Does modifying the trigger really cause legal problems?

[Ed L.]

Once you are unlucky enough to be indicted and on trial, then you better believe that the prosecutor will use whatever crass act of subversion and sabotage against you that they can get their hands on, from the way your gun looks, to the trigger on your gun, to the caliber, to the bullets you use, to the video games you play, to the movies in your movie collection.

This could certainly happen. But are you going to build your choice of defensive firearms and ammo around it? If that's the case you might as well sell all of your ARs and semiauto battle rifles, lest owning them might make you look bad, and rely on an over and under shotgun loaded with birdshot for home defense. That way you can pretend that you are on your way to a sporting clays match when someone broke into your house. You may not even have to worry about the legal aftermath because you might not survive the violent encounter itself.

In this day and age, it would be pretty weak for a prosecution to point to a high cap handgun/AR/or ammo to try to make you look bad when these weapons can be found on the persons and in the cars of virtually every police agency in the nation.

As long as the gun is legal to own for the average person and is legally owned by you, it should be good to go in most places. This does eliminate ARs in some places like New York City & Chicago. Hell, in New York City ARs and such are banned and you cannot legally own a new longarm that has more than a 5 round magazine capacity (I don't know if this applies retroactively or not).

In a place where I was on less secure legal footing with regards to a long gun for home defense, I might use a 12 gauge shotgun with an extended magazine (if legal) or an M1 Carbine with the right ammo (if legal).

[Ed L.]

i was bored and screwing around once when Lexis and Westlaw were free for me (read, when I was in law school) and tried to search for incidents like these...


couldn't find any....


i do think that the level of fear-mongering far outweighs the actual real world occurrence...

either your use of the affirmative defense of defense of yourself or another is justified or it isn't...

Exactly.

Times when I have seen the prosecution mention the firearm choice were when the shooter was on trial because he did something else horribly wrong.

There was a case where someone shot a neighbor with whom they had an ongoing feud and used an SKS. As it turned out, the neighbor who got shot made a threat against the shooters life ina common area of the building like a hallway and the shooter went back into their apartment and got the SKS and came back into the hallway and shot them. This was hardly an unavoidable shooting as the threat had ended as soon as the shooter left the scene after initially being threatened.

[M4Fundi]

I asked the former Special Prosecutor for the State of Texas & a former city DA (& OSS agent in his youth) who has reputedly put more men on death row than any other prosecutor in US history this question about triggers, custom guns, etc. & he said, "you either did it right or you didn't & if you did it right then I don't care if you used a custom bazooka. If you did it wrong then I'm gonna get you on what you did wrong and not what you were using. NOW, if you kill someone in self defense & you were in the right you're still gonna have to RIDE THE RIDE & it ain't gonna be pleasant, but you aren't gonna get prosecuted for a custom trigger. I would advise avoidin killin anyone cuz the ride ain't fun"

this isn't to say that another DA with an agenda won't make a stink about the trigger if you did it wrong.

I carry the gun I shoot the best that fits the situation and some are custom & some aren't. I just try & avoid ambiguous situations and plan on "doing it right"

[DacoRoman]

This could certainly happen. But are you going to build your choice of defensive firearms and ammo around it? If that's the case you might as well sell all of your ARs and semiauto battle rifles, lest owning them might make you look bad, and rely on an over and under shotgun loaded with birdshot for home defense. That way you can pretend that you are on your way to a sporting clays match when someone broke into your house. You may not even have to worry about the legal aftermath because you might not survive the violent encounter itself.

In this day and age, it would be pretty weak for a prosecution to point to a high cap handgun/AR/or ammo to try to make you look bad when these weapons can be found on the persons and in the cars of virtually every police agency in the nation.

As long as the gun is legal to own for the average person and is legally owned by you, it should be good to go in most places. This does eliminate ARs in some places like New York City & Chicago. Hell, in New York City ARs and such are banned and you cannot legally own a new longarm that has more than a 5 round magazine capacity (I don't know if this applies retroactively or not).

In a place where I was on less secure legal footing with regards to a long gun for home defense, I might use a 12 gauge shotgun with an extended magazine (if legal) or an M1 Carbine with the right ammo (if legal).

I agree with everything you say. I made those points only for clarity's sake, and to echo what we can potentially be in for, given our choice of defensive arms.

For the record these days I use a Glock 19 loaded with whatever ammo is available from Doc Roberts' list (right now 127gr +p+ and 124 gr +p Ranger T's) for CCW. I'm oscillating between a standard connector with the S spring, and a standard connector with the NY1 polymer trigger spring (- coil spring) and don't go lighter mainly due to the fact that I carry a Glock AWIB. I also have a 6920 with standard trigger that is in my closet.

But I'm aware that I may very well have to defend my choice of using ugly black high capacity weapons loaded with "sinister" hollow points "designed to destroy as much flesh as possible" in self defense . And I'll argue that the lighter your trigger the more potential explaining one may have to do. I should think that the use of a striker gun with a 4.5# connector (eg, a Glock with a "-" connector) can be well defended, but the lighter you go I think the more explaining you may need to do.

I just think that one should be prepared to defend one's choices and not just rely on the hope of being in a shooting that is automatically seen as "justified" as you may be dealing with an attorney general that has a very jaundiced eye.

[ToddG]

this is not legal advice and I am not your lawyer

Many people have stated, correctly, that merely having a tuned trigger cannot turn a legitimate claim of self defense or proper use of force into a crime.

I, too, have done the Westlaw search and come up with nothing... but remember, for the most part that simply means the issue has never come up on appeal. There could be a hundred cases where a guy got screwed because he had a "hair trigger" but it was never appealed.

I've carried many guns with custom tuned triggers. The P30 I'm wearing right now has a trigger I even modified myself! Am I worried about it? No. If I shoot someone on purpose and have to explain why my gun was modified, I can very easily demonstrate that the improved trigger allowed me to put rounds on target more accurately and more quickly. This, in turn, means reduced chance not only of my own death, but the deaths of nearby innocent bystanders, etc.

On the other hand, I can explain that! translates into I can pay my attorney to explain that pretty quickly. So the defense case that is already going to cost you tens of thousands of dollars just got a little more expensive because now your attorney has one more roadblock to destroy on the path to freedom.