On the Enfield rifle, the magazine release is inside the trigger guard. Couldn’t that potentially lead to a lot of accidental discharges? I mean, sure, ideally you’d only be releasing the magazine when the chamber is empty, but it seems like it would be easy for someone in the middle of battle, for any number of reasons including fatigue, carelessness or lack of training, to mistakenly try to eject the magazine with a round in the chamber and have his fingers slip, discharging the rifle by accident? Did this happen frequently?
The magazine wasn’t commonly removed from the rifle. Soldiers didn’t carry extra magazines; they carried stripper clips. In practice, it was pretty much exactly like how your SKS was used.
Ah, I see. Thanks.
It’s really hard to get the magazine out of a Lee-Enfield, too. It’s only supposed to be removed during cleaning.
I can tell you from experience that the way the magazine release works, it’s almost impossible to disengage the under normal- use your fingers are nowhere near it, for a start, and it requires a fair amount of upward pressure on the magazine release to disengage the magazine from the rifle.
In short, there’s no reason to be removing the magazine in combat, and guns aren’t loaded when they’re being cleaned, so accidentally firing the rifle when trying to get the magazine out just isn’t likely to be an issue.