Thumb safety pros/cons (side conversation moved from 320 lawsuit thread)

[HCM]

Unless I'm reading your post wrong I think your confusing the M9/92F with the 92G.

Back when I used the 92F I found it nearly impossible NOT to put the gun on safe every time I racked the slide. With the lever down the trigger is deactivated until it is manually swept up again.

A better approach is possibly what Taurus did with their 92 by making the frame-mounted thumb safety also a hammer drop. But then a thumb-on-safety 1911 grip could result in dropping the hammer in recoil. The USP has the same problem depending on variant.

Sent from my SM-G970U using Tapatalk

No, I’m not referring to the 92G.

I agreed with you putting the gun on safe can be an issue with the 92F when manipulating the slide though there is a gun specs training fix for this (curling fingers under the levers when manipulating the slide).

Re- the 92F safety I think you are mid understanding what I am talking about. Rather than explain it again this video illustrates the proper (1911 style) manipulation of the 92F/M9 safety.

[call_me_ski]

That is how I manipulate the 92FS safety. I guess I didn’t realize that so many people struggle with it. I always found it very intuitive. While I was in the Marine Corps I only noticed one problem with the safety and it was a Marine that didn’t realize the gun was on safe despite pulling the trigger 3 times(on safe the trigger feels completely different on a 92) and rolling the gun over to look at it to diagnose the problem. Range staff stepped in to help him out. What can I say, he was a machine gunner.

[HCM]

I strongly agree with Tokarev and RevolverRob.

The Beretta safety, and pretty much any slide mounted safety, is not desirable. If how your hand is built allows you to swipe it off with your thumb, good for you. That's not everyone. I can not swipe off a Beretta or S&W 3rd gen safety with my shooting hand thumb. No amount of statements on the internet about training will change that. I'm not an anatomical expert, but however my thumbs are built simply doesn't allow it. It's a stretch, at best, and certainly not reliable nor an intuitive motion. Thus, I needed to use my support hand thumb to disengage it. This may come as a surprise, but that was a practice taught in the USMC because of the wide range of shooters going through the programs and the inability of people to reliably manipulate the safety. Having been through the USMCs pistol training, as well as law enforcement and commercial market training, I have a hard time agreeing with the statement that the pistol training was "Criminally negligent". The quality was absolutely better than FLETCs program, as a point of comparison.

Taking the attitude that you can just swipe it off when establishing a grip only addresses a portion of the problem....what about when the gun is out of the holster, but you don't yet have a PID'd threat that you're actually drawing down on? That can cover a pretty significant amount of pistol use, especially among the people who carry 92FS pistols the most (military PMO and civilian LE). If the answer is, "Well just swipe the safety off when drawing it, even if you don't have an immediate PID'd threat you're drawing down on", then what is the point of the safety?

That whole idea is an admission that the safety is unergonomic, anyways. A safety should be easily manipulated by the broad range of shooters using it, and in such proscribed ready/carry positions that the pistol is reasonably used. 1911, M&P, yes.....Beretta, 3rd Gen S&W, not so much. Going back to what @RevolverRob insinuated, if the safety wasn't garbage then the G model wouldn't be as popular. Maybe your thumbs allow easy manipulation, but that doesn't mean everyone on the market has your thumbs, and the market trend is pretty clear evidence that the safety is suboptimal.

The G model is popular because the market trend is “point and shoot” pistols are popular. Pistols niche is as a reactive weapon. As such I agree a 92G would have made a better M9 than the 92F. .MIL pistols only have safeties because all other .MIL systems have them.

However if you must have a safety the 92F safety is not the bogey man it’s made out to be. I’ve taught people who wear size Sm and Size Med gloves to work the safety on 92Fs this way. The grip size / LOP has been a more significant issue.

[SoCalDep]

So I'm late to the party, but I'll throw in my opinion. First... No one is wrong. We all have preferences and what saves a life in one situation can doom it in another, so I won't be saying one "has" to do it in any particular way.

I carried a Beretta 92FS with the safety engaged through a big portion of my career. When my Department began issuing the Beretta 92F series it was mandatory to carry the pistol with the safety "on" in the holster. In fact, for any handgun equipped with a safety, policy continues to be that it be carried with the safety on. I agree with this.

I know a lot of deputies who carried safety-off. I never did. I never had an issue including some pretty reactive draws. That said, I know of numerous shootings where someone racked multiple live rounds because the safety was on and they didn't expect it to be. How no one died and there was always other personnel there to do the work I don't know. To me, that's a training issue, but training issues are real.

That said, I think the Beretta gets a bad rap. 1911 fans were pissed that a pizza gun with a "bullette" (Thanks Jason Burton!) was adopted and everything that could get trashed did get trashed. Some of it was justified. Some of it wasn't. If manipulated correctly, the safety is very easy to disengage. I've only taught five to ten thousand people on Berettas, but lots of them are very small. Many of them have and had injuries, and most of them are extremely apathetic towards anything involving firearms. All could do it. Many simply don't.

This leads me to my main point... when we start looking at guns "for the masses", we have to accept the fact that there are the few who are horrible... the few who are great... and the large majority who are in the middle. The horrible will ruin things for everyone, so we have to deal with that. As Ernest Langdon once said to me "If you gave them a pencil they'd poke their own eye out"... or something like that. He also said of the great ones that if you gave them a S&W Model 10 they'd rock it. Everyone else is in a spectrum of performance that is not what we'd call ideal but we still have to prepare them as best as we can (in training and equipment) to face bad things. That means that we need to train them adequately for their equipment and hold them accountable to maintain a level of skill that is appropriate for their training.

The Beretta safety isn't "bad" if one trains and understands how to use it. Someone got a FAST coin running an on-safe Beretta. I know a lot of people who won fights with Berettas carried on-safe.

Alas, I know of people who maybe would have died if the guy next to them (with a striker-fired gun) wasn't there to address the threat because they could not. At this point, all of my Berettas have been converted to the "G" system. That's not because I don't like or can't use the safety. It's because at this point most of my shooting is with striker fired guns and the more Beretta "G" guns I got the more I got used to not manipulating the safety. Since I wasn't training for it, I became less proficient at it.

People have been shot with their own guns without safeties. People have not been able to shoot their own guns with safeties. It's all a failure to properly train/practice/skill build or... sometimes luck sucks.

All that said... I will end by saying this. I find it hilarious and disappointing how many people will trash a Beretta safety and demand a Safariland SLS/ALS holster.

[jnc36rcpd]

I pulled my 5906 out of the safe just now. If I understand correctly, the point is that sweeping down on the safety of the on-safe pistol will off-safe it? It did not just now with an unloaded pistol. Am I missing something in the video? The presenter maintains such a movement will work with both the Beretta and the S&W. Am I missing something?

[Duelist]

I pulled my 5906 out of the safe just now. If I understand correctly, the point is that sweeping down on the safety of the on-safe pistol will off-safe it? It did not just now with an unloaded pistol. Am I missing something in the video? The presenter maintains such a movement will work with both the Beretta and the S&W. Am I missing something?

The Beretta safety works beautifully with that technique. The S&W takes a bit, or a lot, more effort to make it work.

I love my Beretta and 3rd gen Smiths. I’m carrying glocks and DA revolvers.

[jnc36rcpd]

Agreed on the on the love for Third Generation S&W and on the Beretta. I also carry a Glock, but I am nostalgic for the 1990's.

I will play with the off-safety technique. Does it only work with a loaded pistol?

[HCM]

I pulled my 5906 out of the safe just now. If I understand correctly, the point is that sweeping down on the safety of the on-safe pistol will off-safe it? It did not just now with an unloaded pistol. Am I missing something in the video? The presenter maintains such a movement will work with both the Beretta and the S&W. Am I missing something?

Yes.

The beretta safety is spring loaded so if you get it started it will finish popping up on its own.

The S&W safety is not so you must move it through the full arc.

[Bucky]

There is nothing wrong with the beretta safety if you use the proper technique- wiping down with the thumb while acquiring the grip. Thr beretta safety is spring loaded so you don’t need to push it all the way up.

Medium size hands here. The beretta safety is plenty easy to swipe off while acquiring a grip. Never understood the criticism.

Add me to the list of people who cannot swipe off the safety of a Beretta without awkwardly contorting my grip.

I've never intentionally carried a Beretta 92 or 3rd Gen Smith with the safety set once in my life. But one time I FOUND the safety had become activated on my 3913 at some point during the day. That was the last time that gun was carried. I never trained with it that way, I probably would have lost that gunfight.
.

One of my favorite carry guns when I first got my CCW permit was a 92 Compact. It had a sweet trigger and Trijicon night sights (with the fixed front). I found on a couple of occasions the safety was on. Didn’t think much of it. Then I lost a state IDPA championship when my 96F was on safe (partially due to a distraction by an unreasonable SO - MD sided in my favor). It cost me 3 seconds to figure out why my trigger was dead (lost high SSP by a second). That 3 seconds felt like 20.

After that incident, I picked up a Cougar L and sold the 92 Compact. It would be many years before Beretta would offer the G conversions. I don’t think anyone was doing the true G slide conversions at the time, or at least I didn’t know about it.

Fast forward to today, and my main carries are a Wilson / Beretta 92 G Compact or EDC X9. See, I don’t have problems with safeties, but the 92 slide mounted safety is a no go for me.

[Evil_Ed]

The Beretta safety is easy to swipe off. That's why 98% of serious Beretta 92 and PX4 shooters convert their guns to "G" decock only models, right?

I can't speak for others, but I converted mine to "G" models not because getting the safety off is an issue, but inadvertently putting the safety on IS an issue. It's very easy to sweep the safety off with your thumb when drawing but if you don't know that you need to do that...it's a problem if you haven't trained to always sweep the safety off.

Making the gun decock-only takes that problem off the table.