Kind of an unfair comparison. A 1911 “in good working order” will not drop the hammer and fire, especially with the safety engaged. A properly functioning half cock notch will prevent this.Originally Posted by Wise_A
Kind of an unfair comparison. A 1911 “in good working order” will not drop the hammer and fire, especially with the safety engaged. A properly functioning half cock notch will prevent this.
Yeah, I found that one - the dude at the Canadian IPSC match.
I would like to attempt to answer this as well as a few related points you made, RJ.
1. Original CZ75 Design: the original CZ75's could be carried either cocked and locked like a 1911, or decocked, the latter being what we call "TDA" on this forum. However, they were NOT meant to be fully decocked but rather at half cock. Please note that "half cock" is a misnomer, as it is really only maybe 15% cocked, nowhere near enough tension to light off a primer if there was some crazy mechanical failure where the hammer dropped from that position. Note the Shadow and Shadow 2 is basically identical to this original deaign, lacking the firing pin block (FPB) added in the early 90's.
While half cocked, the hammer is resting on the half cock notch, which is big and burly and extremely unlikely to allow the hammer to move forward even with a huge amount of force applied to the back of the hammer, even with a heavily worn firearm. From this position the gun is, in my opinion, 'mostly drop safe'. The only way it is likely to go off is if it is dropped muzzle down, since then inertia is working directly against the firing pin spring, which is otherwise putting constant rearward pressure on the firing pin. You could slam the back of the hammer with a mallet (any volunteers out there?) And it won't go off unless you hit so hard as to literally break the half cock notch on the sear or hammer, both of which are made of hardened tool steel. Even then you would need to have enough energy left over from your blow to overcome the firing pin spring and touch off a primer.
By contrast, while fully decocked, the hammer is resting directly on the firing pin. If you were to slam the hammer with a mallet in this position, the gun will go off if you hit hard enough. The hammer is directly connected to the primer via the firing pin.
2. The event in OP: based on the info in this thread, it sounds like the guy fully decocked his non FPB equipped CZ, just as thousands of other competitors do every weekend at matches across the USA. He then threw the gun into his holster, missed it, and the gun hit the ground. While in the air the gun spun around and hit the ground hammer-down and muzzle-up. The RO happened to be in front of the muzzle right as this happened, the gun discharged and an innocent man died.
3. Personal experience: Im a CZ fanboi, and used to carry a manual safety SP01 by manually decocking it before holstering. I got very comfortable with doing this safely over hundreds of reps. This was also my competition gun. I will admit on this forum that during matches I dropped the hammer to half cock and not full decock, because fully decocking and then holstering gives me the heebie jeebies... my mind is thinking about that firing resting on the primer... and I dont want to be thinking about that instead of being present in the moment before that beep goes off. I did this fully aware it was against the rules, I think one time an RO said something and I fully decocked, the other times they didnt notice or didnt care.
Now I both carry and compete with decocker and FPB equipped guns, so I dont need to worry about the above safety concern or being DQ'd
4. Rules and inherent safety: I disagree strongly with the idea that non "drop safe" should be banned from competition. Every single AR15 is not only lacking a drop safety, but is actually more mechanically inclined to go off if dropped or hit hard from a certain direction, since it lacks even a firing pin spring to put rearward pressure on the firing pin. Regarding pistols, look up the series 70 1911 drop tests mentioned above in this thread to see just how perfectly things need to align to make a gun actually go off when dropped. Finally, consider that the pre-upgrade P320 was advertised as "drop safe" but actually wasn't. Moreover, the position where the P320 is most likelt to discharge is the exact position the CZ in question discharged in and killed someone, the worst possible angle of muzzle 45-ish degrees up.
In my opinion the CZ in question would not have gone off when dropped at this angle if it was on half cock instead of fully decocked. I wish they would amend the rules to allow hammer fired guns to be dropped to half cock in production, but realize this would add complexity to the rulebook and some would cry foul that allowing that hammer spring to be 15% compressed gives hammer fired guns an unfair advantage.
I wholeheartedly agree with the points made upthread that this is an extremely rare occurance, which is what makes it a tragedy, and one is far more likely to die driving to the match than in it.
I think that the organization should be looking at the changes you suggest simply to protect themselves when/if the next incident happens.
Was it not meant to be fully decocked all the way down, or decocker design wouldn't allow it to be fully lowered? If it is the former, was it because of the concerns discussed in this thread, or because they didn't want to risk hammer slippage and ignition even with mechanical decocking?
Doesn't read posts longer than two paragraphs.
My concern there is it sets a precedent of changing the rules in response to tragedy, which over time could lead to neutering USPSA and practical shooting in general.
When CZ designed the decocker, they designed it to drop to half cock. I think this clearly shows that this is how they meant the hammer to be set when carrying in condition 2.
I might be misunderstanding your question, but yes another big benefit of going to half cock is it is much easier to do manually without letting the hammer slip as you decock.
Last edited by TicTacticalTimmy; 11-12-2020 at 05:57 PM.
Exactly. As long as you don't have people installing gamer hammers with a half-cock notch that is 90% cocked, I don't see this as a competitive advantage.
Allowing the guns to be holstered in the DA condition intended by the manufacturer seems like an easy rule change.
“There is no growth in the comfort zone.”--Jocko Willink
"You can never have too many knives." --Joe Ambercrombie
I am simply trying to find out facts (vs opinions) why CZ decided to design mechanical decocking to half cock notch. It could've been for a number of reasons such as just simpler to execute, or prevent ND during decocking. I have hard time accepting that this was done for purposes of drop safety since decocker enabled CZs (and other DA/SA mech decock guns that lower to half notch) because all of them, to the best of my memory, have firing pin blocks anyway.
Doesn't read posts longer than two paragraphs.
You know that this is exactly what's going to happen, right? Gamers gonna game. Not 90, but 15-25-30 etc, and it would be impossible to guard against.
Doesn't read posts longer than two paragraphs.
Like this one from the VA State match we shot. This may be one of the worst examples of RO positioning ive ever seen, as competitors had to pick up their gun unloaded off the barrel and load it, which resulted in several right handed shooters aiming directly at the RO on the left.
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