Mossberg MC1sc

https://youtu.be/mP1qzhkyzx4

At SHOT Show’s Range Day on Monday I went hands-on with Mossberg’s new little pocket pistol, the MC1sc. I’m not gonna lie, when I saw the initial press release I figured this is a crowded space, the MC1sc didn’t exactly look revolutionary, and Mossberg isn’t who you think of when you think pistols. Of any sort.

But then I shot it . . .

The MC1sc surprised me. It feels very good in the hand and shoots amazingly well. Great trigger, smooth recoil impulse, highly controllable, and very accurate.

The cross-bolt safety also surprised me. This seems like a weird idea and I expected to dislike it. But it works.

Not only that, but the end user can easily reverse it so it’s on “fire” when clicked left, as pictured above, or on “fire” when clicked right. Basically, you can choose whether you want to flip it off “safe” with your index or middle finger or with your thumb, whether you’re right- or left-handed.

For those who are entirely opposed to manual safeties on a carry gun, Mossberg is also selling the MC1sc sans safety.

We tend to shrug off the idea of a gun requiring a trigger pull to disassemble, but the fact is that plenty of negligent discharges and a non-trivial number of injuries and deaths have occurred from this. While this is absolutely user error/negligence, it’s also a risk factor that can be eliminated by an engineer.

So Mossberg has done what many manufacturers are choosing to do these days and designed the MC1sc to field strip without a trigger pull.

Simply lock the slide back, push the button on the striker cover, and slide the striker cover down and off the gun. Now the slide will come off the front of the pistol, pushing the striker out the back at the same time. Everything else field strips as you’d expect. It’s quick and easy, and even gives you easy access to the striker and striker channel for cleaning.

Six- and seven-round, transparent magazines are available. Seen above is a pair of seven-round mags with short grip extensions loaded to, yes, only five rounds. We know there’s five in there because the magazines are clear. Handy, eh?

I walked away from the Mossberg bay impressed. This little gun feels and shoots like something larger and heavier. Oh, and it’s only $425 at full MSRP. Nice.

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60 COMMENTS

  1. The takedown with taking out the striker from the back is intriguing, but I’m not sure if I like it or not. That said, I’m glad they offer a version sans safety.

  3. Making it take Glock mags is a good idea. Not for people who only buy the Mossberg, because how many mags do you really need for a carry pistol(my answer is three—one in the gun and two on your belt) but for people who already own a G43.

    Now you have five magazines which work in the Mossberg.

    Now if only some smart company would design a pistol around SIG P365 mags.

    I’m looking at YOU, Kahr…

    • The big benefit to the Glock 43 mags is extended mags made by ETS that hold 12 rounds are available and should work fine in the Mossberg. So, the whole hullabaloo over the 43x and Glock 48 is really not warranted because those pistols are not much thinner than the Glock 26, but are much thicker than the Glock 43.

      If you want to hold more rounds, you don’t need a thicker pistol, you just need a longer mag. Sure, it’s not going to be efficient for concealing, but the idea is a reload that holds more rounds. 7+1 and 12 in a spare mag is enough for almost all conceivable DGU’s.

      I like the Mossberg, it’s a less expensive Glock that has all the advantages of a Glock, but none of the weaknesses.

  4. Hmmmm…looked like you were anticipating the recoil a little on the dry-fires…..lol

    Nice quick review. Thanks for being objective on the K-Mart version of a 43.

    Looks like it will do well, but I imagine the price will settle around 300 or a little lower.

    Does it fill the hand better than the 43? Looks like it’s a little more buxom I’m the grip.

    Also…I vote that every third post on TTAG be a Jeremy review. Entertaining and succinct.

    • LOL yes, flinch.com haha. As long as it’s after the trigger break it’s compensating for recoil, not flinch! Or so people like me will attempt to convince you haha

      Honestly I’ve been fighting that in my handgun shooting of late. I need to do regular dry fire practice like I used to.

      • It happens to me with the crappy trigger and minimal grip on my 43.

        Eyeballing the 48 or 43x for their thicker grip and better triggers (on the ones I tried).

      • The only questions I have are as follows. Did you drop test it Jeremy? I assume you did not, why not Jeremy? It’s not a Sig?

        • I assume this is a joke. However…. I have never drop-tested random guns. It’s not my thing and we aren’t on a quest to find as many guns with issues as possible or anything. We tested the SIG because of the rumor that it wasn’t drop safe. We expected to find that it was drop safe and were extremely surprised to that it was very much the opposite. Not just SIG, by the way: https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2017/12/jeremy-s/confirmed-honor-guard-pistol-not-drop-impact-safe/

          If there’s a reason to believe the MC1 has some safety issue, we’ll try to test it. This sort of thing is not in the typical review protocol, though, other than testing manual safeties for proper function. And, no, I wasn’t going to take their SHOT Show demo pistol with a live round and slam it on the ground 😉

  6. The Mossberg is entering a very crowded market place. It can be a very good pistol and still fail. I don’t see anybody trading in their G43, XD/s, Shield or LC9 for this pistol. Their market is for the “gotta have it” crowd and new buyers. Perhaps enough for Mossberg to recoup their investment but not much beyond that. If I wanted to get a pocket pistol I would go and purchase a Nano.

    • Yeah, there’s a lot out there for the super small slimline 9’s and the choices are gonna have to come down to price, features, and ergonomics. To me, anything over $400 for a polymer frame single stack subcompact is too much, so Mossberg is in a advantageous position with their pistol as it looks like it will be 300-350.

      For all intents, Ruger’s LC/EC 9s is the cheapest slim 9 available that has a good trigger and is reliable and can use 9 round extended mags. Walther’s pistols are universally accepted as being good with ergo’s and that leads to good accuracy, but it fails when it comes to higher capacity mags. The Mossberg uses Glock mags, which means it can use the 12 round ETS mags, and that is a huge plus. Springfield has their DA/SA XD-E, so you get the safety of the DA first pull and the swiftness of the single action pull thereafer.

      There’s a lot out there, but the good news that comes from that is it creates a lot of competition which keeps prices low and it keeps people innovating. The fact Mossberg decided to just use Glock mags means maybe others will do the same.

      Now if someone wanted to take my money, they’d make a DA/SA like the XD-E and have it use Glock 43 mags and give it a 4 or 5 inch barrel.

    • I like and use Mossberg products, but am not trading or adding this pistol to my array of many Ruger pistols. Hope they take many sales away from Glock though, which is on my list of products to NEVER own.

    • Crowded market or not. I’d like to get it for the see thru magazine. I’m never sure if I filled it or not when it gets too hard to push down loading it. The cross bolt safety is a nice thing too.

  8. Crossbolt safeties have been around for a long time on some shotguns. It’s a rarer feature on a pistol, but it is a clever bit of engineering because it allows making the pistol right or left oriented with only reversing the part (which is one of the reasons why some companies used to do it on shotguns, before tang-mounted safeties became more common).

  9. Nice looking pistol, it is a shame I just bought a different pocket pistol in .380. My budget is kaput for about a year since I have acquired a couple of different toys recently.

  10. Didn’t read all the comments, but am I the only one that noticed, the slide didn’t lock back after the last round .

      • , Mossberg Of The 1911A1 45 Automatic, ,,I have a war trophy souvenir brought back from China when they we’re fighting theJaps .

      • They made a 1911-like pistol, with the grip safety removed, a huge, overhanging beavertail, a rather extended slide release, an ambi safety, a Hi-Power-like barrel cam (as opposed to the Browning swinging link), and some other changes. I think it was made only in stainless, with only a 4″ barrel. It was called something like the Combat .45 or some such. I think it was made by someone else for Mossberg. I don’t remember when it came out – I saw a couple of them in the early 80’s. I don’t think I’ve seen one since about ’89.

  12. Not only that, but the end user can easily reverse it so it’s on “fire” when clicked left, as pictured above, or on “fire” when clicked right. Basically, you can choose whether you want to flip it off “safe” with your index or middle finger or with your thumb, whether you’re right- or left-handed.

    That crossbolt safety looks like the worst idea ever. If you set it up for your dominant hand, as most will, and then you get into a situation where you need to use your gun with your non-dominant hand, that safety is just begging to have the gun accidentally go on safe when you grip it tightly in a tense situation when you are about to pull the trigger.

        • Maybe. Looks to me the crossbolt safety is better protected than most mag releases and slide stops on other pistols.

          Jeremy didnt note any issues with safety, but did note he rode the slide stop and kept the pistol from locking open.

          So it could be you’re just looking for something to harp about which in reality is a non-issue.

          Maybe you should point out how stupid it is to have a slide release that is not protected to prevent someone from depressing it when just casually shooting. It would cataclysmic in a defensive situation.

          Or just don’t buy the one with a crossbolt safety. Or do…..and see if it’s as bad as you think.

        • That’s a thing for some people. They believe a slide stop is a risk, as you might accidentally press up on it while shooting and lock the slide back mid-magazine. And DIE. …of course, we probably all have seen this happen. Some guns do it on their own because the slide stop spring is under-powered and/or the ammo is particularly snappy and the recoil and flip of the gun makes the slide stop pop up and lock the slide back. I believe this was a regular issue for the first production run(s) of the Glock 43 (or 42, can’t remember).

          Some people accidentally depress the magazine release while shooting and drop a semi-full magazine out.

          All of these external controls can potentially cause a malfunction. A safety is no different.

  14. Still no word on recoil spring weight, which would be #1 reason to consider it from guns like Shield 2.0 with heavy 18 lb spring.

  15. Pulling trigger on empty chamber to disassemble = bad
    Pulling trigger on empty chamber for dry fire training = good
    They can’t both be right. If someone is too incompetent to unload their gun before cleaning, they’re too incompetent to handle a gun and need to seek professional training.

  16. Just purchased this unit with the cross bolt safety, not thinking about that term and thereby picturing the normal flick thumb safety. And before I realized my error, I even went so far as paying $25 more for it than i could have gotten it just to have the safety, only to find out too late that it’s not the style safety I had been envisioning all along because my brain was stuck in default mode.. Oh well. Live and learn.

    99% of my collection have no safety, but that’s not because I am a fan of no safety, but rather because the public have spoken and the safety is generally not to their liking, so therefore the manufacturers follow suit with the production runs based on that. But for me personally, It makes no difference other than I just like the looks of them. Additionally, maybe I’m a bit OCD, because I just like flickin’ ’em. They don’t interfere with my grip hold, so there’s I have no issues with them.

    I’m looking forward to testing the straight trigger too. Now, once and for all I can find out if I like them better, worse, or as is usually the case for me with everything pistol related, or if it makes no difference to me.

    Also ordered a gray Bersa BP9GRCC 9MM, so both will be arriving simultaneously. Regarding my on-line search results, I would have preferred the Bersa in a .40, but like with this Moss, I had difficulties finding just the right combination of features and pricing all together in one package. The biggest issue with the Moss however being that it’s new and a majority of the sellers don’t have ’em in stock yet, so that didn’t help either. But in any case, both have virtually good reviews and other than physically testing them out at a range prior to purchasing, that’s the only thing I can really go on. So, I’ll see soon ’nuff.

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