I got to shoot the new Smith 380 EZ this weekend. I got to shoot both models, the one with the thumb safety, and the one without. I hated the thumb safety model, I was constantly bumping it to safe, and generally worrying about the safety rather than putting rounds down range. Another shooter shot it and had the same problems, accidentally bumping the safe to on.

The gun without the safety on the other hand, was just the smoothest auto loader I have ever shot. No safety issues, just press the trigger and bang. 100% reliable, no problems, a real nice shooter.

I ended up buying one without safety and taking it home.

Wife LOVES it too by the way, and basically claimed it as hers.

This is going to be a good gun for female shooters, elderly, and kids . Smith will sell a ton of them.

Thanks for the report. I've been considering having my wife check one out as she finds here Glock 42 to be a little small.

My wife has one and loves it. Her 85-year-old brother shot it and will be buying one shortly.

My wife has difficulty racking slides. She's tried several and struggled with them all. This one is supposed to be easier. Did you find it to be?

quote:

Originally posted by ukhayes:
My wife has difficulty racking slides. She's tried several and struggled with them all. This one is supposed to be easier. Did you find it to be?

You can literally pull the slide back with 2 fingers. Its about as easy to rack as a Ruger Mark .22 pistol. When my wife pulled the slide back she commented, "Wow! This is easy, just like the name says."

The trigger is really nice too, in the 4ish pound range, which most people will like I imagine. No 12 pound double action triggers here.

Thanks, I will definitely check them out.

quote:

Originally posted by bubbatime:
This is going to be a good gun for female shooters, elderly, and kids .

That's exactly the market that S&W was aiming for with this gun. New shooters, and those with limited hand/arm strength.

Customers who've had a chance to shoot the 380 EZ typically like the gun and hate the safety design. Your experience isn't surprising given what some of our customers have reported back.

M&P thumb safeties generally suck. Hands of a certain size typically much larger than my own might be able to tolerate riding the safety to keep from activating it during live fire, but for most folks those dastardly devices are poorly sized and even more so poorly located. Their strong hand thumb winds up underneath the safety, and it takes something akin to a death's grip to keep one's thumb from moving up and bumping into the safety lever. This was a very common thing with the M&P "1.0" guns, and even with the 2.0 redesign (smaller lever, supposedly easier to ride) it still continues to be an issue for many folks.

Most of the EZs that we sell are with the thumb safety; people of a certain generation and age typically want that security blanket. Even younger folk who just are unsure of their own abilities want it. S&W would have been far better off had they used a safety lever that was designed more like the one used on the TS Shields. Those are about as unobtrusive as it gets during actual live fire.

I have one of each and the TS model went back for the factory TS mod. Upon return I have put many rounds through both with no malfunctions. I'm 75 with large hands and grew up in the Army with the 1911 so prefer the TS as well.

I’m about to turn 70, with medium size hands and skinny fingers, and pretty bad arthritis. I grew up with 1911’s so the thumb safety is natural and highly desirable to me. My EZ is just great! It has the thumb safety, as do all my other M&P’s, including all my Shields. If I could design my perfect thumb safety for the M&P, it would be only a tiny bit larger than the Shield design, which would make it a fair amount smaller than the larger M&P’s, but I can live with each quite nicely.
My hands are skinny enough that I’ll never bump the safety “on”, and in fact shoot 1911’s with thumb below the safety with no problem.
I’ve got s 5” M&P 2.0 on the nightstand beside me right now, along with my office carry at present, a Dan Wesson ECO. They have same manual of arms.
Op’er, I really like my EZ with safety, and expect to be using it more and more as arthritis progresses.
Skip