Thread: Half cock or safety

Originally Posted by longshot

This scenario is the reason for my aversion to the interchangeable usage of the term between true 'half-cock' and 'half-open-bolt'.
On the Lee Enfield and most early 20th century military bolt action designs you can ease the striker forward under spring tension into a half-cock position. This has the striker off the primer and locked, there is a risk when easing the striker forward of slipping and the firearm discharging, there is also the risk of letting the striker all the way forward and resting on the primer while hunting.

When hunting with one of these rifles, using a half-open-bolt with a cock-on-closing mechanism is arguably safer than relying on the half-cock design feature incorporated in the striker of many of these rifles, as has been already mentioned, this is the initiator of our ostensibly unique practice in NZ, which started when a stalking rifle that was not a Lee Enfield was a discussion point.

Getting back on point, if someone with one of these rifles takes the advice to use half-cock literally, which is not the half-open-bolt scenario, then there is an exposed striker resting or ready to drop on a primer. All it takes is a knock to the rifle and discharge can occur.
The correct semantics around this could save a life.

Ultimately the thing to realise is that this is a far more nuanced subject than what some posts would seem to suggest. Saying that no modern maker would make a sub 100% reliable safety because that would bankrupt them, ignores the Remington trigger recall of recent years (Yes I know there is conjecture whether it was the safety or the operators, however the scenario debunks the claim regardless).

One interesting point on the Lee Enfield design, during both wars they started making simplified cocking pieces to get more rifles out the door. These didn't have the half-cock safety notch, finger grooves among other deleted features. These were supposed to have been all removed after both wars for the 'pattern' version but I've seen two of them. So the blanket practice possibly won't work on every LE as well - just to really chuck the can opener at the worms.

The best action in this regard for safety is the military M98 and similar which has a 3-position 'flag' safety on the back of the bolt. Fire, Safe (bolt opening), Safe (bolt locked). The safety catch is a chunk of steel that cams the firing pin back off the sear so unless you physically hold the trigger back while releasing the safety (and if you are going to do that I'm convinced there's no helping you) the firing pin physically cannot go forwards with the safety engaged and if everything is as-built it cannot fire on safety release (and if it did it would likely slam fire on closing the bolt into battery first).