Sidearms & Scatterguns Mag release...what's ur preference?

[KYpatriot]

Just curious, until a few years ago I had always had sidearms with the standard button mag release. I now carry a Glock19 instead of a 1911 because of mag capacity. But now, having had usp40s for a few years the mag release at the base of the trigger guard has REALLY grown on me to the point that I think more manufacturers should consider that design.

I have hands a little larger than average and I still find that the side mount mag release on the flock and other weapons requires a subtle shift in grip to press cleanly. You can manipulate the HK release without changing grip at all with the trigger finger, and I am much faster on mag changes than with the button style. It is just a more user friendly place to put it, not to mention it will be harder to press it accidentally unlike a button on the side.

I am usually a traditionalist but I think HK has something here.

 

[bkw1911]

I see it as more of a "let's get it out of the way because I'm not carrying a pare mag anyway" kind of release. Walther and HK do it on there pistols and on a lot of there concealment type pistols. It works but I don't think it's even close to as quick as a standard release. There's a few reasons you don't see HK in the competition world and that release is part of it. When you do a uspsa match and are dumping mags as fast as possible and loading while moving you notice easier which mag releases are faster. Personally I think the better developments have been the Glock gen 4 and S&W M&P releases that are wider and move back further for people with smaller hands and just giving a bigger surface to hit. The problem with the standard gen 3 and previous Glocks I find is I hit the frame over and over before I can hit the actual release. Fat thumbs. The extended fixes that up.

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[gimpy]

I had a PPQ with the European mag release. It took some getting used to, but after a while, I grew to prefer it.

 

[RedTape]

Its OK. The way I was trained is that the trigger finger does nothing but pull the trigger. That's it. Not the mag release, not to activate a weapon mounted light. Just the trigger. That stuck with me and if I try to use it for anything else it feels very weird. Either works fine as long as you train with it.

 

[KYpatriot]

I just noticed that after years of shooting handguns with the normal side mounted mag releases that I was faster with the HK release which surprised me as I was spring loaded not to like it. It is just faster for me, maybe not for everyone I guess, and more importantly doesn't require any change or shift in grip. I would love to have it on my glocks.

 

[Veer_G]

Trigger-guard approximate magazine releases can be a bit of an issue if they activate easily. I love the long-paddle one on my later-version Walther P99. It's a really positive drop and not easy to accidentally engage. The one on the HK45, the shorter, sort of triangular/concave pyramid shaped lever, not always so much, as it's easier to accidentally engage under recoil, which pretty much effectively ends your party until corrected. At least one shop that does grip reductions offers a reshape of the magazine release, something that I would probably have done were I more likely to carry the HK45 on a regular basis. I used to have an HK P2000Sk, and for some reason I had great trouble with the release on that one, which was troubling because I was otherwise crazy happy with the pistol in all other regards. Clumsy reloads, however, are one really good reason not to continue with a given handgun.

 

[Unknown]

I found that the magazine releases that work really well for competition, usually don't work so well for daily carry. The extended mag releases on a daily carry piece often end up getting bumped on something. That means that in a fight, I would get one round fired, then end up having to do a tap, rack, reassess. So for any carry gun, I use a much smaller magazine release, and leave the extended ones for competition, or range only guns.

One mag release that works well for both is the 1911 release that has a button that is screwed onto a standard length mag release. For competition, I can screw the button on, and it is larger and extended. For carry, remove the button, and the magazine release is standard length and diameter.