Originally Posted by
rsa-otc
Coming from a revolver background I would love a smoooooth consistent 6.5 pound trigger, that didn't stack somewhere along the way.
With regards to what is the lightest acceptable trigger pull for a self defense weapon, 30 plus years of watching from the sidelines (fortunately none of my students or myself have been in the hot seat), I defer to a few folks I've come to respect over the years. They sit on several boards for different training associations, one is a Harvard/Yale trained lawyer and several do the expert witness thing for our side of the issue.
They are of the opinion your trigger weight should never be less than manufactures specs. The reason they give is that you will be hard pressed to convince a jury of non gun owners that you knew more/better than Gaston, S&W, Ruger and alike in a civil or criminal wrongful death/injury trial. That reasoning makes logical sense to me.
Someone posted earlier that weren't manufactures making triggers overly heavy for liability reasons. I personally think that to use that line of reasoning as your defense for "lightening the trigger pull of your weapon" wouldn't fly very far, or at all in a liability or a criminal trail.
My take on the matter is this, If and When I get in a self defense shooting I want the triers of the facts and the jury to concentrate on whether it was a good shoot. I do not what to give anyone possible side issues that they can introduce into the fray to cloud the matter in the eyes of the jury. By not giving them issues to work with you force them to concentrate on the actual facts as to whether it was a good shoot or not.
Our criminal & civil justice system is no doubt the BEST in the world, but is is operated by fallible human beings. Until it is run by an impartial computer that takes in only the facts and spits out a decision, you have Judges, Prosecutors and Jury members who bring their failings, political leanings and predigests to the table that have in the past and will in the future skew trial out comes.
So when people tell my that they want to lighten the trigger below factory specs I gently advise them that maybe more time spent mastering the trigger could save them a lot of grief later.