The Stage is Set: What is a 2-Stage Trigger?
In my “picking a rifle” article, I made a couple of references to a 2 stage trigger and how it was a requirement for my chosen rifle. A couple of readers asked what a 2 stage trigger was and why I wanted one. Considering this is “Year of the Rifle” territory, I’m going to answer this one in its own article rather than in the Free For All Friday posts. Oddly enough, it’s a perfectly simple thing to demonstrate but anytime that I’ve tried to explain it to someone, I find it very difficult to put into a quick explanation. So fair warning: This may get a bit wordy.
A while back, I put out a guide about Good Guns vs. Bad Guns. I spoke a bit there about trigger breaking and why a predictable break is a good thing. To sum up: the “trigger break” is where the gun actually fires. Having it break in the same spot with the same weight each time ultimately leads to better accuracy.
With a single stage trigger, the trigger’s break is right up front. The mechanism itself is essentially sitting on the edge and it just takes a bit of a nudge from you to push it into firing. The best example of this that comes to mind is a stock, mil-spec style AR-15 trigger, a 1911 trigger or your typical single action revolver. There is no lead in, no stacking or anything. You just put a bit of pressure on the trigger and the gun goes bang. For something like a “battle gun” or “competition gun” where quick firing is key, a single stage trigger allows you to get lot’s of shots off with as much accuracy as you would typically get when firing as many shots as possible in a short amount of time. Unless you’re some uber marksman, you’re not going to be threading needles when dumping mags.
When you slow things down, a single stage trigger is usually “accurate enough”. Most people use a single stage trigger their entire life and are just fine with it. There’s even a lot of rifles that ship with single stage triggers and people shoot just fine with them. A single stage trigger’s accuracy can be increased by lightening the trigger but the lighter the trigger, the more that whole “accidentally shooting the gun” issue comes into play.
But what if you want extreme accuracy without sacrificing safety?
With a 2-stage trigger, there is a bit of a lead up to the break point, then a hard break similar to a single stage. Think of trying to pop a balloon by squeezing it. It doesn’t just pop the moment you put a bit of pressure on it. You have to push and push then bam. Now imagine if there was a specific point where you stopped being able to squeeze at the same pressure right before the balloon would give in. Kind of like you’re squeezing and squeezing then “oh hey, it’s stopped” then you squeeze just a tiny bit more and then it goes. That’s a two stage trigger…or at least the best description of one I can come up with at the moment.
So why would that help accuracy? Have you ever tried driving a screw into a wall at a very precise spot? I’m a bit of a stickler for having picture hung in the dead center of where they need to be. If it’s off by even a bit, it will drive me insane. With every picture or decoration I put on the wall, I spend a good 10-15 minutes measuring and marking and calculating in order to precisely determine the point in which to place the screw. If you’ve ever tried to start a screw at a dot drawn on something, you know that it’s far better to drill a smaller starter hole before driving the screw in. That way there’s no chance of the jump sliding around on a smooth surface before getting a bite.
It’s the same way with the trigger. Being able to stage up and take the slack out up to the break let’s you work any play out of your finger due to muscle tension, the padding of the finger and such. It also lets you have, ultimately, a much lighter trigger pull to actually fire the gun which means there is much less chance of jerking the trigger or bouncing the gun.
When you’re taking 50-100 yards, it isn’t that big of a deal and, depending on your target size, you’re not going to see too much difference. As your target size shrinks or your distance increases, having a 2-stage trigger is going to give you a big advantage in your shots. Now, it’s not going to automatically make you a better shot just by dropping a new trigger group into your gun, but once you learn how to use it you will notice your accuracy go up for sure.
Pictured: Geissele 2 Stage (G2S) Trigger
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