Apex Tactical Solutions Touts Triggers For New M&P M2.0

1. I have to chuckle every time I see one of these attempts to square the circle of plastic striker-fired trigger issues.

   You can glue the wings of a B-52 on a pig, but he ain’t never gonna be an eagle.

   You bought a plastic, striker-fired pistol. The trigger will always be sub-standard. That’s what you bought.

   If you really wanted a better trigger, you should have bought a better handgun.

   • Dyseptic,

     Is there any striker-fired semi-auto with a trigger that feels like a hammer fired handgun?

     Every time I pull the trigger on a popular striker-fired semi-auto handgun, I am always disappointed. Is it even possible to have a good striker-fired trigger?

     In my mind the ideal striker-fired trigger would immediately present about 5 pounds of resistance and stay very close to 5 pounds all the way until a surprise break — over something like 3/8 of an inch of travel. In other words the same profile as a quality revolver’s double-action trigger with half the resistance.

     • Not that I’ve encountered, especially if we’re talking about the best of the metal sear-on-hammer triggers out there – the best target revolvers, the Python, the S&W Models 52, 41, etc, and other higher-end target pistols – none of them are strikers.

       Now, there are strikers that are better than the worst of the metal sear-on-hammer triggers – it is entirely possible to have a sear/hammer engagement that sucks rocks off the ground. Perhaps the better way to look at this is “It is possible to make a really bad sear-on-hammer trigger group.” Some of the com-block pistols are sear-and-hammer setups that feel hoooooorrriible. But they can be improved. Some sear-n-hammer pistols made by supposedly competent companies that make nice guns have nasty triggers too – eg, the Walter PP, PPK – I’ve felt several of those triggers that were really well below what I would expect out of Walther. When the metallurgy of the sear/hammer/etc are bad, then perhaps you need to replace parts to achieve the level of crispness you want in the trigger.

       It’s possible to make a bad classic-design trigger group that cannot be improved and needs to be replaced. Just pick up any “mil-spec” AR-15 trigger. The trigger sucks. It has a very thin case hardened layer on the outside, and as you attempt to polish the mating surfaces of the trigger and hammer, you often go through the thin case layer, and end up into the softer metal underneath. Your trigger now feels about like pulling a garden rake through cold peanut butter.

       The issue is the potential – what can the trigger become? OK, the “mil-spec” trigger on an AR-15 sucks. But by just pulling those parts out and throwing them in the trash, and dropping in a (eg) Geissele trigger group, suddenly you have a pretty darn nice trigger. No one, to my knowledge, has really done the Geissele (eg) level of trigger upgrade yet on striker pistols – where you can just pull out the factory parts, drop in the aftermarket parts, and see the level of improvement you see in a AR-15 by simply replacing the parts.

       • Aren’t the PPKs still made by Smith & Wesson?

     • If you like a crisp break, look into a Walther P99 with the DA/SA (Also called the AS or Anti Stress trigger) or a Walther PPQ. They feel akin to a 2 stage rifle trigger. The first stage is very light and smooth, with very little to no resistance, a definite stop, and a very short and crisp break with virtually no creep and minimal over travel with a 0.1″ reset.

       • It is indeed much improved over the average striker-fired types. It still isn’t quite the equal of sear/hammer triggers.

   • Chuckle all you want.

     Triggers on striker fired guns are not single action triggers. Astute buyers know that, and accept it, while favoring the modern plastic fantastics for other reasons. But like almost every part on every piece of machinery that is engineered to meet a price point, they can be improved for those willing to invest the time and cash. Sometimes the justification is nothing more than wanting to personalize your gun. Nothing wrong with that.

     Has anyone brought their GLOCK into your shop and asked you to put a Ghost connector on it? What do you do, chuckle at them?

     • The only GLOCKS into which I’ve put the Ghost aftermarket parts are my two pistols, a 19 and a 36.

       It’s an improvement, but my opinion after doing my two pistols with the Ghost connector is: “meh.”

       You guys keep forgetting that I regularly shoot for-real match guns, with for-real match triggers. I put more rounds through my .22LR match guns than anything else other than my clays shotguns, which are a Liege, a Sterlingworth and a Parker, all with nice triggers I’ve worked on. Only one of my six AR’s still has a “mil-spec” trigger (just to allow customers an A/B comparison), and perhaps only a couple of post-64 Win94’s I’ve acquired over the years have factory triggers on them any more, but they don’t suck that badly.

       The 1911’s have nice triggers after my attention, the revolvers either didn’t need any work by me (older revolvers that already had attention from a gunsmith) or they got attention from me. Even my Ruger 10/22’s have gotten attention.

       Out of all my dozens of guns, the plastic guns are the ones that don’t compare to anything else. They feel mushy, indistinct and ill-defined – even after I’ve studied their friction points, polished and lubed to make the trigger all it can be.

   • While I agree that most triggers in plastic, striker-fired pistol are mediocre at best, I disagree that they can’t be done well. The stock trigger in the Walther PPQ M2 is superb.

   • I disagree. The engineering problem may be a little more difficult, but look at it this way, striker fired guns have only been on the mass market for thirty years, when you shoot a hammer-fired gun, that engineering has been perfected over several hundred years.

     Already we are seeing progress here. I have one of the PPQs mentioned in another comment, and it is miles better than anything by Glock, Springfield or S&W. The triggers will never be the same as a single-action hammer gun, but neither will a double action revolver, we can still have good triggers. Just need some time and demand.

2. It’s amazing how much people bitch and moan about triggers these days. I don’t have much of a problem with the vast majority of stock triggers and can put rounds on target. I think a lot of this stuff is marketing making people think they need all these gizmos to add to their pistols. Also wouldn’t suprise me if S&W made apex an offer they just couldn’t refuse.

   • A-freaking-men.

   • PROUD Chicano,

     Most of the hype is just that, hype. Some of it is based in fact. I think a super-duper trigger provides a measurable improvement when someone wants to be super-accurate or super-fast. And neither of those factors matter for the overwhelming majority of recreational shooting, hunting, self-defense, and combat.*

     By and large, it is mostly a style or comfort thing. Some people simply want a trigger that feels nice even though it isn’t necessary for acceptable performance in their expected recreational or self-defense use.

     * There are a few hunting and combat applications that require super-duper accuracy (e.g. long range targets) … those applications definitely benefit from an excellent trigger.

   • Part of the reason is that there are more handguns available for people to select from.

     Consider the situation, oh, 50 years ago (post-WWII). You wanted a semi-auto carry gun in a full power round. What choices did you have?

     A 1911 in .45 ACP or .38 Super, a Browning Hi-Power in 9×19 and… not much else. There were lots more .32 and .380 pistols for civilian carry, but by the post-WWII era, concealed carry was outlawed in most states.

     The SOP back in those days was a) you got your 1911 or BHP in a nice new box, you wrote down the serial #, you closed the box and you took it down to your friendly local gunsmith, asked him to touch up the trigger and anything else he spotted, and then you waited for it to come back with a nicer trigger and some mods before you carried it. Your carry piece had a nice damn trigger on it.

     If you wanted a nice trigger from the factory, you got a revolver. Most people who carried handguns carried revolvers. And the triggers on those revolvers (mostly Colts and S&W’s) were damn good in single action mode. If you wanted ’em really smooth on the DA pull, you took it down to your friendly local gunsmith (FLGS) and said “I’d like an action job.” He’d slick up everything inside the action, lighten the rebound spring (in a S&W) a bit, and wha-la, you had a 9# DA trigger, smooth as butter. Your SA trigger was at 2.75# or thereabouts, and crisp.

     Then came the 70’s and 80’s, and the obsession with magazine capacity started in earnest, and suddenly there was the Glock. The trigger sucked by comparison to revolvers, but suddenly you have 15 or 17 rounds in a mag! Whoo-hoo!

     We’ve gone through 25 years of thinking that injection-molded cheez-whiz was the be-all-end-all for handguns, and people who bought a Glock as their first handgun just lived with the horrible Glock triggers. But recent developments in the concealed carry market have put revolvers and 1911’s back into the hands of a new generation of shooters. Unlike the Old Days, now people can see that striker guns have sub-standard triggers – when you make the classic triggers the standard instead of making Glocks the standard.

3. Interesting that their barrels still fit. That would tend to indicate that the new 2.0 barrels are exactly the same as the old ones. I wonder if S&W addressed the barrel to slide lockup issues in 2.0 that the Apex barrels are marketed as addressing?

4. I hate to be a buzzkill, but all this M&P trigger shenanigans can be circumvented by purchasing a CZ P10C instead.

5. I handled one today. The trigger is much improved in so far that it’s a bit better than the HORRIBLE trigger on the gen 1s. But it’s still not that great.

6. These polymer pistols are great carry pieces and they definitely have a place in everyone’s safe. That said once you get into the higher price point firearms you’ll see that you definitely get what you pay for.

7. I played with one at the DSC show this past weekend. The trigger had the more pronounced reset click that should give the Glock fanboys a tingle down their leg. After reset the trigger still felt a bit spongy until the decently crisp break. It felt quite a bit like a Glock to me except it didn’t quite stack at much before the break.

   I have 5 of the Gen 1 M&Ps. Two have modified sears from Dan Burwell Gunsmithing and the remaining 3 have Apex kits installed. I expect to pick up an M2.0 C.O.R.E. whenever they appear unless the price of the M1.0’s take a severe dive where as I’ll buy it instead and change out the sear.

8. Been meaning to get one for my Shield but my first kid arriving 10 days ago kind of precludes that for now

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