The M&P Project

The polymer-framed handgun was pioneered by Heckler & Koch in the 1970s but wasn’t popularized until Glock began manufacturing its series of pistols a little over 10 years later. By the turn of the century, they were everywhere. Military and police forces around the world adopted the new weapons readily, and they soon found a place among recreational and defensive shooters in the civilian market as well.

Today, almost every major firearms manufacturer has plastic-framed offerings. Even the first generation of such weapons had some obvious benefits. They offered high ammunition capacities at lighter weights than comparable steel or alloy-framed pistols, and Glocks in particular gained a reputation for unbeatable reliability. They were also bulky and, to some eyes, ugly.

The former problem was why I eventually dismissed my own Glock 19. The pistol’s awkward, oversized ergonomics simply didn’t suit my smaller hands. I wasn’t alone, and by the mid-1990s, pistols with modular frames began to appear in the marketplace. These guns provided a degree of built-in customization, allowing the weapon to be adapted to the user rather than demanding the opposite.

Smith & Wesson was one of the first major manufacturers to adopt this innovation. The new Military & Police series (recalling the M&P revolvers introduced at the dawn of the 20th century) features an interchangeable backstrap insert. A shooter can select small, medium, or large inserts to modify the overall size of the grip. In short, the M&P pistols implemented the Glock-style striker-fired action and passive safety mechanisms in a more elegant, ergonomic package.

This is what had intrigued me about the M&P pistols for several years. I even handled them at gun shows to confirm their favorable ergonomics, but I could never justify the restricted-capacity, dumbed-down (and possibly less safe) versions “legally” available in my native California. Meanwhile, aftermarket solutions also began to appear for some of the platform’s known weaknesses.

When I effected my escape from California last year, the legal barrier was removed. After a few months, I finally succumbed to curiosity and purchased an M&P9 Pro Series pistol, which supposedly has an improved sear over the standard models. As usual, though, I compared the new pistol to my dimensionally similar SIG-Sauer P220, which serves as my standard all-around sidearm. With the slimmest grip options installed on both pistols, the 17-round, 9mm-NATO M&P9 felt almost identical in my hand to the eight-round, .45-ACP P220. (In fact, the grip circumference differed by only about an eighth of an inch, favoring the big-bore, single-stack pistol for trimness.) With magazines loaded, the P220 outweighed the M&P9 by less than two ounces, contributing to the similar feel. (The pistols both weighed less than 2.5 lbs.) The Pro Series’ trigger break was also comparable, only slightly stiffer than the SIG-Sauer’s advertised 4.5-lb. single-action break.

However, trigger pull and trigger reset are the primary known weak points of the M&P pistol. Its standard trigger tends to feel mushy, and its geometry pulls the sights off target too easily—at least for me. The reset is also nearly imperceptible, which can slow down followup shots or cause the shooter to short stroke the trigger. Luckily, the marketplace has already provided some solutions.

Investing a couple hundred more dollars, I installed three components from Apex Tactical Specialties: an aluminum trigger, competition springs, and their reset-assist mechanism. The Apex kit replaced the highly curved S&W hinged trigger with a flatter, Glock-style trigger (complete with pivoting safety lever), which improved the trigger geometry, in my opinion, and gave a cleaner break. The new springs also reduced the overall trigger pull weight, further enhancing control. Finally, taking ingenious advantage of the unused channel for S&W’s internal locking system, the RAM provided the pistol with a tactile and audible trigger reset.

When the northwestern weather produced a warm, dry winter day, I finally headed to the local wet, muddy shooting range for some live-fire testing. Again, I put the M&P9 up against my trusty P220. Both guns performed well in my somewhat out-of-practice hands, shooting 2⅛-inch groups at approximately 10 yards, and that’s where the comparison ended. While the P220 may have slung the vaunted .45-caliber slugs very effectively, the S&W pistol put more than twice as many bullets down range and did so more easily.

This review, such as it is, would have been completed much earlier, but I also wanted to evaluate potential holsters for the pistol. As a mid-sized handgun, I thought that the M&P9 could prove suitable for everyday concealed carry. I tried variations of Kydex and hybrid holsters but found them lacking for my needs. In the end, I returned to traditional leather, selecting a highly canted inside-the-waistband holster that kept the pistol easily accessible but conveniently out of my way.

 
Now that I’m involved in the business of selling firearms with Dancing Giant Sales, I will be even more curious to see how the Smith & Wesson compares to other competing offerings from the latest generation of polymer-framed pistols, but the M&P series has demonstrated that the technology itself has improved from its rough beginnings. While not perfect out of the box, the M&P is meeting demands for a flexible, ergonomic pistol in effective calibers. These requirements will persist well into the future, if the defensive handgun continues to take its rightful place in civil society.

Justice Done in Florida

Or was it?

As it turned out, young George Zimmerman wasn’t standing his ground when he fired that fatal shot in Sanford, Florida, but being beaten into it by younger Trayvon Martin. At least, given the evidence and testimony presented at trial, the state failed to prove otherwise beyond a reasonable doubt, leaving the jury to presumably accept that self-defense had justified the defendant’s actions.

Like many, I at first thought that the defendant must be guilty of something. He had surely confronted the victim and provoked the fight that led to the fatal shooting. (In some respects, I had perhaps even wanted him to be guilty, because I am a person who avoids unnecessary confrontation and could not reasonably see myself in the defendant’s place.) Unlike most, though, I also wanted the local police and prosecutors to do their jobs without political interference, so I was dismayed when the case was pushed as a racial cause célèbre.

I was also willing to change my opinion as the actual facts emerged from the cloak of propaganda. Two currents swayed me both before and during the trial.

First, the state brought an unsustainable charge against the defendant. In Florida, second-degree murder requires that the perpetrator act with hate or a depraved mind, motives that were clearly absent even before the trial commenced. I wondered about this overreach, until the answer struck me. The state had to win on an accusation that couldn’t later be turned against its own agents. A loss would be preferable to exposing constables on patrol to potential murder charges merely for contacting suspicious individuals.

Second, at trial, the most compelling evidence and testimony supported the defendant’s version of events. While the defendant may have initiated contact, the facts strongly suggested that the victim was the aggressor in the fight that followed. That is reasonable doubt right there, even if you feel or believe that there is still guilt lurking somewhere. Confronting a suspicious individual in your neighborhood may be foolish, but it is not a crime and does not justify battery upon your person.

In the end, most of us might never have heard of the incident if the mainstream media hadn’t initially jumped to the conclusion that an old Jewish man had shot a 12-year-old black boy without provocation. Maybe the outcome would have been different then.

Self-Defense, the Right to Arms, and the Concealed-Carry Revolution

The video I’ve shared is from a recent Cato Institute policy forum on self-defense and “stand your ground” laws. Though fairly long, it provides solid historical, political, and legal analysis, so I encourage everyone to watch. As you might suspect, I disagree in part with the last commentator,¹ but I still think he made valid points about the application of the law and the possible need for further guidance. After all, if “stand your ground” laws were a reaction to the misapplication of other statutes by prosecutors, are they not at risk for misapplication themselves? Absent political motives, the mere fact that relative experts disagree on the meaning of these laws suggests there is yet a degree of ambiguity, but that is a matter for legislators and judges to resolve.

As noted in the video, the adoption of such affirmative self-defense statutes has followed the proliferation of right-to-carry laws throughout the country. However, many if not most people are still largely unaware of this quiet revolution, both because the laws encourage or even require the concealed carry of firearms and because the mainstream media usually does their best to ignore the laws once they’ve been passed.² Naturally, there is a long and troubling history behind the right-to-carry movement, and I can touch on that only briefly here.

In A.D. 1986, only a handful of states would readily issue licenses to common citizens. In the rest of the country, the carrying of firearms was either broadly prohibited or the licensing authorities had almost unlimited discretion in issuance. This was the legacy of the two-pronged gun-control efforts³ of the 1920s and ’30s, which were ostensibly intended to combat the dramatic increase in violent crime that accompanied alcohol prohibition.

That began to change when Florida became the first state in recent decades to adopt a shall-issue statute, which required the licensing authority to issue licenses to all applicants who were not legally disqualified. Florida’s concealed-carry law became a model for reform, and by the mid-1990s, over half of the United States had enacted similar shall-issue statutes. The causes have not been widely explored, but I think that they will prove clear enough once this chapter of history is written.⁴

Opposition to the shall-issue movement has been and continues to be fierce, and in each case it has usually taken several years for liberalized concealed-carry legislation to make it through state legislatures and past gubernatorial vetoes. Without fail, opponents have warned of dire consequences should the reforms pass into law. Blood would run in the streets, they assured, as minor disputes and disagreements escalated into shootouts. Invariably, though, such grim outcomes have failed to materialize, and violent crime has continued to decline⁵ as right-to-carry laws have continued to expand.

Today, all but a handful of states enjoy shall-issue licensing or better. California, New York, and several other “liberal” states still maintain discretionary, may-issue regimes, while Illinois is the only state with no licensing system. Legislative reform is unlikely in these gun-control strongholds, so multiple constitutional challenges are now making their way through the federal courts.

The U.S. Supreme Court is widely expected to hear one or more of these cases within the next two years.

1. I am far, far more worried about misconduct by the police and prosecutors than I am about the potential that a criminal might “get away with it” here or there.


2. After vigorously campaigning against a right-to-carry reform, the news media seem to conveniently forget about the topic, except for occasional “investigative” pieces designed to expose or embarrass licensees. Here is a recent exception to that rule. “New Fashion Wrinkle: Stylishly Hiding the Gun.” The New York Times (2012).


3. These efforts resulted in the National Firearms Act of 1934, which sought to regulate firearms at the federal level via taxation (since the federal government was presumably bound from direct infringement on the right to keep and bear arms by the Second Amendment), and the “uniform acts,” which sought to control guns at the state level (since state governments were presumably not bound by the Second Amendment). In practice, though, the various prohibitions on concealed firearms found within the uniform acts were mostly used to disarm “undesirable” people (i.e., minorities and immigrants), and that was probably a large part of the true intent behind them. Otherwise law-abiding white citizens were generally unaffected for several decades, and the wealthy and influential could always count on getting licenses or at least special consideration in the event of any embarrassing incidents.


4. I contend that the right-to-carry revolution developed as a response both to the equalized enforcement practices reached in the 1970s and ’80s and to the political successes of the national gun-control movement from 1968 to 1994. Note that the number of shall-issue states had almost doubled within two years of the enactment of the federal ban on “assault weapons.”


5. The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports show that homicides (gun related and otherwise) have continued to decline from 2006 to 2010. Firearms-related homicides specifically dropped from 10,225 to 8,775. More guns on the street simply do not correlate to—let alone cause—more violence.