This whole Sig 320 "voluntary upgrade " has me thinking about which autos can be more drop safe than others.  Specifically I was trying to think of autos that do not have firing pin/striker safeties?  And yes I know the 320's issue was more of an issue with the inertia of the trigger group.

These are the autos that I'm familiar with that do not have firing pin/striker safeties (i.e. the firing pin/striker does not get positively locked in carry mode, and is usually just held back by spring pressure alone).  This is not to say these autos are not drop safe, but rather have the potential to fire if dropped from a high enough position or if the gun is subjected to significant shock (explosion, car accident etc).

1911 Series 70 and clones
Browning Hi Power
Ruger LCP
Kel Tec P3AT


What other guns can you think of?

Mk. III Hi Powers have firing pin blocks.

Good catch, yes that is correct.

Of the pistols mentioned in the first post the 70 series 1911 is not considered drop safe however the 80 series style is.

As someone else mentioned only he MkIII HP is drop safe.

I'm not sure but don't think the LCP or Kel-Tec is drop safe.

ETA -The LCP is not a hammer/striker fully down restrike capable and I don't know about the Kel-Tec.

The Sig P290rRS and Kahrs are fully resting restrike capable and could be drop safe.

When I came back to edit I saw a post below mine mention the Smith's. They are a partially cocked design too and not sure they're drop safe.

Some of the CZ family have firing pin blocks and are safe.

Wouldn't any double action pistol like a Bert.92 ,P22x series, SW gen 3's, ect..

I recently tested my POS Taurus 709 Slim with a primed case and it did not fire when dropped.

I know for sure the Beretta 92's and the P22x series do have firing pin blocks.

What is "drop safe," and how do you test for it.

Just taking the P320 as an example, it DID pass the NIJ and other tests to be considered "drop safe" for sale. Apparently that isn't good enough for them, they added more tests, discovered a glitch, gave it to the Army for free, and was then going to announce it when someone deliberately tossed a firebomb in the dumpster.

Now is the second phase of this campaign - to get everyone to thinking that maybe their gun isn't drop safe, and require further testing. So far the results for most are to stop carrying their P320 but now the list is going to get longer and longer.

What is "drop safe," and how do you test for it? First of all, the average gun owner has zero, zip, nada education and training in dropping, throwing, or hammering on guns in the first place. I just read a post, here, today, in which a gun owner of a P320 used a snap cap with a FULLY LOADED MAG to test his.

This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and somebody will be lucky to live thru it.

Bluntly, if you don't have an engineering degree and a "bullet proof" lab, you have no business experimenting with guns to see if they are "drop safe." It's testing to failure - and the first failure we will see are those using live ammo to reenact some video commando "testing" a gun to see if it will go off.

They WILL go off, they are made to, we barely have enough safeties on it to keep from shooting ourselves in the leg or abdomen as it is? And how does that happen? It's not the gun, its the shooter, and when he/she doesn't pay attention you can get a vicious case of "Glock Leg" and do it with a Ruger. Or, practicing in class while using appendix carry and discover you just gave yourself an appendectomy. Hopefully you don't hit a femoral artery.

SEALS carry two tourniquets, one is none, you have two femoral arteries, one in each leg. Think about that the next time you pocket carry a 9mm loaded with hollow points bare, in your pocket. Where is it aimed?

And people are worried they might drop a gun muzzle up.

We need some adult perspective on this - "drop safe" is being used as a product liability wedge to get you to throw your apron over your collective heads and run hysterically out into the wilderness. It's not going to go well when some discover unforseen obstacles while they wildly career around in their basement lab.

It's been said that to actually test for "safeness," (yo, it's a loaded gun ya know it's never ever safe) it has to be dropped in a few million different ways. Repeatedly, cause it's a one in how many times it takes to get it to fire?

And you are paying a crew of engineers, lab assistants, and "grips", the guys who build the test rigs a salary until you prove it can't go off, ever. If it does, back thru the engineering loop for redesign #87.

If they get it to be "drop safe," then can you even shoot the overbuilt piece of junk? We are already wincing over so called "smart" guns that can be fired with just a few magnets to defeat the firing pin block. Now we have people throwing them on concrete floors or whacking them with hammers to get them to go off. If we want to control the firing pin that badly, may I recommend eliminating the trigger and simply pulling back on it like a sling shot to make it fire?

We laugh at the stupid things AWB states pass and we come up with AR's that fire, extract, and then hold the bolt open. Completely legal workaround. Now we want "drop safe," which is going to add an exponential number of lab experiments to gun designs that never ever considered most of them.

I don't have the date when the NIJ and other institutions adopted the standards, but every gun ever made before that was NEVER drop tested to accepted standards. None existed. Lets take some examples - the Colt SAA, which is carried hammer down on an empty chamber, or the 1911 as originally designed which was reputedly capable of being 1) worn out in service and 2) falling on the hammer which could override the half cock. Boom. Muzzle up.

The Army simply can't afford a "drop safe" gun and neither can you. It's engineering something that will be proof against - what? Human stupidity, and there is no cure nor is anyone immune to it. It can happen at any time, any place, anywhere. We are attempting the impossible - to keep us from being human, when humans are the one thing in the world perfectly capable of overcoming any obstacle. We just haven't figured out some of them.

We came up with the atomic bomb, didn't we? And then Clinton gave it away to the North Koreans, all the while sending all those horrible unsafe 1911's to the scrappers. Got to ask, how many times do we shoot ourselves in the foot? Well, we are lining up once again to make guns so impossibly hard to shoot they will also be impossibly expensive.

You can't make a gun drop safe. It's a gun. It's always dangerous. Stop fooling ourselves.

Thanks for that.  Not really trying to start a thread on what is or is not drop safe or the definition thereof. Nor the various standards of drop safety and if I am qualified to test for drop safety.

Just exploring for my own personal knowledge which autos have a firing pin/striker block vs. those that do not.

You can absolutely make a gun completely drop safe from 10 feet without it costing a million fucking dollars or making it an unwieldy gun. The military absolutely needs a handgun that isn't going to go off from a 4 foot drop with the barrel pointed at their head, because people do stupid shit in the military and drop their guns. It's not impossible to prevent it from firing when dropped at that distance.

Another way to look at it.

You are completely wrong. There are many guns on the market that will not fire when dropped from practically any distance.

Omaha Outdoors dropped some other stuff and nothing else fired. Glock, HK vp9, m&p's ect.

I'm not wrong until you prove every gun ever made can't be forced to fire it. Just saying "your wrong" doesn't make it a fact.

SIG said their gun was drop safe and lo, it's going thru a free retrofit. Ruger said the LCP was drop safe, and mine got sent back to the factory to be retrofit, too. All because somebody was playing with it and shot the floor or TV.

As I pointed out the Colt SAA isn't - nobody carries one of those with a live round under the hammer.

We have a lot of posts here which explore slam fires - how guns go off just loading the round into the chamber, and in the case of the M16 series the firing pin can't even touch the primer until fully locked. Yet we get reports of them going off, usually with none specification ammo. This gun has been in service how long - 45 years - yet it does exhibit a propensity - in a very rare and limited number of cases, many fewer documented than word of mouth would suggest.

There is a practical limit to the number of tests and the amount of repeated impacts any gun manufacturer can possibly anticipate. If we triple the number of tests, it goes to that cost being reflected in the price of the gun. Liability insurance is already a major item in the overhead of making guns, now we want to increase the testing and redesign to prevent as little as 4 in 500,000 guns.

And it requires people being less than adequate in handling them, even downright stupid. How does that soldier drop his gun? In Basic, lack of familiarity. On the battlefield, lack of sleep, food, water. Difficult terrain, obstacles, interaction with vehicles, other soldiers, basically, banging around in the environment.

22 years USAR, the first 8 in an OSUT unit, then another six in logistical command units, and the last four in MP - I know how guns go off in combat. The safety is off and the finger is on the trigger, every time I witnessed it. Twice.

But, nooooo, we have to make them even safer, jacking up costs exponentially and raising our taxes when the real issue of most negligent discharges is NOT dropping the gun and it going off. The vast majority are safety off and finger on.

We are chasing a dream.

I appreciate the OP looking for a gun with a firing pin block but that's not what was printed. "Drop Safe" was called out as the request. "Drop Safe" is the current dumpster fire on the internet, and "drop safe" isn't really that easy to engineer when the average shooter starts demanding 100% incapability of being fired. The history of firearms in that regard has been to make them 100% capable of being fired - despite mud, bad ammo, dented magazines, and operator ignorance.

Those are far more important issues in combat than dropping it on the ground. It has to work when you need it to, not be so layered in redundant safety engineering it won't.

Ranking the types of negligent discharges by cause we find that for the most part its the operator who is the weak link. He touches the gun and risk goes up exponentially. If you want a gun that is safe, lock it in one, because any gun you use and carry is designed and built to reliably fire - it's what we've been focused on for hundreds of years, getting them to work.

Not just sit there doing nothing.

Asking for a drop safe gun is like asking for a cut safe knife. It's an impossible goal. And when it's eventually required - its going to be far worse than the AWB in stupid. When you've seen the progress of firearms over 50 years, lived and worked with them, you get a different perspective than the limited window of internet that many here think they know about.

This thing is getting legs and the real agenda is to make guns more expensive, complicated and harder to buy. It won't make them more drop safe. It will create new ways to sue makers and for the most part it's being generated by those who don't realize they are the primary risk to themselves. What are the four rules of safety focused on? User error.

You can blame the gun but in every case one goes off a human started the chain of ignition by handling it.

The first thing should you should do, before wasting all that time typing a bunch of nonsensical drivel, is to do a little Googling about the subject.

never mind not worth it
cp

This. Please. Holy crap.

Honestly ANY pistol that lacks a manual safety or a half cock with a firing pin block could potentially fire in the same way the P320 did when dropped. When the 320 was dropped (unless I am mistaken) the trigger actually moved, thus disengaging any firing pin blocks that would be there. That said I would honestly consider 70 series 1911s drop safe, as that is the purpose of the half cock, to catch the hammer should the sear disengage without trigger being pulled (or at least that is my understanding).
ETA: Ultimately it falls to the owner to know intimately the function and potential short comings of any platform they choose to own and or operate. It is always a possibility that something could go horribly wrong and gun fire without direct intent. But I do like these threads, it gets us all thinking and that is a good thing.

I would agree that the general consensus is that Series 70 1911's. are drop safe.  However... even if the hammer never falls or moves at all... the inertia of the firing pin, which is not positively secured, could set off the primer if subjected to a large enough shock.  Not sure what the outcome was but this thread about an arfcomer dropping his 1911 in the bathroom causing an AD makes me wonder...especially about guns without strikers/firing pins that are free floating.....  And yes I know that AR15's have a free floating firing pin too.

1.) And just saying you're right doesn't mean you are.

2.) Firearms have progressed past 1873.

3.) You don't seem to be able to argue a cohesive point. You keep jumping around from different things without sticking to one. No-one is talking about people putting their fingers on the trigger and pulling it to fire. People don't want a gun that is 100% not going to fire all the time, they want a gun that is 100% not going to fire from being dropped or hit. They want a gun that will 100% fire if they pull the trigger.

It doesn't cost absurd amounts of money to make this happen. It isn't a dream to have a handgun that will not fire when dropped. We already fucking have one in service, and there are plenty on the market.

A buddy of mine did try to make his AR discharge by simply charging the rifle over and over on the same round, I think he said by the 30th time it did actually go off. Now to the free floating FPs, I had overlooked that remote possibility that the FP could build enough inertia to set off a round. I suppose it could happen, but I have dropped my Makarov (free floating FP) a good many times and it never went off so I think this is an extremely remote possibility...

When people attack the messenger, it's because they don't see any flaws in the message.

Non sensical drivel is the view of someone who's a johnny come lately to the gun carrying crowd or who has an agenda to promote and doesn't want to look weak trying to push their drivel.

TL;DR for the high school study hall crowd: You can't make a gun perfectly drop safe. How is that nonsense? Because we spent millions of dollars over the last 150 years trying to get them to fire no matter what. That was the problem we faced, now we want them to NOT fire?

You can't have it both ways. You can only engineer things to one side or another - the Colt SAA with hammer mounted firing pin will drop it when the sear is released and a primer underneath it is going to get smacked. There's one side of the range of operation.

On the other side are all the redundant disconnectors, firing pin blocks, and timing of late model pistols which are a result of liability engineering - trying to keep us from a Joe Dumbass moment. And yet, it happens every week, somebody discharges a firearm negligently, shooting themselves or others.

We don't accept it, we do all we can, we have improved things considerably. But it's really a matter of YOU - and in this case, we are discussing the fact that a major error has to take place for the gun to even hit the floor. YOUR competency as a gun handler has to be impugned to accept that the gun might - not will, but just maybe, go off.

Now, what have we done about it in the past?

Thumb safeties on hammer guns worked pretty good, but even then the 1911 had it's issues. Bang a used service pistol hard enough on the hammer and you might get it to go off. That lead to more improvements.

We've had striker fired designs for awhile and most of the ND's seem to be happening to those guns without a thumb safety - which the Army REQUIRED for use by the tens of thousands of inexpert carriers introduced to the gun who usually get one familiarization firing a year. I don't need to Google that, I was in the military 22 years USAR, IN OD MP and I have some idea of what I'm talking about. Unlike the monkey cage who just sling feces when they aren't making better points.

A thumb safety on an autoloading pistol isn't a tradition so much as an institutional realization that humans get hired to work in DOD and humans make mistakes. Same for the minimum 6 pound trigger pull, when they do carry, a 2.5 pound target trigger tends to create a few more friendly fire incidents - or, bluntly, negligent dumbass stupid discharges. You get that when you've worked 24 hours straight, no meals, and then the enemy chooses to attack while you are stressed out. 6 pound trigger pulls, thumb safety.

And some people are worried about the gun going off? In combat it will go empty and get thrown first. It's the basement gun fondler who really has to worry, men in service are held to a high standard of behavior AND it's controlled to a large degree, even micromanaged to some extent. And - your buddies are right there to call you on it when you goof up. You will answer to them before it even gets up the chain to your supervisor.

At home? Nobody is going to call you out for your fast draws, playing with a loaded weapon, etc. Which is exactly the incidents reported when the LCP was recalled - careless, even reckless handling of the firearm. No, I don't need to Google that, I already did when my first gen LCP was recalled and I read just how dumb some owners were handling them.

Shot the carpet, shot the TV, blamed the gun. Ruger made good on it but the reality is that they just held their pricing on things until the profit was recovered. And that is what you pay for, an upfront fee to cover Joe Dumbass who can and will shoot himself because we have no qualifying test over who can own a gun. It's an inalienable right - you can't keep the 3% who buy guns just because they can but probably shouldn't. Hey, they drive cars on the streets in your town, and shoot fireworks, and do other stuff you read about in the paper or see on video - like, load a lot of tannerite into an old lawn mower and have their leg amputated when it hits them.

Didn't need to Google that, it was posted here. Ouch. That left a mark.

Gun owner. We should sue the MTD and tannerite makers for that?

Drop a gun and it's the guns fault? What's next, sue the car maker because you didn't let off the gas heading toward a stop light cause the automatic braking will do it? Hey, you're texting, that's more important, right? Get that selfie.

"Drop safe" = we don't trust you to handle a gun and lawyers will hook you into blaming us for your incompetence. You are paying extra because it takes more ink to print "Contents are hot" on the coffee cup.

What part about "guns are dangerous and you need to keep the barrel pointed up and downrange at all times?" don't we understand? But, oh noes, the evil gunmakers are putting out junk and we need to prove they aren't trying to kill us!

How about WE are trying to kill us, not only by a lack of familiarity handling that firearm but also just standing next to you? How many people get shot from unloading a gun, or failing to do so when they start to clean it? A lot more than throwing it on a concrete floor doing trick gun spins while it's loaded. And now we have people posting as some kind of gun engineering acolyte who are hammering and dropping guns from SIX feet in the air.

When is the last time YOU held a pistol by the trigger guard six feet in the air and let it drop onto the back of the slide or hammer?

Now tell me who was holding your beer while you did that.

Not only are the new legion of "gun testers" showing up on video completely out of their normal line of work, they are also promoting false science, lack of safety, and a huge propensity to ignore the problem that starts it all - humans who are doing something wrong in the first place.

You aren't supposed to drop your gun on the floor. Might go to why only 4 of 500,000 have seen one model go off. We likely haven't seen the others, humans run in herds and groupthink is going to promote tossing hammering and beating on them to see how to make theirs go off as if it's some kind of public service.

I KNOW my guns will go off. There has been a history of 150 years invested with millions of dollars to overcome all the little things like dirt, mud, dust, badly loaded ammo, etc which were conquered to make them reliable. We WANT them to go off, we stress "test fire your gun for 200 to 500 rounds to be sure it will when needed."

Not, sling that holster over your shoulder and watch it hit the floor shooting you. What kind of safe conduct and gun handling is that?

Deep pocket liability lawsuit, that's what.

You want a drop safe gun, the standard toward that is a 6 pound trigger pull minimum, and a thumb safety. It blocks the firing mechanism even if you pull on the trigger, which some gun owners seem to incorporate into their holstering routines as if it were taught by the highest rated operator out there. Nope. Just being dumbass.

There is no "dumbass proof" gun any more than keyboard connected to the internet. As most of this controversy proves. All we have to do now is wait for the video of someone who wins a Darwin Award over his impeccable test scenario.

Jesus fucking Christ, this is pretty fucking easy. The gun shouldn't go off if someone isn't pulling the trigger. If the gun fires from being dropped, that's a problem.

If you think it's acceptable for a newly designed pistol to fire when dropped, you're crazy.

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