On 12/23/97 2:33 AM, Jim Choate (ravage@ssz.com) passed this wisdom:

Right mounted safety? Sounds like a lefties gun. Safeties are usualy thumb tripped which means they are on the left. The idea is you can safety the weapon without taking your finger from the trigger. That could explain the loading problem, guns built for lefties typicaly have all kinds of weird handling issues. It sounds to me like a real nightmare to load and use in the bush since you have to take your hand off the gun in order to get the safety off while you load another round while cycling the bolt through its action - eliminates snap shots that's for shure. Do you know if it is a lefty build? If so then it clearly isn't a military grade weapon since they are ubiquitously designed for right handed firers (at least until the last 20 yrs. or so).

Once the clip is in place, top feed since you said "push down", does the safety prevent the cycling of ammo through the breech? Does it use a stripper clip or a carrier? You don't happen to know the type of action?

It was the first cicilian marketed semi-auto in the country ... the right hand safety can be operated and usually is by the thumb of the right hand its a big flat lever with a good sized tab on it, just extend the right thumb and push down. The magazine was a non removeable clip that could only be loaded from the top, no stripper clips. The one drawback to the weapon was it was a top eject and the it was said that the ejecting shell distracted the eye of the shooter, personally I got used to that within the first 100 round I fired with it.

Is this a military grade weapon or sport?

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A parallel pistol example would be nice too, if you're so inclined.

I don't know of any pistols .... except that in the case of the ubiquitous military .45 (1911A1) while one can easily insert a magazine with the gun on safe, it isn't truly loaded til a round is chambered which involves coming out of safe to rack the slide

Interesting since the 1911 I use doesn't exhibit this ... I don't have a problem loading it irrespecitive of the safety. If the safety is on the hammer is blocked from the bottem by a lever. You can put ammo in it, cock it via the slide, etc. Just can't pull the trigger. Will have to look more into this...

agreed ... but .. my point is that racking the slide to chamber a round invlved bring the weapon to full cock, which, considering the abysmal track record of the the thumb safety removed the weapon from the only really safet state which was half-cock ... but that is maybe splitting hairs ... Merry Christmas to you too ... we here in Vermont are having a *very* white Christmas already with more snow coming tonite and tomorrow ... Brian B. Riley --> http://members.macconnect.com/~brianbr For PGP Keys <mailto:brianbr@together.net?subject=Get%20PGP%20Key> "When hell freezes over, grab your ice skates." -- Mark Johnson