Initially offered in 9mm and .40 S&W, Springfield Armory's XD quickly gained a following for being the only striker-fired pistol with a grip safety. Unlike the significant minority of 1911 users who find that the grip safety doesn't always "un-safe" when gripped, I've never heard a single complaint about the XD grip safety. If you grab the XD, the grip safety is out of the way. But any pistol or pistol series that aspires to be a bigbore defensive handgun has to offer .45 ACP as an option. Doing so is not always easy. Designers often have the unenviable choice of slim grips and low capacity (single-stack magazines being "low" capacity in the 21st century) or offering increased magazine capacity at the cost of bulk.

Not shirtsleeve weather here! The Springfield XD didn't care about the cold; it kept on working regardless.

But Springfield's .45 XD grip is not much larger than that of a 1911. To make an eight-shot 1911 smaller than the XD you have to go to custom, slimline grips. For the normal, non-slimline grip size you get 13 rounds of 230-grain hardball medicine in your XD plus one in the launching tube. The second thing previously missing from many striker-fired pistols is one mentioned by police but greatly desired by the military: a thumb safety.

We all know that a striker-fired pistol is essentially a revolver fed via a box magazine. That they have internal safeties to prevent inadvertent firing. That a safety isn't needed. Still, the military is quite clear that there has to be some kind of safety. And a lot of shooters have a higher comfort level with a thumb safety. Then there's the "gun grab" factor. There are a number of police officers who have survived altercations because the bad guy could not figure out how to work the thumb safety after he grabbed the officer's sidearm.

SPECIFICATIONS
MAKER:	Springfield Armorywww.Springfield-Armory.com
ACTION:	Striker-fired DAO
CALIBER:	.45 ACP
CAPACITY:	13+1
BARREL LENGTH:	4.0 inches
OVERALL LENGTH:	7.3 inches
WEIGHT:	32 ounces
SIGHTS:	Fixed, three-dot
STOCKS:	Polymer
FINISH:	Melonite
PRICE:	$559

The new XD arrived without any prior announcement. Once I opened it, it took me only a moment to spot the safety lever. Obvious? No, but when you're used to looking at striker-fired pistols, it jumps right out at you. Bulky? Not in the least. I have problems with almost all ambidextrous safeties on 1911s. Typically, I find that the offside safety lever is too large and the knuckle of my trigger finger and the lever over there do not play well together. I've had 1911s with ambi safeties that I could not shoot without consciously shifting my grip. The ambi safety of the XD does not give me that problem in the slightest. I can feel the far side against my knuckle when the lever is pressed down, but it is not in the way at all.

If I were being the slightest bit grumpy I might complain that the lever is just a tad too short (but then, I have been accused of having orangutan thumbs). Unless your thumbs are even longer than mine, you'll find that the safety lever is very well located on the frame. Not slide-mounted, but located on the frame. While the thumb safety is ambidextrous, the Springfield engineers resisted the urge to make the new pistol with an ambi slide-stop lever. It is only on the left side. I've been doing my slide-lock reloads of late by grabbing the slide to close and not using the lever. Done that way, the lack of an ambi slide stop is not a problem.

Fieldstripping the XD is a stone-simple procedure. The four elements: slide, barrel, recoil spring/guide and polymer frame. The difference with the thumb-safety version? You've got to keep the levers down while putting the slide back on.

The safety clicks up with authority, and it does so regardless of the striker position. That's right--you can put the safety on after you dry-fire. When you push the safety lever up, you lock the slide closed, whether the striker is forward or back. You cannot engage the safety with the slide locked open. Some might wish to leave the slide unlocked with the safety on so you could load and unload with the safety lever up. I don't see it as a problem, as the other mechanical safeties are still in effect and you can load and unload safely with the thumb safety off.

However, I'll bet if a large police department takes a look at this model XD, someone in the department will come up with it as a bright idea. And I'll bet the Springfield engineers have thought of how to do it. With the dry-firing and handling out of the way, I quickly yanked off the slide to take a look. The safety works by blocking the trigger mechanism in the frame, leaving the rest of the safety parts to continue their work in the slide and on the striker without change. Again, from an engineering standpoint I have to admire that. They've added a desired safety part and function without changing the design or function of the existing safety mechanisms.