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DA/SA??

Spartacus
what does it mean?
( I know "double action/single action" )
my PM9 is DAO, right?
is my Double Eagle DA/SA?
thanks
tom
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Comments

3 comments

Date Votes
  • burpfire
    hello. i wouldnt consider your kahr pm9 a single or double action pistol. i just consider those types like the kahr and glocks and springfield xd models as striker fired. those guns really arent cocking anything, they are just re-setting the action with each shot. now, the h and k pm7 actually have to be manually cocked or squeezed in order to fire.

    if i remember right, the colt double eagles are double action only, meaning you cant manually cock the hammer and have it stay cocked.
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  • v35
    The terms double and single action are quite old terms. Glock designed a unique system in the 1980s that is neither. In fact that action and other copies of the system should properly be named Glock Action.
    These pistols have to be set to half cock, either by hand or by cycling from the previous shot, or they wont fire.
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  • beantownshootah
    DA/SA doesn't have an unequivocal meaning, but it usually refers to semi-automatic pistols that can be shot either DA or SA.

    Probably the best example of this sort of gun is the CZ-75 which can be carried either cocked-and-locked (eg SA) or with the hammer down on a live round for DA carry, where pulling the trigger cycles the hammer and fires the round.

    Any gun that allows for single-action or double-action trigger pulls *could* be considered DA/SA, and examples would include the CZ-75 and its many clones, the usual Smith and Wesson auto pistols, the Berettas, Sigs, etc.

    While the terms "single action" and "double action" are old, they are still meaningful, and most shooters understand that a "single action" trigger pull releases an already cocked hammer and fires a round, while a "double action" trigger pull both cocks the hammer and then drops it, firing a round.

    Being an absolute purist, technically Glocks (and similar guns like your Kahr) don't have hammers, but rather internal strikers, and are therefore neither single nor double action.

    More important, the internal striker on a loaded Glock remains at a sort of half-cocked position, so technically pulling the trigger doesn't *entirely* cock the gun.

    To cycle the striker on a Glock, the striker must be first partially cocked by partially (or entirely) racking the slide. Since you can't cock and release the striker *solely* by pulling the trigger, a purist would not consider a Glock to be double action.

    If you are not such a purist, you might consider a Glock to be double-action since pulling the trigger adds enough energy to the striker for it to set off a round, then releases it to do so. This is largely a semantic distinction.

    In practice, Glocks function similarly to true "double-action only" pistols, with the above mentioned caveat that you have to partially rack the slide to cycle the striker for a second shot.

    Because of that, it isn't clear to me why the Glock so-called "safe" action is any better than a traditional DA-pistol.

    In fact, its quite arguable that its inferior, because a true DA-pistol will let you get a second chance at a poorly-struck primer just by pulling the trigger again. With a Glock, to get your "second hit" you'd need to partially rack the slide.
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