As I continue shooting the LTT P30L LEM, one particular aspect seems to define a given shooter’s enjoyment of the gun. That one thing is the trigger, of course.
For a competent double action auto man (or woman, though I have not actually met one of those – 5# short reach triggers do not count), a traditional DA/SA auto is still probably the best of all worlds. The problem is, there are not many of those guys floating around. As my friend Justin Dyal likes to say, “The ability to shoot double action well is like a superpower.” He’s completely correct about that because it lets you take advantage of guns and features you might not have been able to before, and it tends to make shooting every other trigger pretty easy as well.
The LEM seems to offer many of the benefits of the DA/SA, but without the “drawbacks.” What are those perceived drawbacks? The long, heavy first trigger pull and the need to decock the gun are generally the flies shooters find on the DA/SA guns. For smaller men and most women, the trigger reach for the first shot is often a bridge too far. The LEM solves the first problem with a long light trigger pull and the second by automatically lowering the hammer when you release the trigger. The third issue is less of an issue because of the weight of the trigger and the far-to-the-rear sear engagement.
This is an excellent system for most people, certainly for professional gun carriers who often receive less than stellar training and are not enthusiastic enough to fix that on their own. If the problem with a DA/SA is the weight of the first trigger pull, the LEM has the opposite issue. When a trigger is so light and so long and then gets heavier right at the breaking point, most people will disturb the gun a fair bit as they move through the final break. Disturbing the gun as it goes off is usually considered a fundamental handicap to good marksmanship.
If you like to practice crashing the trigger, as I do, you will quickly notice that triggers with heavy pulls that eventually just let go, or light pulls that suddenly break, are both much easier to get good hits with compared to triggers that get heavier as they go. In a shorter trigger system, we would normally call that stacking and usually pay a gunsmith to remove it. In this case, the stacking is built in and is a “feature” of the gun.
Practice will help you with this issue, but it may never get you to quite the level that those other triggers will allow for. The solution is to prep the trigger whenever possible. If you need to crash the trigger, that generally means that prepping is not possible. Understood. When it is possible, as it is with most shots most of the time, then a good pressout and trigger prep will get you to the wall quickly and easily, and then you can increase pressure until the gun goes off, just like you would with any other trigger.
I should reiterate that prepping the trigger does not mean stopping the trigger press at the sear engagement. It simply means starting your trigger pull as you present the gun to the target, rather than waiting to pull the trigger until you are on target. If your shot allows you the time to stop the trigger and refine the sights, then so be it, but stopping the trigger is obviously not possible or desirable on fast shots.
Any LEM trigger is a pretty good trigger, but the Gray Guns flat trigger that LTT put in my copy really works well. When all the slack is gone, the trigger is completely vertical and gives you a very credible version of a straight 1911 trigger. It is also a fairly wide trigger shoe, making the break seem even lighter than it is. This allows for some pretty easy shooting, which leads me to another benefit of the LEM.
One area that I find the LEM to really excel in is one-handed shooting. It is more forgiving (compared to single-action triggers) of the clumsiness that sometimes plagues shooters when using only one hand. A DA trigger is also forgiving, but it is harder to shoot one-handed than the LEM. Is the LEM the be-all and end-all of trigger systems? Not if the market is to be believed. Nonetheless, it does offer some real advantages, and its relatively minor drawbacks can be mitigated pretty well. Just get out and practice!