Originally Posted by
Cecil Burch
So there are a couple of items to think about on this.
First, as a caveat, I have not seen a ton of safeties on guns in my classes or in any where I have AI-ed for Craig or Paul. The reason is really simple - all of Craig's Sims guns are Glocks, and almost all of my UTM guns are Glocks as well. I have a single M&P, but it does not have a thumb safety. I have one student who has trained with me and Craig multiple times who has his own Beretta 92 UTM pistol, but it is set up as a "G" model. So take some of what I am about to say as educated extrapolation, NOT as a definitive.
While I have not seen much safety use, I have seen a lot of other emergency manipulations that are outside the basic "draw gun, aim, shoot" cycle. What you tend to find is the ones who don't have a grappling background and are looking to the tool to solve the problem, will eff up over and over again. The most usual is the timing issue of getting a gun out at the wrong time. The other culprit is the student desperately trying to get the gun out when they are in an inferior position. Not only are you extremely likely to end up having your gun taken away and used against you, you will be unlikely to do any work needed to the gun outside of "draw, point, fire". That may be disengaging a safety, but it will also include having the slide movement fouled, dropping a magazine (by hitting the release), or dealing with any other malfunction. Tool fixation as the magic woobie will be a failure 95% of the time.
What always works is rather than focusing on the tool, we focus on dominant positional control. If we attain a superior position and maintain it, and maintain control over what the opponent can do, THEN whatever we choose to do as the appropriate finish is easy and highly likely to work. I have seen on many, many occasions, students in an evo where they have gotten to dominant positional control long enough, and they can manipulate the gun to their heart's content. I have seen people change magazines, clear complex malfunctions, switch hands, etc. without any issue because of superior position, not whether the tool was set up a certain way. I did a car evo one time where I ended up shuttlecocking (driving his head down into the floorboard) of my partner, drawing my sims gun that choked immediately, and then I tried racking it a few times on the open window edge, and when that failed tossed my gun out the window, reached around the front of the other guy, took his weapon, and when it jammed on the first round (I know - the universe was not smiling on me that day), I transitioned to hitting him on top of the FIST helmet with his gun. I would posit that if either pistol had any kind of safety, I probably would have been able to easily swipe it off. Not because I am a shooting wizard or the second coming of Jim Cirillo, but because I had dominant positional control and that wins in the entanglement.
One last thing to add is this. Both Paul and Craig have carried 1911s (Paul has also run a 2011 I believe) and I am pretty sure they would do so again. That may be a good clue on what they think about the possible problem of a manually operated safety.