This week you get to see me eat a little bit of crow as I finally come around from being a dinosaur to embracing the new hotness. Well, maybe not the newest hotness. But I am finally going to admit that something we started to see about 10 years ago is an improvement over the default AR-15 design.
Not that Eugene Stoner did something wrong. I think we can count Mr. Stoner easily among the best 3 weapons designers of the modern era, along with Mikhail Kalashnikov and the Holiest of all John Moses Browning (Peace be upon him.) But even weapons built by geniuses of design are improved upon over time. Take a modern 1911 vs the WW2 vintage. Hands down, the modern one is a better gun.
Which leads us to the Radian Talon 45 degree ambidextrous safety. I will be honest, I thought the 45-degree safety was a gimmick when I first started seeing it in competitive shooting. Part of that is built-in bias, which I will freely admit. When you have about a million reps on an Army M-4 with a normal 90-degree safety, you start thinking of the safety as a nonissue. It just seemed like a solution looking for a problem, if you get my drift.
See Also: Radian Model 1 – Ambi Magic(Opens in a new browser tab)
But I did buy one to try it, because I also believe that you have to evolve. Being an awesome shooter 10 years ago doesn’t necessarily mean you are awesome today. The shooting sports have made training a Red Queen type of event. If you don’t stay sharp, the new guys will absolutely pass you by.
Now let’s go ahead and say that a 45-degree safety isn’t a huge advantage, but it is an advantage. For getting the weapon from safe to fire, it is marginally faster. Probably nearly immeasurably faster, but it is there. It has to be, the lever has less distance to move. But that is not the place I primarily see the advantage. Going from fire back to safe, the 45 safety is no question easier and faster. Again, not huge, but it is a noticeable difference. It is also funny that a normal M-16/AR-15 safety actually works at 45 degrees too. Go check. It doesn’t lock into place, but an AR stays safe to 44 degrees. At 45, not 90, any AR safety you have will fire. The full 90 degree throw makes sense when you have a 3rd (180 degree) auto or burst position. With a civilian legal trigger group, 45 is what it seems is ideal.
I have hesitated to have them put in all my guns though, until now. Because another problem reared its ugly head with early 45 safeties. Let us see again, Stoner was a genius, and he built his gun not to fail. MANY of the early development 45-degree safeties, and several designs you can buy today, utilized tiny screws to hold the safety lever onto the side of a camshaft. Which works fine out of the box sitting on the workbench. However, a lot of us sweat. And over time those tiny screws had a bad tendency to rust out and fail. Snapping your safety lever into the dirt is a bad feeling when you need your gun to go bang.
Finally, there is a design on the market that solves this problem. The Radian Talon is the best designed of all the 45 degree safeties I have seen to date, and has yet to let me down. First, it is a one-piece design on the left ( normal) side. Instead of two levers attaching to a cam pin via mechanical device, the left side is machined as part of the cam pin. Just like the original, near unbreakable Eugene Stoner intention. The right side, instead of a .0005 millimeter screw, is held in place by a dovetail and spring-loaded retention spring. A vastly superior design.
See Also: Protect Your Red Dot w/ Radian Weapons’ GUARDIAN Optic Guard — SHOT Show 2023(Opens in a new browser tab)
And if you don’t like it? The Radian model can also be set as a true 90 degree throw. There is really no way to lose with this one. Not to mention, Radian offers 4 sizes of offside throw lever, for whatever you prefer. Available as just a short lever kit ($54.95), or as all 4 ($77.45), this is a great way to upgrade your blaster.
I know the dinosaur feeling well. I’m of the M16A1 and A2 Era and preferred the A1. To this day, my go-to is an A1, albeit slightly different from the issue model I rocked so long ago. My TACP son laughs at me and tells me and refers to it as my ‘Modern Musket’, but I digress.
I, too, resisted various ‘improvements’ to the oem safety. I tried an ambitious safety once and didn’t like how the additional lever irritated the webbing between finger and thumb. Then one day the clouds opened, the Angels sang and I was made aware of a company selling drop-in trigger units AND a pushbutton safety. I was curious and reached out to the company with questions. Lo and behold, the owner of the company called me directly, answered my questions and I bit at the shiny dangly thing in the water before me.
It arrived. I Installed it. I haven’t looked back. In fact, there is now one on each my lowers. It’s the Elftmann Pushbutton Safety.
Brownells now carries them, too. Check it out
As always, YMMV!
(When’s the next book coming out????)
I know the dinosaur feeling well. I’m of the M16A1 and A2 Era and preferred the A1. To this day, my go-to is an A1, albeit slightly different from the issue model I rocked so long ago. My TACP son laughs at me and tells me and refers to it as my ‘Modern Musket’, but I digress.
I, too, resisted various ‘improvements’ to the oem safety. I tried an ambitious safety once and didn’t like how the additional lever irritated the webbing between finger and thumb. Then one day the clouds opened, the Angels sang and I was made aware of a company selling drop-in trigger units AND a pushbutton safety. I was curious and reached out to the company with questions. Lo and behold, the owner of the company called me directly, answered my questions and I bit at the shiny dangly thing in the water before me.
It arrived. I Installed it. I haven’t looked back. In fact, there is now one on each my lowers.
Brownells now carries them. Check it out here: https://youtu.be/MMkXKbWsqcQ
As always, YMMV!
(When’s the next book coming out????)