hair triggers

Question
How common are hair triggers , specially on a 380 ?
can they really just go off. and how do you know when you may have one is it listed or tested. what guns are known for soft or hair triggers. why are they used or how dose it happened. 380 semi auto. thank you very much.

Answer
Mr. Vera,

"Hair trigger" is a Hollywood term that generally refers to a light trigger, but the term is fairly well meaningless.

There are two kinds of triggers, those which are safe and those which are unsafe.

Triggers that are unsafe are so because someone tried to "fix" them.  Any trigger that will trip by someone bumping or dropping the gun should be fixed by the factory armorer or a qualified gunsmith.

What makes a trigger "light" is relative.  For example, a benchrest rifle will have a safe trigger that may take as little as 2 oz. of pressure to fire.  This is acceptable on a benchrest gun, but not a field rifle.  A military field precision ("sniper") rifle will generally have a trigger of 2 lbs.  This, however, is too light for a battle rifle, which generally will have a trigger of 5 lbs or more.

With that background, a .380 is a (barely adequate) self-defense caliber.  It has no target application.  Modern handguns have drop safeties, and no handgun should "go off" if it is dropped, let alone just sitting there.  If it does or can, someone who didn't know what they were doing has tried to "fix" it. The gun should not be used until the problem can be corrected by a qualified gunsmith.

In a self-defense handgun, I would not recommend a trigger that has a pull wieght of less than 5 lbs.  I know of no gun in that caliber that has a trigger even that light from the factory.