SW99 40 S&W issues???

3933 Views 3 Replies 3 Participants Last post by freddyboomboom, Mar 11, 2006

Wehrmacht45

Discussion Starter · Mar 9, 2006

I heard that a police department out east....cant remember which one picked the SW99 in 40 S&W as their pistol but after a bunch of problems they sent them all back and went for a SIG or HK instead. Anyone else ever hear of this. I saw CDNN had SW99's in and I almost ordered one but thought that this may be the large order that got sent back.

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stdrtf13

· #2 · Mar 9, 2006

As I understand it the New Jersey State Police ordered 2,600 SW99s, but only received 41 for testing and rejected the SW99 due to 'chronic malfunctioning'. Smith and Wesson attributes it to bad ammo. I believe they turned to an HK.
This was back in 2001, however, so its somewhat unlikely that these guns have been floating around this long.
There are a few SW99 owners on this forum if you want to inquire about their experiences with the Smith, and maybe if the SW99 has a date-coding system similar to the P99. With this information you could find out if the weapons were manufactured around this time.

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freddyboomboom

· #3 · Mar 11, 2006

My understanding is that they specified a combination of action type and safety that caused the manual of arms to be overly complicated. S&W said "that's a VERY bad idea, it won't work the way you think" and when NJSP said "do it anyway, that's what we want" then S&W did it. Then when NJSP wer testing them, they found out it was exactly like S&W said and complained of 'chronic malfunctioning' instead of the real 'cranial rectumitis' of the specifications...

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freddyboomboom

· #4 · Mar 11, 2006

Here's a quote from John Farnam:

Not surprisingly, the SW99NJ combines all the worst features into one package! It cannot be decocked, but the trigger can be staged. And, once staged, the trigger cannot be returned to its forward position (without reciprocating the slide). This gun is going to generate, for years to come, multitudinous ADs within the NJSP. On the side of the slide is etched, "Caution-decock feature removed" The trigger is way too light for a duty gun, and, when officers try to stage the trigger (which they will, despite efforts to stop it) they will AD with great regularity.

I secured a copy of NJSP's self-serving "justification" paper for selecting the SW99NJ. They really need to talk to someone who knows something about guns!

And here's the story that I originally heard (no link, found in Google's cache):

The SW99 model requested by NJSP was the regular TDA (DA/SA) model, but without a decocker. The slides had to be specially machined to lack the decocker button cutout. S&W tried to convince the NJSP that this wasn't necessarily the best of ideas ... (comment snipped) ... but in the end they relented and provided the customer what they demanded.

Naturally, if you're familiar with the TDA 99 design, you'll wonder how you'd decock the pistol when you lock the slide back, insert a magazine, and then load/chamber the pistol by releasing the slide. How indeed? The trigger is now "cocked", but with the trigger in the "forward" position. What Walther basically calls their "Anti-Stress" mode in the new catalog.

Anyway, the only way to "decock" the TDA pistol without a decocking button is to pull the trigger ... which is only something you can safely do with an EMPTY pistol.

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