’s easy to change a main spring housing. I have no idea about the S&W revolvers.

Manufacturer lawsuit avoidance: Not necessary in Texas. We changed the Texas Civil Practices and Remedies Code several years ago making it very hard to sue a gun manufacturer for alleged failure of the firearm. You can forget filing the “Better design� cases in Texas. That said, I’m not sure if any other states provide the protection against consumer suits (as opposed to governmental suits, or suits based upon the unlawful acts of a third-party) provided by Texas law. Without the Texas-style protection, the failure to incorporate a viable safety feature, such as Springfield’s main spring housing safety on 1911's, could be used against another manufacturer, if someone is injured by a ND that could have been prevented by that type of safety. Springfield could unintentionally be setting the standard by which other manufacturers could be judged. The same goes for Colt’s Series 80 firing pin blocks, and Kimber’s “Series II� firing pin blocks. This causes obvious problems, especially when the “new� safety feature is functionally problematic, as reports about the Kimber “Series II� indicate. Such reliability problems provide a defense to other manufactures that are sued for failure to adopt those features, but it costs money to prove you were right. If the new “safety� feature had never been adopted by any manufacturer, then it’s a much harder case to pursue.

Consumer lawsuit avoidance: The protection provided by Texas law to gun manufactures does not extend to gun owners. If you disable a safety device and someone gets hurt or killed in an accident the safety device would have prevented, the gun owner has major exposure! There can be defenses, such as “I disabled the Kimber “Series II� firing pin block because it has a reputation of failing and rendering the pistol unable to fire, and I use this gun for self-defense.� This argument may or may not save the day, but once again it’s going to cost money to prove it. This argument deals with intentionally disabling a safety feature on a gun, not the failure to purchase a gun with the safety feature. That won’t work in Texas, and I seriously doubt it will work anywhere else, except possibly in New Jersey, California and other such states.

So, although I don’t think internal safety devices are a huge issue, I do see some mechanical and legal issues that give me pause for concern. If I were king, we wouldn’t have ‘um.

Regards,
Chas.