Good stuff. Thanks.
One reason I wanted a downward sweep is that it's faster and easier for me. However, from the point of view of foiling a bad guy with a safety he can't easily or quickly work, the up-sweep or forward sweep is counter-intuitive and might be better in that way.
I do like Bersas and CZs, but am open to others as well. On my Firestorm (Bersa) .32 and I have become fairly adept at the upsweep with practice. That practice took me a week to get good at. A bad guy would indeed be more likely delayed by a forward or upsweep safety.
Thanks
One reason I wanted a downward sweep is that it's faster and easier for me. However, from the point of view of foiling a bad guy with a safety he can't easily or quickly work, the up-sweep or forward sweep is counter-intuitive and might be better in that way.
I do like Bersas and CZs, but am open to others as well. On my Firestorm (Bersa) .32 and I have become fairly adept at the upsweep with practice. That practice took me a week to get good at. A bad guy would indeed be more likely delayed by a forward or upsweep safety.
Thanks
benEzra said:Massad Ayoob has discussed this at some length, but mostly in the context of police carry (open carry, lots of interaction with questionable individuals at close range). He was not talking about having a gun taken out of the officer's hands, but rather situations in which the bad guy gets the gun out of the officer's holster. About 20% of police officers are killed this way, and there have been a number of situations in which a criminal took the officer's gun but couldn't figure out how to get it off-safe, allowing the officer time to draw a backup gun.
I'm not sure how applicable that would be to civilian concealed carry, though it could be a consideration for open carry.
I do like having a safety on a gun for use when handling the gun (loading, unloading, holstering, storing). I have an S&W 3913LS with a manual safety/decocker, but it's usually off-safe when in the holster. Note that some guns with manual safeties (PPK clones, etc.) are NOT designed to be carried with the safety off and should be on safe when carrying.
I know you had mentioned that you'd like a safety/decocker that sweeps down to fire, but the S&W style safety/decocker (slide mounted, sweep forward with your thumb to fire) is IMHO just as fast with practice, and would open up your range of possible pistols quite a bit. There aren't many guns at all with sweep-down decockers, and some of those don't have particularly good reputations for ease of action under stress.