The CZ Scorpion EVO is easily one of the most fun 9mm carbines I’ve had the pleasure to shoot. It’s lightweight, will eat about anything you feed it, and has an excellent reliability record. It also has a bit of a cult following, which results in many aftermarket accessories – they’ve got you covered from flash hider to stock (or brace).
Probably the two biggest complaints I’ve heard about the Scorpion are the magazines and the stock safety. CZ has already done a lot of work to remedy the magazine issues and Magpul has also entered that market, so it is probably safe to say that most magazine problems should be well in the mirror.
That leaves safeties. There are a plethora of aftermarket safeties as well, and I’ve had the pleasure of testing many of them, including ones from Apex Tactical, Gear Head Works, Parker Mountain Machine, Manticore Arms, and HB Industries. Each of these products brings its own advantages. Some of them do it in unique ways, but none do it quite as unique as CZ Custom’s Push Safety.
For those of you who grew up on Daisy BB guns, the push safety style should be very familiar to you. Instead of using a lever that moves up and down to engage the safety, the push safety moves left to right, or right to left, depending on the model. It’s a drastic departure from most pistol caliber carbine safeties that are on the market today, most of whom use a variation on the AR-15 or MP5 lever-style safety.
The biggest advantage to the push safety is that it completely eliminates the unwanted pressure that many shooters experience from the lever-style safety on the Scorpion. I have pretty big hands, and even with shortened levers, I’ve still felt the pressure on my trigger finger after longer days of shooting. Some shooters decide to just delete the safety on their trigger finger side. That works, but for courses of fire that require switching shoulders and shooting (and I’ve shot a few competitions that have those), it still doesn’t eliminate the issue, because now your trigger finger is on the side you thought you’d never have to worry about. And deleting the lever on one side also removes the advantages of an ambidextrous safety, such as being able to easily operate it no matter what side you shoot on.
Because the push safety has no levers, the pressure is gone. And, in their attention to detail, CZ Custom has ensured that the edges of the safety are nicely beveled for your comfort. There is absolutely nothing on this safety to rub you. And, even though CZ Custom does make right- and left-hand models, operating either version ambidextrously is simple. No worries about having to switch your thumb over to the other side, or awkwardly trying to catch the lever with your trigger finger. If you can reach the safety with your thumb and trigger knuckle, you can easily push it back and forth.
Speaking of which, my preferred method of operation is switching to Fire with my trigger finger’s first joint, then switching to Safe with my thumb. I don’t have to dramatically alter my grip to achieve either. It has a positive stop in the Fire position so it’s harder to accidentally put on Safe, but it remains easy to intentionally manipulate. It doesn’t protrude very far on either Safe or Fire, and the chances of bumping it are minimal, but the stop is a nice extra measure of safety.
All the glowing words aside, the obvious question arises: “Is this going to slow me down?” Here’s the honest answer – that’s really up to you. As I mentioned, this is a significantly different design than the stock safety. Any time that you introduce a new piece of equipment, you must train to it. If you think that you’re going to install this and then instantly be as fast as you were before, move over Keanu Reeves, there’s a new Wick in town. There will be a learning curve, and it will take the same type of practice to learn this safety that it did to learn your current safety.
With that said, there is absolutely nothing I’ve found inherent in this design that will slow you down once you’ve put in the required number of repetitions. After a single range day, I had my first shot times with the new safety within 1/10 of a second of my times with the stock safety. And it wasn’t a particularly long day – about 100-150 rounds. It was a last-minute trip, so I didn’t dry-fire the night before. Had I put in those repetitions, I honestly doubt there would have been a difference in times.
Overall, the safety is well-built, definitively solves the problem it was designed to address, and shouldn’t be an impediment to your speed. It deserves a look if your safety has been driving you crazy, or if you just want to try something a little different.
The Push Safety retails for $70.83 and can be purchased at CZ Custom
