I'm curious about something: why would you want to "deactivate" the lock? As long as you do not insert the special key and lock the action, it does nothing to interfere with the operation of the weapon. It cannot accidentally lock itself, so why bother with it? Serious question. I don't understand. I have one and have never activated the lock and have no desire to do so. I don't know how many .44 Mag, .44 Spl, and .44 Russian rounds I have fired through it, but I would say that 3,500 - 4,000 or so would be about right with no issues whatsoever with the lock. I just ignore it. Do you know of any documented cases of them self-locking?
Back when this was a common topic for discussion at gun forums, there were many documented cases going around about heavy kicking, lighter than average, guns with this feature locking up under recoil. Since most have seemed to agree, since that time, that the thing to do is deactivate the lock upon purchase, discussion of the topic has died down a great deal, and I'm not sure any longer where to find such documentation (its not having been a hot topic in quite a few years). But this was once considered, within the gun community, a resolved matter in favor of deactivation, particularly with lighter than standard guns firing heavy kicking rounds. I'm unaware of any fixes made by S&W to this issue, in-house.
