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Legal Concerns with Aftermarket Triggers...

9K views 97 replies 27 participants last post by  titanicthunder 
#1 ·
So I've been considering installing a PRP trigger on my Mod 2. This is my EDC piece and I'm wondering if, God forbid, I am every in an altercation that results in a shooting, is modifying the trigger feel/pull a liability? Actually I would use the factory springs because the effort is fine, I just want less take up and over-travel.
 
#2 ·
There's no easy answer. It could create issues and then again things could be fine. There's a lot of variables. In a criminal case you might be fine but things could be different in a civil case.

There's a reason that duty guns can only be worked on by a department armorer. I can't touch my issue gun for maintenance. NYPD is issued Glocks with 8 and 11 pound triggers. In a civil case it's easy to create doubt about any work that you performed yourself. In an SD scenario the police might not give a crap about your gun other than is it legally owned. A blood sucking lawyer probably won't have the same view. It's like the hand load debate. Majority of the time you should be fine but there's always a chance. Any aftermarket Glock trigger has a waiver of liability attached to it that basically says if you shoot someone with this you're on your own.
 
#6 ·
There's no easy answer. It could create issues and then again things could be fine. There's a lot of variables. In a criminal case you might be fine but things could be different in a civil case.

There's a reason that duty guns can only be worked on by a department armorer. I can't touch my issue gun for maintenance. NYPD is issued Glocks with 8 and 11 pound triggers. In a civil case it's easy to create doubt about any work that you performed yourself. In an SD scenario the police might not give a crap about your gun other than is it legally owned. A blood sucking lawyer probably won't have the same view. It's like the hand load debate. Majority of the time you should be fine but there's always a chance. Any aftermarket Glock trigger has a waiver of liability attached to it that basically says if you shoot someone with this you're on your own.
Lucky you...MD now specs a 12# trigger for civilian use...u know, for safety. That's why Baltimore is such a safe place...I'm sure the tourist dollars are just pouring in now that it's well-known what a great place MD is to visit...I was thinking about booking my next vacation in MD because...well, sheeit...I got nuthin'.
 
#49 ·
I am one and I'm not a fan of aftermarket triggers. I tell clients that while it most likely would never be an issue, why tempt fate with an overly aggressive prosecutor or plaintiff's attorney.
 
#10 ·
When you draw, you'll have so much adrenaline in your system that your fine-motor skills go to crap.
You won't even feel the take-up.

Get some snap-caps and practice... that's my opinion.

Here's an opinion on trigger modification... pretty much falls in line with conversations with my gun-trust lawyer.
The Massad Ayoob Chronicles, Part V - The Truth About Guns

Again, opinions...
 
#12 ·
The simple answer that nearly all experts and attorneys will give is to not lighten the factory pull. You have to make the call. If you're worried don't do it. Just realize if you do so You ARE giving an attorney some ammo. It may be blanks and never hold up but there's a current case in Oklahoma in which the prosecutor is going after a reserve deputy for having a hair trigger.


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#16 ·
I haven't heard of any cases where someone was sued because their trigger was too light. Doesn't mean it couldn't happen in today's litigious society. Especially by the Mother of one of those "good boys who was just turning his life around".

I have put trigger kits in both of my EDC pistols to lighten the pull, but nothing dramatic. Still around 5 lbs. Same for my ARs. You might have a problem if you lowered the trigger weight and then you had a negligent discharge injuring or killing someone.
 
#18 ·
So, is your pistol "automatically" confiscated? Let's say someone busts through my front door in 7 seconds and I drop this iPad and kill him with my box stock xds. Let's assume he had a gun aimed at me and I got lucky.

Again, I lose possesion of my weapon??? I know there are more scenarios than stars but C'mon. I would think unless it's not a righteous shoot you'd have no problem. NOT a good shoot being the case the trigger probably doesn't much matter.

Interesting and frustrating at the same time!
 
#20 ·
So, is your pistol "automatically" confiscated? Let's say someone busts through my front door in 7 seconds and I drop this iPad and kill him with my box stock xds. Let's assume he had a gun aimed at me and I got lucky.

Again, I lose possesion of my weapon??? I know there are more scenarios than stars but C'mon. I would think unless it's not a righteous shoot you'd have no problem. NOT a good shoot being the case the trigger probably doesn't much matter.

Interesting and frustrating at the same time!
It's evidence.

It'll be held until the DA decides wether or not to press charges (and possibly longer if there is a civil case pressed by the survivor/family).
 
#22 ·
Homocide is "deliberate and unlawful killing of one person by another".
I can't believe the coppers would "lead" with what I did (not real scenario) was homocide.

You're right, they don't know me from Adam. Well, actually, they do, but irrelavant. But, you're guilty until proven innocent now? I really do want my country back!!

Burden of proof on me. Wow!!
 
#26 ·
Even a knife or a baseball bat, used in self-defense, will likely be confiscated as evidence by the police. That's the reason you shouldn't use a $3k Les Baer Custom 1911 as your EDC. Back to after market triggers for your EDC; in our litigious society, I don't think it worth the civil risk. IMHO, better to practice with the stock trigger of your Glock, XD, S&W, etc and get proficient with it, in a tactical sense. If a lighter weight trigger pull is important to you, then get a more traditional DA/SA pistol like a Beretta or even better yet a SA 1911 in 45 acp or the new Springfield Armory EMP 4 in 9mm.
 
#28 ·
This argument comes up time and again...and it just stays ridiculous every time.

If I use a firearm to save my life, it's paid for itself a million times over, regardless of the cost. If I never get it back--big f***ing deal. I'll buy another.

Using your logic, I should never drive my Barracuda, because it's worth a lot of money and it might get totaled in an accident.

Except, of course, it's worth 4-5 times what the Baer on my hip costs...and the odds of getting into an accident are orders of magnitude better than using the Baer in self defense.
 
#33 ·
Why not use this as your EDC Cuda, #3 Colt Pistol, used by Texas Rangers, Price $977,000?

View attachment 51916

As Steve Earle said--she loads a might slow.

(That, and I understand the difference between a collector's pistol that really isn't intended ever to be fired and a custom 1911 that is--something that is obviously beyond your comprehensive capabilities)
 
#34 ·
I don't use my Nighthawk or Ed Brown in a home defense scenario because I have better choices. But if I happened to have my Nighthawk in my hand when someone broke it and shot him with it repeatedly and lost if for evidence I'd spend zero hours worrying about it. Just my 2 cents.
 
#38 ·
The point you're missing is that if push came to shove the 4000 dollar Baer is worth less than his life and those of his family. He'd be perfectly fine turning over his Nighthawk or whatever other higher dollar rig that he had to unfortunately use to defend himself and his family. The 4 grand he dropped on that gun is nothing compared to the value of his and his families safety.
 
#43 ·
And I don't find them to be the best tool for the job.

Again, that's like using the cheap drill when you have a better one.

Please note: I'm not saying that you have to carry a high-end pistol for defense...

I'm just pointing out the massive flaws in claiming you shouldn't, particularly in the case of your original claim "it might end up in evidence".

You keep trying to move the goalposts to include daily wear.
 
#44 ·
Y'all bring up some very good points. No question. And, God forbid, if anything like my silly scenario ever happened I'd turn over the weapon without protest.

But, there's an old saying. Justice delayed is justice denied!! If it were to take "months" to "clear" "verify" or take whatever steps are necessary something is wrong with the process. Having said that, I would agree. My life is worth more than anything I own that goes bang!!
 
#47 ·
I'm going to say this one time only. USE WHAT EVER YOU ARE COMFORTABLE WITH. If someone tries to hurt my family or me, I'm going to use every advantage i can to stop them, NOT KILL BUT STOP. If you can not explain that upgrading your trigger made you more proficient with your self-defense device then don't do it. If upgrading your windshield wipers helps you to see clearer to avoid an accident why would you not put better windshield wipers on your car? If you intentionally pull the trigger in defense of yourself or your loved one and it was not a negligent discharge what is the problem, if you are not defending yourself or your family why was your gun drawn in the first place? Maybe that is the question that you should be asking yourself, not whether or not my trigger is light.
 
#50 ·
Masaad Ayoob's theory on this:
The Massad Ayoob Chronicles, Part V - The Truth About Guns

The two things I would strongly advise against doing and have strongly advised against doing, would be a trigger pull lighter than the factory recommends, and removal or de-activation of a safety device.

You try not to give weapons to your opponent. If I have an [opposing] attorney trying to nail my scalp to the wall, I’m not gonna give him the sound bite of “Ladies and gentlemen, you’re here to determine whether this man was reckless, and arrogant, and negligent. Ladies and gentlemen, he was so reckless, he deactivated the safety device on a lethal weapon. And he was so arrogant, he thought he knew more about this gun than the designer.” Tell me how you’re gonna get past that.

As far as the light trigger pull, your problem there, number one, is it has historically been linked to unintended discharges. So problem one, under stress, we SAY we’re gonna keep our finger off the trigger.

The trouble with that study done in Europe with trained emergency-response personnel, indicated that several times, the sensors that were put on the test gun picked up a finger touching it [the trigger], when the officers swore that during the high-stress exercise their finger had never entered the trigger guard. It apparently occurs unconsciously, as the mind says “Hey, if we have to shoot this thing, we want to verify we can reach the trigger.”

Second, you can go to court and say “I didn’t accidentally discharge the gun, I always keep my finger outside the trigger.” And they will then hit you with the bomb. “So, you want this jury to believe that you’re incapable of making a mistake? You’re the first perfect human being in two thousand and ten years. Is that what you’re telling this jury?” Now that is gonna be a pretty tough sell.

Where the accidental discharge theory comes, is they know you have a justifiable shooting, but you’ve got either the rare prosecutor that is politically driven and has some political hay to make by hanging you out to dry, or the much less-rare plaintiff’s lawyer who’s trying to sue you or your insurance company for something – mainly your insurance company.

They know there is no such thing as a justifiable accident. They know that in a state like Florida, or many other states now, even on the street, the so-called Castle Doctrine has been extended. Basically, particularly if you’re attacked in the home, the presumption is that you were right to shoot the intruder.

If you read the fine print, you’ll find all those laws are worded so they do not cover negligence. So all the other side has to come up with is say “Yeah, well, but he killed him by accident, and that’s not what this law is about. Our theory is, he accidentally shot him.” The light trigger lends itself to that. And you’ve basically just given them an argument they can use against you.

The prosecutor who is politically-motivated will use that argument, because he knows it’s a very tough sell to convince the jury that somebody like that, somebody like you, a productive member of society, with a clean criminal record has suddenly turned into Hannibal Lecter and decided to maliciously murder another human being for sport. They know it’s an easy, slam-dunk to convince the jury that somebody just like them got careless for just one second, and did something stupid.

So that becomes their theory of the case, and it’s a much easier sell. They don’t get bonus points for convicting you for murder instead of manslaughter. It’s really real simple, pass/fail. If you win the conviction, you done good. If the guy is acquitted, you’ve made an ass of yourself. So a lot of them will go for that low-hanging fruit, and that is where the false theory of “he shot him by accident” comes from. And that’s one of the reasons I don’t want to see a lighter-than factory spec trigger on a defensive firearm.

The other is in the civil case. The plaintiff’s lawyer is not looking for justice – they are looking for money. There are damn few people who are both so rich and so stupid, that if I won a civil judgement of a million dollars against them, there would be an unprotected, liquid million dollars that I could put my claws on and seize to satisfy the judgement.

Probably everybody reading your blog has a million dollar homeowner liability coverage. The insurance company has the money. And bingo, that’s where they go. If they make their theory that he shot them by accident, it’s homeowner negligence, they can get into the deep pockets of the insurance company. If they say, no, he deliberately, maliciously shot my client to watch him die, the attorney knows there’s not a homeowner’s policy in America that covers you for what’s called a willful tort, the deliberate act that harms another person.

So if they say you deliberately shot him, basically, they are closing off their access to where the money is. So that’s why it’s so attractive to them to say you shot him by accident with a hair-trigger gun. I do not like to leave blood like that in the water for the sharks.

Someone might argue that with a lighter trigger, I’m gonna hit better, so therefore it comes under your thing it’s safer for the bystanders. Actually, no, it fails to pass another legal test called the doctrine of competing harms. History tells us that light triggers are so often associated with accidental shooting tragedies, that trying to say “Well, I did it for safety,” just is not going to pass muster. It doesn’t pass the balance test.

So what I tell folks is, nothing lighter than “factory spec” in the trigger. Certainly make your trigger smooth, I’ve never seen anyone accused of having too-smooth a trigger pull, in 31 years as an expert witness, and 39 years of teaching this stuff, and 40 years of writing about it. But what I have seen again and again, is that the trigger is too light, and therefore reckless and negligent, and guilt-producing, and culpability-producing.

If I don’t like the disconnector safety on a Browning, I would get another gun, or have the one I have smoothed up so my problems with it are solved. If I don’t like the grip safety on a 1911, I’d buy a pistol that did not have a grip safety and be done with it. And the other modifications I think are going to be very defensible, and I my experience has been that they are very defensible.
 
#54 · (Edited)
I wonder what an attorney, representing the family of someone you just shot in a self-defense scenario, would attempt to tell the jury about the use of a pistol like the one below (with an enhanced trigger)? Edit: If you used a gun in self defense that looked like the one below. How would the attorney suing you in civil court spin his case?

Everyday carry Material property Metal Fashion accessory Tool
 
#55 ·
I wonder what an attorney, representing the family of someone you just shot in a self-defense scenario, would attempt to tell the jury about the use of a pistol like the one below (with an enhanced trigger)?

View attachment 51973
He would tell them, if this person was not trying to commit a crime he would have never been shot. So i can't defend his actions.
 
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