The poster starts this post by typing “are safeties in striker fired pistols heresy?” I hear this all the time. On virtually every YouTube video with a striker fired pistol with a safety, the reviewer says that. Hickok45, hrfunk, MAC, and others, they’ve all said it. Why does the type of pistol matter? Why is it somehow ok on a hammer fired pistol, which has a longer, heavier, and less likely to have an ND trigger? I go the other way, I can comfortably carry a DAO pistol with no safety, or a TDA gun with safety off, but on a striker, I insist on them. Paul Harrell reviewed the Sig 365. He said the trigger is so light that he wouldn’t carry it without a safety. And this guy is no amateur
Why? 5 pound trigger instead of a 10 pound trigger. No hammer to thumb as I holster, which is where the majority of ND’s happen.
The argument is always the same stupid mall ninja nonsense. “A safety will get you killed”. “My safety is between my ears”. “Keep your booger finger off the bang switch”. “Train to always keep your trigger finger off the trigger”. If you can train to keep your trigger finger off the trigger, as you should, why can’t you train to automatically disengage the safety? If you’re so supremely confident that your finger will NEVER touch that trigger because you’ve trained for that, why would you be worried about forgetting to disengage the safety? The stress of the life or death moment could make you forget? That same stress that could screw up touching the trigger before you meant to?
When the LASD went from the Beretta 92 to the M&P, they experienced a 500% increase in ND’s. They had always been taught to keep their finger off the trigger with the Beretta, just as they had been taught to on the M&P, so it’s not like cops only started putting their fingers on the trigger when they got the M&P, so how did this 500% increase happen? The report that was issued stated more training is necessary with the striker fired pistol. Assuming that’s gonna happen, and it won’t, not by any real means, how much more is needed? Should they go from 20 hours to 40? What is that gonna do? How much training do 99% of gun owners get? Certainly WAY less than what cops get. At the very least, it is obvious that striker fired guns are less forgiving of human error, and more training is needed to safely use them, so why wouldn’t it be more prudent to have a safety? Oh, that’s right. Safeties will get me killed and my safety is between my ears. All I have to do is keep my booger hook off the bang switch and I’ll be fine. Got it.
https://ktla.com/news/local-news/ne...with-increase-in-accidental-shootings-report/
Holster is your safety? Ok. They work pretty well. I say pretty well because there are many trash holsters out there. I saw a guy walking around with an M&P Shield in a nylon holster flopping around on his belt. And even if it’s a great holster, you still gotta get it in and out of it, and that is where a lot of the ND’s happen.
Are striker fired weapons easier to shoot more accurately? I would say so. Light trigger pulls will do that. I took my S&W M&P 45 and my S&W 4566 to the range a few weeks ago. I gotta say my groups are tighter with the M&P than my shots fired in DA on the 4566, but it’s not like I miss the target. If it was a person instead of paper it would be just as dead. But the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.
This aversion to safeties is a pretty recent development. And it’s usually repeated as nauseum by guys who started shooting after Glocks came along, because they’ve been brought up to believe they’re the only way to go. Before Glock graced the world with his product, millions of people carried weapons with safeties. Somehow, they managed to survive to tell their tales.
“A former Los Angeles Police Department officer who was paralyzed when his 3-year-old son shot him with a Glock has sued the gun manufacturer and others, alleging that the light trigger pull and lack of a safety mechanism contributed to the accident”
A trigger that a 3 year old can pull is nice for gun games but not so nice to carry around. Yeah, the kid should never have been able to get his hands on it, but the owner made a mistake. Who here hasn’t made a mistake? It might have been a one time 2 second mistake, but it happened and the consequences are permanent.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/idaho-woman-accidentally-shot-and-killed-by-2-year-old-in-walmart
I remember this one. The article I read had a picture of the weapon. A S&W Shield. Don’t recall if it was the safety or non safety model, but I can guarantee if it had the safety, it wasn’t on, because I don’t believe a 2 year old figured out how to flick the safety off on that pistol. Either way, a 2 year old was able to pull that 5.5 pound trigger. And who knows if the gun had one of those popular 3 pound aftermarket triggers installed? Gotta take the grittiness and mushiness out of that 5.5 pound trigger, right?