Quote Originally Posted by draitzer View Post
The talk about a safety being required in the US has always bothered me. Was it a proposed regulation ultimately abandoned, or in reality a legal liability concern in our litigious land? How about all the Diana, Webley, HW, Slavia, and other spring pistols with no 'safety' provision that were sold?

Don R.
I’m pretty sure it was fear of product liability. As you say, lots of other air guns continued to be imported and even made in the US without safeties after the H-S pistol was discontinued in 1968. Indeed, the Hy-Score brand was used in the 70s to market German Diana 23/25/27 rifles, none of which had a safety.

Maybe (pure speculation) the no safety catch issue was a “cover story”. Perhaps by 1968 they just weren’t selling many pistols and wanted to cut their losses? They did keep all the factory tooling, after all, finally selling it to Marriott-Smith in the late 80s. And would it actually have been that hard to modify the design to include some kind of safety catch?