The Fatal Flaw of the HW40 Design

The safety can't be set to "fire" one-handed by right-handed shooters. It requires two hands if the pistol is in your right hand (as God intended).

It can, for the 10% of the world who are lefties, with a simple extension of the index finger. Score one for the mutants (my MIL, wife, and daughter are so afflicted).

If you are hunting rodents at varying ranges and have both a carbine and a pistol, and go to draw your pistol with the right (after transferring the carbine to the left hand), you must make a very awkward move to flick the safety off with your left thumb, while holding the pistol in the right shooting hand, all while juggling the carbine. This may actually cause your pistol and rifle to clash with attendant noise and damage.

A mouse is alive today because of this.

This air weapon is useless for self-defense in close quarter action scenarios. The safety should either be reversible, or a simple button in the trigger guard, not up forward on the left side of the pistol requiring two-handed operation. No telling how many airgunners have been felled by charging mice when relying on their sidearm, but the potential consequences are dire. The HW40/P3/P17/Marksman 2004 is a much-admired platform, and I have not seen this deficiency discussed before.

The Weihrauch company should address this oversight immediately. 🙂

well your post is a bit tongue in cheek but after looking you have two choices

don't set the trigger safety

or build a L wire that connects to the safety and goes into the trigger guard

as long as you did mistreat the L wire it might be a problem solved, epoxy is your friend and a p17 your test bed

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pmcl47eqhnxglzl/Wihrauch_HW40.pdf

It was a bit tongue in cheek, but the issue remains. Whoever heard of a pistol that requires two hands to render operable? I might as well carry a rifle,  or a rocket launcher. The point of a pistol is to be handy.

Since I do much hunting in the Dreaded Camo Bathrobe of Death(TM), I keep the pistol in the left pocket to crossdraw. This leaves it pointed in a very serious direction much of the time, so no safety is not an option.

It is my most favored pistol and the whole truth only dawned on me this morning, as a rodent that should be dead scampered away. You don't hear many knocks on the P3 (other than its appetite for palm flesh) and this is my only one.

Thanks for considering the issue.

so you are carrying something in your left hand ???? I would always shoot it in a weaver stance but a left pocket robe holster is a unique carrying method

I'm a little surprised that mice haven't laugh themselves to death after seeing you for the first time---sorry I couldn't help myself

so lets get serious for a moment, first off how is the safety held in place and if it could be removed you could make an overlay on the top of it to move it forward in the trigger guard 2mm piano wire and epoxy of some sort and make it as pretty as you could

T.W. Chambers has the safety so you could build a out the one you have and have a new safety for the new owner if you ever sold it

I have a HW40 and a P17 and I think you have a good idea and I never shot the P17 without a leather glove on my left hand

so line the robe pocket with some leather or work on that safety