Telesway
Member
Sorry to bring up an old discussion but one thing about it has been bugging me lately:
I understand that taking off the thumb safety is a simple, small motion, easy to do even under stress. What I don't know is this:
Since there are so many things that can go wrong in a fight, you would want there to be as few things that can go wrong as possible, right? So, is the better trigger pull of guns equipped with manual safeties worth having the one more thing that can go wrong?
By the way, those who claim an absolute never-ever-fail 100% success rate at releasing the manual safety under stress during either a real fight or a very realistically simulated one [meaning a force-on-force drill where your practice partner is going pretty much full force with his strikes/stabs with a practice knife/attempts to take you to the ground so that your other practice partner can kick your head in] are either lying, haven't done enough FoF training, or are just very, very, very good at fighting.
I mean, if person X has been in one fight and has successfully disengaged the thumb safety in that fight, his record is 100%, but that, of course, does not provide quite enough empirical data to warrant a claim of a perfect 100% success rate for everyone who practices a lot with their manual safety-equipped guns. Nor is a 100% success rate during range practice count since the level of stress is significantly lower when the shooter is not under the threat of physical pain/injury.
Now, if person X does force-on-force training, say, once a week for two years and trains hard, meaning they get hurt when they mess up (think hard UFC/MMA-style sparring with airsoft/paintball guns and practice knives *), i.e. gets their lights punched/stomped out if they fail to disengage the safety during such training and they still have a perfect 100% track record with their manual safeties, then there is enough empirical data to back the claim.
*An example of the training scenario: you are packing your airsoft 1911 cocked and locked and in a similar holster in which you carry it every day, wearing similar clothes you wear every day, you have two friends and all of you wear mouth pieces , groin cups, and protective glasses (like swimming goggles or airsoft masks) possibly some kind of helmets too, and the drill consists of you trying to evade the other two until they attack and when they do, they attack full force and then you try to draw your gun and shoot them. This is to simulate a real-life scenario where two thugs first engage you verbally, say, ask if you got a light, then start demanding money, then attack you, which means you can't draw and shoot when you first see them or even when they first approach you.
So my question remains: is the better trigger pull worth +1 to the list of things that can, in some situations, go wrong? I'm only asking this again because I think it's an important question and, because of my own inexperience, I cannot sufficiently answer it.
Presently I favor guns with no manual safeties since I only have the one gun that doesn't have one so it's all I've practiced with (and I do practice almost daily though FoF drills are rarer... much too rare, to tell you the truth) but I am thinking about getting a nice 1911 at some point and then face the decision of which one to carry and which one would become my main training piece (since I dislike the idea of training equally with 2 different platforms, one gun will become a range-only gun and the other one my CCW).
Any opinions/ideas are more than welcome.
-Chris
I understand that taking off the thumb safety is a simple, small motion, easy to do even under stress. What I don't know is this:
Since there are so many things that can go wrong in a fight, you would want there to be as few things that can go wrong as possible, right? So, is the better trigger pull of guns equipped with manual safeties worth having the one more thing that can go wrong?
By the way, those who claim an absolute never-ever-fail 100% success rate at releasing the manual safety under stress during either a real fight or a very realistically simulated one [meaning a force-on-force drill where your practice partner is going pretty much full force with his strikes/stabs with a practice knife/attempts to take you to the ground so that your other practice partner can kick your head in] are either lying, haven't done enough FoF training, or are just very, very, very good at fighting.
I mean, if person X has been in one fight and has successfully disengaged the thumb safety in that fight, his record is 100%, but that, of course, does not provide quite enough empirical data to warrant a claim of a perfect 100% success rate for everyone who practices a lot with their manual safety-equipped guns. Nor is a 100% success rate during range practice count since the level of stress is significantly lower when the shooter is not under the threat of physical pain/injury.
Now, if person X does force-on-force training, say, once a week for two years and trains hard, meaning they get hurt when they mess up (think hard UFC/MMA-style sparring with airsoft/paintball guns and practice knives *), i.e. gets their lights punched/stomped out if they fail to disengage the safety during such training and they still have a perfect 100% track record with their manual safeties, then there is enough empirical data to back the claim.
*An example of the training scenario: you are packing your airsoft 1911 cocked and locked and in a similar holster in which you carry it every day, wearing similar clothes you wear every day, you have two friends and all of you wear mouth pieces , groin cups, and protective glasses (like swimming goggles or airsoft masks) possibly some kind of helmets too, and the drill consists of you trying to evade the other two until they attack and when they do, they attack full force and then you try to draw your gun and shoot them. This is to simulate a real-life scenario where two thugs first engage you verbally, say, ask if you got a light, then start demanding money, then attack you, which means you can't draw and shoot when you first see them or even when they first approach you.
So my question remains: is the better trigger pull worth +1 to the list of things that can, in some situations, go wrong? I'm only asking this again because I think it's an important question and, because of my own inexperience, I cannot sufficiently answer it.
Presently I favor guns with no manual safeties since I only have the one gun that doesn't have one so it's all I've practiced with (and I do practice almost daily though FoF drills are rarer... much too rare, to tell you the truth) but I am thinking about getting a nice 1911 at some point and then face the decision of which one to carry and which one would become my main training piece (since I dislike the idea of training equally with 2 different platforms, one gun will become a range-only gun and the other one my CCW).
Any opinions/ideas are more than welcome.
-Chris