The safety levers themselves are made of a steel stamping. The positive "click" of the safety comes from the interaction of the angles stamped on the safety lever itself and the detent in the sear block. If the detent can move freely (sometimes molding lines might need to be smoothed out a bit) and the spring isn't kinked, just replacing the safety lever can be sufficient to clear up a mushy safety engagement. Sometimes simply taking it apart and putting it back together more carefully can solve the problem as it's easy to not get things assembled exactly right when you're trying to keep everything aligned to drive the sear housing pin through.
When I first installed the safety on the gun in the OP, it was mushier than I was hoping. I disassembled and reassembled with a little more care put into getting the safety lever exactly where I wanted it. I used a punch as a sort of slave pin to get the sear block in the gun and played with the exact position of the safety until it gave the positive click I wanted, then drove out the punch using the factory pin. That helps significantly.
The M&P safety isn't quite as good as a 1911 safety. They tend to sit flatter when disengaged than your typical 1911 safety which tends to have the extension on the safety sit at the top and extend at a slight upward angle. That tends to put the strong hand thumb a little bit higher on the gun. On the M&P, though, you don't really have to run your whole thumb on top of the safety to effectively deactivate it or keep it deactivated. I've found that using the phalanx of my thumb (the middle bone of the thumb) at just the rear corner I can reliably deactivate the safety and keep it off during shooting.
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Originally Posted by spyderco monkey
