I wonder about the the safety-on failures and how many of those are people who didn't practice enough to make safety-off automatic? I'm not surprised that someone who carries a striker fired gun on duty and a 1911 off duty would make that mistake, or if a 100 rnds-per-year Army MP fails to take the safety off. Now broken thumb, yeah I understand that one.
Adam
Why? The manipulation is very different, with the mechanisms being located in totally different places in relation to the thumb and what it's doing. For my thumb to reach a Beretta safety, I have to break my grip and contort my hand. With the ALS, my thumb falls naturally on it.Originally Posted by SoCalDep
"Are you ready? Okay. Let's roll."- Last words of Todd Beamer
Pros/cons is life........possibilities vs probabilities. As far as a thumb safety goes, it can be a firewall between being safe and an oops moment. We are human and oops moments come along from time to time. My thoughts are simple: Decide on a platform....I know, I know, that may not be as easy as is sounds as evidenced by multiple comments in this thread. Once decided, train with your firearm. Rote memory is the goal here, doing something without having to think about it, in this case handling your firearm.
Anybody want to start a thread on magazine disconnects??
I bet if you learn the correct technique, the safety will be off before the gun is out of the holster, and with the right holster the safety will be off before your grip is even complete. In fact, the position of the thumb when properly actuating the SLS assists with disengaging the Beretta safety during the draw - even with SLS holsters that prevent access to the safety when the pistol is holstered. The fact you can manipulate the SLS tells me you can naturally manipulate a Beretta safety.
@HCM clear your pm box
@SoCalDep's note on ejecting multiple live rounds with the safety on reminds. I came to the conclusion a few years ago, that safety equipped guns should not be able to rack the slide with the safety on. For a while, I really liked the idea of all administrative handling being able to be done with a safety on. Then I realized (after finding my gun inadvertently on safe). That I could rack out a bunch of rounds tapping and racking. Yes that is a training issue overall, but it's a real situation.
With a 1911/BHP I cannot rack the slide with the safety on. I draw the gun and get a dead trigger, go to rack the slide in a failure drill and can't, I have to wipe the safety off. I do so (and probably still rack the slide due to muscle memory), but now the gun works.
FWIW, even though the M&P safety is sort of 1911-esque, but isn't 1911 placed, I've found it almost impossible to rack the slide with the safety set. Whether you overhand or grasp the rear the way the safety pops up makes it so that you pretty much automatically disengage it. I've tried racking the slide with the safety on before and it takes a very deliberate grasping to do so. This is a standard thumb safety. Not that abbreviated little thing on the Shield.
@RevolverRob
Really good point - I’ve never thought of that but makes a ton of sense!
I've always considered the slide mounted safeties on the Beretta 92FS and S&W Traditional Double Action (TDA) autos, not as something to be used when carrying, though you could, but as a tool for additional safety when administratively handling the gun.
You can engage the safety when you are loading or unloading the gun, when handing the loaded firearm to somebody on the firing line, or when the gun is not under your control, such as in a drawer, or in a bag.
It gives you options. If you don't like or need those options, there are a whole lot more guns without the feature than with it.
I know all this has been discussed multiple times before, but it's never a bad idea to revisit central issues like safeties on handguns.
In competition, safeties are used on 1911/2011 race guns with triggers so light that they are unsafe to holster without a safety on (grip safeties are often disabled). However, the new generation of fully-tensioned striker designs, with aftermarket trigger mods aren't much different except no safety is required. It gives me the creeps, especially when people slam-holster after make-ready.
When I was into 1911s, I carried guns with nice, crisp, short, light triggers. This included a p238 (no grip safety). Even with all the training and practice I had invested in subconscious mastery, I twice holstered guns with safety off and only discovered it later.
Fast forward to my adoption of TDA guns. I've had the safety come accidentally on during a stage, and couldn't figure out what happened for quite a while. I am not at all surprised by BBI's stats on defensive use of guns that failed because of safeties.
I don't want to rely on them to be on for safety, and I don't want to rely on them to be off when shooting is a life-safety event. Of course, that's just me--everyone has to make their own choices.
“There is no growth in the comfort zone.”--Jocko Willink
"You can never have too many knives." --Joe Ambercrombie
I read this somewhere and it made sense to me. We practice sweeping off the safety in repetitive draws from the holster in a precise, choreographed motor pattern. Such patterns are programmed in the motor subcortical neural systems but evoked by a cortical command. The retrieval process of the motor commands is specific to the start of the needed movement. However, when you start from a nonstandard position - that could fall apart, meaning not in the practiced physical position. On the ground, off balance, something like that and you forget the safety as you just go for the gross movement of the draw and forget the safety nuance.
Anecdotal - match where you have to retrieve your gun from a box. Saw quite a few 1911 folks at the peep, open the box, get the gun and then nothing but a curse. The effect is supposedly like the reported failure to find red dots when the gun is deployed in a nonstandard posture, on the ground, under the table, whatever.
Side issue - I had a habit as a left handed when shooting an AR and reloaded to sweep the safety on! Bah. Had to watch for it. In a mystery gun run - we were given a double barrel coach gun and a handfull of shells. Damn thing would put on the safety each time you reloaded. Never told that and it took seconds to figure it out. Still a pain on the reload.
Last, the issue seemed not to be important in revolver days. All those folks who carried revolvers seemed not overly concerned with safeties but they existed for some guns. Grip safeties and some with manuals but rare.
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