Does a Light Trigger Increase Accuracy: Research and Analysis

Most shooters take it as gospel that light triggers increase accuracy. You can ask the newest shooter, to the oldest Denim Dan at the gun store, and you will get universal agreement that lighter triggers are better. And yet, where is the data to prove this? Trick question. There hasn’t been any data to examine this scientifically, until now. In this article, we will review some initial findings, to see what affect light weight triggers have on accuracy. We will also discuss what this means for self defense, and duty minded shooters. Keep reading for more.

Readers of this website know that I like to form my opinions on data, and I reserve the right to update or change my opinion if new data comes out. This particular topic intrigued me. I assumed there would be some fairly straightforward data on the benefit of lighter triggers. After some digging through my favorite research archives I found a lot of info, with almost none of it pertaining to this specific topic.

Personally, I prefer lighter triggers, both on my duty guns, and on my personal guns. You’d be hard pressed to find someone who’s like, “give me a real heavy trigger, with a lot of grit in it.” However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that lighter triggers make a difference. There are plenty of “intuitive” ideas that aren’t actually true. It might make sense that doing sit ups would help you get abs, but it doesn’t actually work that way, for example.

This lead me down the research rabbit hole. Interestingly enough, one of my favorite groups, Mountain Tactical Institute, just released their preliminary findings on the affect that a light trigger pull has on accuracy. I highly recommend giving their website a read, as they cover a lot of fitness and tactical topics that are quite interesting. Before we get to the results, we need to discuss how they set up their experiment so we can judge for ourselves if their data is even valid.

Research Design: Does a Light Trigger Pull Increase Accuracy?

Mountain Tactical Institute used 10 Swat Officers from the Fresno, California SWAT Team. These officers are part time SWAT officers. They have an average of 15 years as police officers, and around 7 years of tactical experience on their SWAT Team.

The 10 officers were separated into two groups of 5, the experiment, and control groups. These officers were then required to complete twenty trials, shooting at targets ranging from 15 – 100 yards. These officers were shooting at two targets separated by 3 feet. They were also required to shoot at them from stress conditions on some trials, where they would do a quick shuttle sprint, and then engage the targets.

The control group engaged the targets with normal AR15 style rifles, with stock triggers. These stock triggers averaged around 7 pounds in weight. The control group then replaced their triggers with Hiperfire EDT (affiliate link) lightweight triggers. The Hiperfire trigger averaged 5.05 pounds in weight.

The officers were given a few trial runs to get used to the new triggers, and then both groups finished running a few more trials. They did a good job running the control group through these final trials as well, because as we all know, with more practice you’re likely to improve your shooting.

Based on MTI’s research design, everything was held constant but the trigger swap. Theoretically, this means that any change in accuracy should be the result of the Hiperfire trigger. Now, let’s see those results!

Does a Lighter Trigger Pull Increase Accuracy: Results

The short answer is yes it did. Overall, the group that shot the Hiperfire triggers in the last set of trials improved their accuracy by 7%. The control group improved their accuracy by 4%. This means that we can expect that across a wide range of CQB distances, a light trigger accounts for around a 3% difference.

As you might expect, targets shot at further distances showed an increase in accuracy for the Hiperfire, lightweight trigger. If we only consider the targets at 50 and 100 yards, the lightweight trigger group increased their accuracy by 15%, where as the control group increased their accuracy by 8%. This indicates that, at these intermediate distances, you could expect a 7% increase in accuracy from a lighter trigger. Now that we’ve got some results, let’s discuss this data to see what logical conclusions we can draw from it.

Does a Lighter Trigger Increase Accuracy: Discussion

I want to highlight a few things before I get some statistics nerds yelling at me in the comments section. First, these are the preliminary findings, and as such, MTI is going to release more detailed info in the coming weeks.

Secondly, there’s an issue of statistical power. With only 10 shooters running the number of tests that they ran, there is a chance that these results were partially due to chance. MTI is not a research institute, and they run what you and I would consider informal experiments, that are designed to create discussion on training. These experiments aren’t something you’ll see at Harvard or MIT. This doesn’t mean their data is invalid, it simply means that we need to take it with a grain of salt.

These statistics make sense to me. In my experience, a nice trigger can make a difference, but it won’t turn you into a world class shooter. There is solid research that shows that expert shooters actually have much different brain activity as they manipulate their triggers, compared to novice shooters. Skill and experience matter!

I know some of you are thinking that as cool as this experiment is, this may not be applicable to the real world. Sure competition guns can have hair triggers, but it may not be a good idea for duty guns right?

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Do We Need Light Triggers on Duty Guns?

I’m going to preface this section by saying this is my unscientific opinion. I don’t see a down side to duty firearms having lighter triggers, provided they are as reliable as stock triggers. However, I don’t think that extremely lightweight triggers would be beneficial, and in fact they may be a detriment.

Having shot in a fair amount of shooting matches, I can tell you that very light weight triggers tend to be more unreliable. They also are me more likely to be activated in stressful situations that would not be encountered in a competition match. Think of things like someone grabbing your gun as you enter a room, or a breaching charge going off, and a piece of dirt or debris striking your firearm.

Again, I have no data for this as no experiments could be done to test these theories. In my experience most high end duty guns, usually end up with triggers no lighter than 4 pounds, and many are closer to the 5-6 pound range. This seems reasonable to me.

My CZ Shadow 2, has around a 3 pound single action trigger, and a roughly 6 pound double action trigger. Crucially, both of those trigger pulls are very smooth, and they are easy to manipulate. I would prefer a smooth heavy trigger to a light unpredictable, or gritty trigger.

Final Thoughts on Light Weight Triggers and Accuracy

I am excited to see the rest of the data. I’d like to see what happens when we compare stress shooting, and non stress shooting as well. I would also be excited to see different trigger weights, both on pistols, and rifles. Based on this preliminary data I think that the longer range you plan on shooting, the more it makes sense to use a lighter trigger.

We tend to see this on sniper rifles which always have lighter triggers than carbines. While this is anecdotal, I think it has been the case for a reason. I plan on writing more on this topic as the full results are published so stick around, and sign up for our email list!

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