Fancy Triggers

Someone asked recently on M4C about triggers for SBRs, and below is my response, expanded somewhat for the blog.

I am a fan of the GI trigger.  I have never missed a shot that I blamed on the trigger* (more on that in a minute) but have missed many shots that were the fault of the shooter.  With aftermarket triggers (Excluding the ALG, which I have not tried yet, or even seen on the market) I have also not encountered a fancy-trigger that I believe is robust enough to consider using that wasn't also money better spent on an equal cost in ammo and some time on the range learning how to shoot.

SBRs are, for me anyway, about close range and fast shooting.  Can they be shot at distance?  Certainly.  We had a shooter in my 0.5 class last week that went from never having spent any time with the AR FOW to hitting A/C steel at 200 yards with an A1 profile 10.3" barrel, GI trigger, and Aimpoint T-1 (which, according to most of the internet is just physically impossible).  I myself have reliably made hits on 8" steel with 11.5" A1-profile barrel and an Aimpoint Comp ML2 with GI ammo (something else the internet says is impossible)

Now to really piss you off.  The fancy-trigger is a crutch.  I personally believe they have a place in precision shooting, and that some who come from such a professional background or spend a lot of time doing civilian nappy-time shooting get used to that crutch and they need it, or at least want it, all the time.  That doesn't mean it's not a crutch.

I also don't like the two-stage for close-range, fast shooting.  Because I'm not used to the crutch, I will sometimes bobble the reset when going fast because I'm not resetting the trigger far enough, because I'm used to the GI trigger.

As to my own experience...

*Prior to the 0.5 class last weekend I had been shooting a gun for an article with a Geiselle SD3G trigger in it.  Since January of this year virtually all of my AR shooting has been with this gun and I'm just over 1400 rounds with it.  Besides that the only rifle  I've been doing has been a Winchester Model 70 which I took to a 3-day practical rifle class and put about 600 rounds through.  Trigger on that frankly rivals the S3G in terms of how easy it breaks.  In that 0.5 class last weekend I had occasion to shoot my BCM T&E loaner gun both up close at speed and at 100 yards for zeroing and 200 yards at the A/C steel.  My performance in all cases was sub-par.  I could not go as fast as I used to, nor was I as precise as I used to be.  To be sure, some of this is simply that I've been focusing on handgun shooting in place of carbine this year to date, but some of that is absolutely that I got used to the crutch.

Speaking of handgun shooting...
I originally started pistol shooting with Glocks, then went to mid-grade 1911s (think Wilson, Brown, Yost-Bonitz), then back to Glocks.  Using the IDPA Classifier as a metric I went from Sharpshooter with the Glock in the beginning, to Sharpshooter with the 1911s, and then dropped down to Marksman with the Glock when I went back to it. Why?  The crutch.  The trigger of the 1911 allowed me to get away with being sloppy.  What is interesting is that I didn't use that crutch to excel, I used that crutch to devolve!  Logically I should have easily moved up in the Classifier with the better trigger (although the Classifier is weighted to negate this to some extent, the times for a Glock are not the same as the times for a 1911) but I didn't.  Instead I got lazy (lazier?) and I am paying for it now with the Glock.  I just recently re-shot the Classifier after YEARS of shooting the Glock again and finally managed to pull myself back up to where I STARTED almost 10 years ago.  But I didn't learn.  I purchased and installed a Vanek Classic trigger in one of my Glock 19s and took it with me to a Hackathorn Advanced Handgun course a couple of weeks ago.  My performance was no better than with the stock Glock trigger and "-" connector but I'm now $100+ lighter in the pocket.  Know what I should have done with that money?  Ammo and range time.

If you're ok with the crutch, and willing to install the crutch on all your guns, and willing to accept that if you need to shoot a GI trigger you may not perform as well due to being spoiled by the crutch, then by all means have at it.  If you do shoot a whole slew of triggers and find that your performance is not impeded by going from the fancy-trigger to the GI then you're simply a better shooter than I am.  But if that's the case, it begs the question, why would you spend all that money on a crutch you don't actually need?

I'm not saying there's no place for aftermarket fancy triggers, but what I am saying is that I haven't been able to find a place for them in my guns, for my needs, that doesn't come with serious drawbacks and eventually lead to an actual negative overall result.