Safety or no safety?

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Trunk Monkey said:
That name seems very familiar, does he participate here?
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One of the few, authentic actual gun-guy authors out there, gave us Dirty White Boys, Hot Springs, Point of Impact (made into the movie Shooter), Game of Snipers, etc. Don't know if he's snooped around here, but wouldn't be surprised. The guy does impeccable research on his firearms history, the actual weapons, tactics, etc. One of his recurring characters in his novels, the ex-Gunny Bob Lee Swagger is a 1911 guy.
 
Bought a P365 with the safety myself for hot summer day carry, not a big fan of the 9mm and my preferred carry gun is a 1911, so sweeping the safety is a 45 year muscle memory thing. Don't really like striker fired guns period but the 365 with a safety is acceptable to me.
I like the 365 and would love to get an XL with the Romeo zero sight but they are not available with the safety yet.
 
D.B. Cooper said:
I dunno. I seem to a recall an advert of some sort, back in the late 80s/early 90s when police departments were switching to Glock, that talked about having thrown a Glock out of a helicopter from however many hundred feet and it didn't fire.
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There's a post over on Glock Talk called I Guess My Glock 21 Has Proved Its Worth. The poster decided to see if he could wear out a Glock 21. He froze it in Salt Water, he buried it in mud, he threw it out of an airplane, he filled the action with sand and gravel and shot it. He fired 200 thousand rounds through it before the barrel finally wore out. I don't think he ever cleaned it and I think the only maintainence he did was replacing springs.
 
Trunk Monkey said:
There's a post over on Glock Talk called I Guess My Glock 21 Has Proved Its Worth. The poster decided to see if he could wear out a Glock 21. He froze it in Salt Water, he buried it in mud, he threw it out of an airplane, he filled the action with sand and gravel and shot it. He fired 200 thousand rounds through it before the barrel finally wore out. I don't think he ever cleaned it and I think the only maintainence he did was replacing springs.
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Not sure how much of that I believe, but, as I don't own one, it doesn't hurt me to believe it. When would anyone have time to fire 200k rounds?
 
First I have to say you should always carry a round in the chamber.

I started out carrying TDA guns and I was satisfied with them, until I accidentally engaged the safety on one while clearing a malfunction during a class.

That incident occurred right before I decided to sell all my guns and start over. So after some consideration I decided that was never going to carry a gun with a manual safety again and I haven't.

I've been carrying exclusively SFA pistols since 2013 by now I'm used to it.

I'm a firm believer in not carrying multiple types of pistol. I don't switch between guns with a safety and those without.
 
Trunk Monkey said:
First I have to say you should always carry a round in the chamber.
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Yeah, I always do. I am torn on the safety though. I do carry my FN without the safety, but I carry a g3c with it. Maybe subconsciously I don't trust the manufacturer. I do trust Sig. Ultimately, I am the safety. But, I do have airbags in my car.
 
I won’t carry anything which includes a manual safety. I want as few dexterous manipulations as possible between “oh sch!tt” and “bang.”
 
Phillip Farney said:
Ultimately, I am the safety. But, I do have airbags in my car.
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The irony is rich here.

Repeatedly, over 20yrs of rebutting this particular argument, statistical data supports that airbags increase severity of injury for low speed wrecks and do not decrease rate of injury or fatality in high speed wrecks. But people sure seem to feel safer knowing their cars are equipped with airbags. This is a common instruction point during risk management and safety training courses - instructors advise students to avoid solutions which SEEM to improve safety without actually doing so, or especially those which actually increase risk or severity of consequence. (The punchline - seatbelts save lives, demonstrably. They can even save your life from your airbag).

While I don’t expect the same negative statistical reality exists in which manual safety firearms increase risk or severity, but assuredly, I’ve never been able to find, despite searching, data which supports a manual safety does anything to improve safety of a firearm.
 
Varminterror said:
While I don’t expect the same negative statistical reality exists in which manual safety firearms increase risk or severity, but assuredly, I’ve never been able to find, despite searching, data which supports a manual safety does anything to improve safety of a firearm.
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I would generally agree with you, although I think that manual safeties can increase the danger for new/untrained/poorly trained shooters. I doubt that any real data exists that differentiates between different handgun action types. It's kind of difficult to find any data like that differentiating semi auto's from revolvers, let alone different types of semi autos. Honestly, I doubt that knowledge about the terminology for specific types of firearms and actions is common enough amongst those who would be collecting such data for them to provide consistently reliable data.
 
I read some article that poo-poo'ed the idea of manual safeties, and in it the author stated that a manual safety can give a person a false sense of safety that leads to complacency and carelessness, thus becoming less safe. There may be some truth to that for some people, but that's my point. It all depends on the person. If you don't feel safe carrying a particular firearm, you may be less likely to carry at all. On the flip side, if you're not willing to train with whatever you do carry, you'll be less effective with it. A person needs to find a gun they're confident in, train for proficiency, and carry on.
 
You know, it really doesn’t bother me either way. If the gun has a safety I use it but most of the guns I carry have no manual safety and it doesn’t bother me in the least. I guess preference would be to have a grip safety but I currently don’t own a pistol with a grip safety, though I have in the past. Obviously it doesn’t matter much to me.

Now keeping the trigger covered, that’s a really, really big deal to me.
I guess one could say the safety to me is making sure the trigger doesn’t get pulled.
 
Varminterror said:
...I’ve never been able to find, despite searching, data which supports a manual safety does anything to improve safety of a firearm.
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Not to argue for manual safeties (or against)- I have read accounts of officers lives being saved when a badguy had wrestled away the officers handgun, turned it on the officer and couldn't fire it because the badguy couldn't figure out the manual safety. A rare occurrence to be sure.
 
HPCadm17 said:
I read some article that poo-poo'ed the idea of manual safeties, and in it the author stated that a manual safety can give a person a false sense of safety that leads to complacency and carelessness, thus becoming less safe. There may be some truth to that for some people, but that's my point. It all depends on the person. If you don't feel safe carrying a particular firearm, you may be less likely to carry at all. On the flip side, if you're not willing to train with whatever you do carry, you'll be less effective with it. A person needs to find a gun they're confident in, train for proficiency, and carry on.
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That sounds like the author really reaching to support a point. As you point out, it's a mindset and training issue. Anyone who says "Don't worry, the safety's on" needs to have his attitude adjusted.
 
DeepSouth said:
...preference would be to have a grip safety...
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The trigger safety is the grip safety moved to a better location. A grip safety is deactivate when the pistol is gripped. The trigger safety isn't deactivated until the finger is on the trigger.

Now keeping the trigger covered, that’s a really, really big deal to me.
I guess one could say the safety to me is making sure the trigger doesn’t get pulled.
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Very important points!
 
Varminterror said:
While I don’t expect the same negative statistical reality exists in which manual safety firearms increase risk or severity, but assuredly, I’ve never been able to find, despite searching, data which supports a manual safety does anything to improve safety of a firearm.
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Mas Ayoob did quite a bit of research back in the day that strongly indicated manual safeties on law enforcement pistols could be credited with saving officers' lives -- when the bad guy was attempting to, or had, taken control of officers' pistols.

There was also quite a bit of research (and I believe Ayoob participated in that as well) a while back which could find zero evidence that a law-abiding citizen OR law enforcement officer had ever been killed due to the extra step of having to ready a pistol with a manual safety for firing.

For years, the 1911 reigned supreme in competition, despite the requirements that the safety be used in most strings of fire. 1911 shooters did not face a time handicap having to off-safe their pistols. (Now, I wouldn't bet on slide-mounted pistols such as the Beretta or 3rd generation Smiths not causing a split-second delay in readiness, and we already know that type of safety requires a slightly higher learning curve as far as training.)
 
@Old Dog - The claim no officer has been killed because of the extra step in manipulating a manual safety is not evidence a manual safety makes a pistol safer, and is only supporting carrying a manual safety is not more deadly for the carrier. It’s a completely different hypothesis.

When a person believes a manual safety makes their pistol safer, or makes them safer while carrying it, they’re buying into a lie. A commonly accepted lie, but a lie nonetheless.

Equally - claiming the 1911 dominated competition is also not evidence of increased safety, nor is it evidence a manual safety is a superior design for speed or accuracy. It IS evidence a single action trigger can have a significant speed and accuracy advantage, a design which we all agree inherently requires a manual safety. Feature A helps you get to the objective B, and C is an associated feature with A. A begets B, and C is inherently there, but C does not beget B. It’s a logical fallacy to tout this as evidence. Again, you’re not actually addressing the hypothesis in question - a manual safety doesn’t actually increase safety.
 
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Varminterror said:
When a person believes a manual safety makes their pistol safer, or makes them safer while carrying it, they’re buying into a lie. A commonly accepted lie, but a lie nonetheless.
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Wow, just wow. Kindly provide some documentation as to how you believe this to be a lie.

This is a serious issue in the firearms community. So many commonly repeated, seemingly pithy statements presented as gospel, some many cliches we accept as truth. "My safety is up here," etc.

What type of handgun would you rather have someone who's never ever handled a real pistol in their life (say, a visitor's toddler wandering into your unlocked bedroom or a nosy guest) picking up the loaded, road-chambered Glock in your nightstand? What exactly is your definition of "safer" anyway? All firearms are by their very nature unsafe, potentially deadly.

Varminterror said:
nor is it evidence a manual safety is a superior design for speed or accuracy. I
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Never said it was. Yet you quoted my post.

I don't particularly care what others think, anyway. I don't have a dog in the fight. I carry a striker-fired pistol with no safety at work, and a hammer-fired pistol with no safety (sometimes a striker-fired) when not at work (though I do occasionally carry a cocked and locked 1911 when the whim strikes me).
 
MistWolf said:
Not to argue for manual safeties (or against)- I have read accounts of officers lives being saved when a badguy had wrestled away the officers handgun, turned it on the officer and couldn't fire it because the badguy couldn't figure out the manual safety. A rare occurrence to be sure.
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This is often touted as evidence in this discussion, but as above, it’s not evidence which is unilaterally applicable for the hypothesis.

On one hand, the officer had a statistically real opportunity with a manual safety model that the criminal might not be sufficiently familiar to operate the firearm. That’s why we have multi-level retention holsters as well. So there’s a logical hypothesis supportable by statistics (at the level of anomalous statistical noise) that an officer who has his weapon taken from him is less likely to have it used against him...

BUT...

The same statistic is evidence that insufficiently trained and practiced persons have a higher statistical chance of mis-operating the firearm when a manual safety is present. In this case, the user is more likely to have a failure, and remain at risk from the results they failed to prevent thereafter.

Proportionally, the importance of this evidence falls against manual safeties. The officer is only safer because the manual safety is easier to mis-operate. Since a person is overwhelmingly more likely to use their own firearm than have it used against them, they are proportionately more likely to mis-operate their own firearm than have an instance where they are saved by the fact someone else mis-operated it against them.

I’ve been looking for years, and as I said above, there’s no evidence out there which really proves a person is safer for carrying a manual safety model over a passive safety model.
 
Varminterror said:
Equally - claiming the 1911 dominated competition is also not evidence of increased safety, nor is it evidence a manual safety is a superior design for speed or accuracy.
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It does indicate the manual safety isn't slowing down those competitors that are using it.

Folks, choose what you like, but I'm always fascinated by those that are so well trained that they'll never accidentally shoot something they don't want to shoot with a gun with a short, light, trigger, without a manual safety, but are simultaneously so poorly trained that they can't operate a manual safety.
 
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