Defensive carry/trigger enhancement kits

[Tacomaman]

This is a question for attorney's. Are trigger enhancement kits or as Cajun Gun Works calls them, standard package(for defensive carry) problematic for CHL holders? I have an Apex trigger kit in my CZ 75D Compact PCR.
I am considering buying one for my RAMI. Both of these pistols are carry guns.
Should I be rethinking this?

[Tex1961]

I have reservations at a Holiday Inn next week, so I should be able to answer your questions. Rule number one, never take legal advice from an internet expert All that being said, I'll go ahead and throw in my opinion. As far as the legal side of it, Maybe, Maybe not... Could all depend on the situation, the prosecutor, the jury.. who knows.. There have been cases in the past where a prosecutor tried to use things like gun enhancements against a self defense shooting... But again, who knows..

I have to admit that the APEX triggers are darned nice triggers, but it's always been my policy to NEVER mess with a carry gun. Oh sure, maybe upgrade the sights or grip, but actual mechanical parts, Never... I've been around firearms for north of 40 years. I work at a gun range, I have talked to many, many people either in person or through several gun forums and I can't tell you how many times I hear of people installing aftermarket equipment and then complain afterwards of a failure.. Is it a high percentage, absolutely not.. more the exception. But I've heard it enough times to say that I would never modify any of the internals of my carry gun.. If I ever did, I would run several hundred rounds with zero failure before I would trust my life with an aftermarket upgrade.

[Tacomaman]

Thanks Tex1961 for responding. Appreciate that.

[Jose_in_Dallas]

I know Massad Ayoob frowns on this but I have no problem with it as long as it does not make the firearm unsafe or unreliable. No different than Sig and some of their Legion guns that have "factory" trigger work on them.

[PriestTheRunner]

I had about 3000k rounds on my stock FN509 trigger and striker before the striker failed. Went ahead and did an Apex trigger job on the FN when replacing with their barrel style striker replacement and have about 2000k more rounds through it. Its my daily carry and duty gun.

Only 5 FTE-FTF failures, and those were from a subpar gun oil clogging / delaying the self-cleaning blow port and the striker to upper interface. IE no trigger induced issues whatsoever.

If it is good high-quality components, you don't go under a nice 3-pound or similar standard trigger weight, it retains any factory safety system (like a trigger safety), and you give it several hundred rounds of utilization before carrying- In my opinion you're good to go.

Keep in mind, its probably less the legal side of things (unless you go way under standard trigger weights or have a negligent discharge) and more the point that you are trusting your life to it. There are plenty of PD's and sheriffs out there that are running upgraded components from their armorers on the duty setups for SWAT and even line officers that there is a basis of reasonableness to utilize upgraded components.

If you trust your life to the stock manufacturer and their (sometimes not so great) manufacturing/assembly personnel, then there is no reason not to trust your life to other companies that have demonstrated good engineering and quality components (Apex being a great example).

[Bolton Strid]

This is a question for attorney's. Are trigger enhancement kits or as Cajun Gun Works calls them, standard package(for defensive carry) problematic for CHL holders? I have an Apex trigger kit in my CZ 75D Compact PCR.
I am considering buying one for my RAMI. Both of these pistols are carry guns.
Should I be rethinking this?

The question you should be asking is, how much is your life worth. In this case it's the cost of some trigger parts. An additional question is what exactly is all that supposed to do for you - what sort of advantage in a defense situation do you think you are achieving with this sort of tampering? I can show you what they can do to you. A cop in New Mexico with a Sig P320 found out last June.

Time indexed towards the end of a car pursuit, is Officer #3.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNfueOtsG_w&t=75s

Wilson Combat grip module, some kind of slide probably non-factory also, milled for an optic, definitely non-factory trigger peeking into the trigger guard and lord knows what else on the insides. Just one malfunction after another. @1:36 you can see him straining at pulling the trigger and nothing happening. When he drops the mag @ 1:40 you can see it still has rounds at the ready and he wasn't able to fire enough to empty it yet anyway. When the scene ends at 1:49, he's aiming an inoperable weapon towards the suspects.

That scene has to be watched in slow motion to take in the desperate efforts that cop was trying to keep his weapon operational in a high risk situation.

Whether he realized what happened and corrected it afterwards is unknown. It was probably a Sig in description only, considering the level of aftermarket parts it was made up of - at least the extended mag appears to be a factory Sig item.

I have never been nor ever will go into a conflict or where there may be a conflict with a sidearm that has non-factory internals. A lot of research time and money went into design of trigger internals that would mesh into the overall design & function, more so with pistols designed with combat in mind. Like with any interest, there are things out there which are made to sell, get your money and offer little to no upgrade in reality. Best you leave the tricky stuff for the range, where it's safer to do so, where the targets don't shoot back. It's up to you whether you want to risk or not the sort of experience that guy in New Mexico had.

[srothstein]

I have never been nor ever will go into a conflict or where there may be a conflict with a sidearm that has non-factory internals. A lot of research time and money went into design of trigger internals that would mesh into the overall design & function, more so with pistols designed with combat in mind. Like with any interest, there are things out there which are made to sell, get your money and offer little to no upgrade in reality. Best you leave the tricky stuff for the range, where it's safer to do so, where the targets don't shoot back. It's up to you whether you want to risk or not the sort of experience that guy in New Mexico had.

I can agree with this concept in theory, but with a little modification it could be a sound idea. I would never go into a combat situation with a modified weapon that had not been thoroughly tested for the modification to work at all times. I would point out that the 1911 has probably more possible modifications for it and some are good and some are bad. But the special operations community kept using highly modified versions of it after the military had transitioned from the 1911 to the M9 for everyone else. This fact says that my modification of the advice to make sure the mods are thoroughly tested is what makes the critical difference.

Always remember that there is a big difference between mods for the range and competition and mods for actual life on the line situations. If the mod works on the range but gives you no benefit in combat, I would stay away from it for a carry weapon.