Forgetting the safety? Age, Youth, Training?

[dtw]

Since this is in the competition forum, do most competitors engage the TS between shooting positions in a stage?

[Trooper224]

I've never done it, in nearly four decades of shooting the 1911. That doesn't mean it can't happen, it's just never happened to me. I don't think this needs to turn into God's Gun against everything else. But, what I have seen, more than forgetting a safety, are negligent discharges with striker fired pistols and AR rifles. Two of which caused injury.

Does this mean I think no one should be carrying ARs or plastic fantastics? Of course not. What it means is, you make your choices and you take your chances. Guns are dangerous, they kill people. Sometimes the wrong ones. You need to keep that in mind when you strap one on.

[GJM]

Since this is in the competition forum, do most competitors engage the TS between shooting positions in a stage?

Not intentionally

[Jim Watson]

I have, when on a crooked or retreating move.

[SCCY Marshal]

Since this is in the competition forum, do most competitors engage the TS between shooting positions in a stage?

Not with handgun, rifle, or shotgun. The DA/SA crew doesn't decock, either, and it all annoys me. Especially the day it got me briefly disqualified without inspecting my rifle...or was it shotgun? One or the other.

Multi-bay stage at 3Gun, ditch whichever long gun and run to another bay for the rest of the stage with some other gun. I pivoted while coming off target with the shoulder gun and slammed it in the barrel as I kicked off my sprint without looking or pausing. The R.O. got salty and ordered me marked as a D.Q. for failure to safe because there was "no way" I had taken any time to and argued with my friend when he bluntly told them to check my gun first. Someone told him that he hadn't seen the gun either and couldn't have reason to argue the point. He insisted that he'd shot with me enough to know that if it was off target, it was on safe. They got to the barrel about then and were shocked to see it on safe. Still gave him lip that it must have been luck.

Same crew but different day and another R.O. who kept chiding me for snicking my handgun safety back off to drop the hammer at the end of stages once I'd shown clear. "You don't have to safe it before showing clear."

"Am I slowing you all down?"

"No, but you don't have to so why are you bothering?"

We had a variation of that exchange on every stage.

I prefer a smaller venue at which the match director pulled me aside while that same friend was shooting a stage to compliment his constant decocker usage. Something along the lines of, "he's run a double action a time or two, huh?"


Edit: Come to think of it, this is one of my friends who actively dislikes thumb safeties on his handguns for fear of forgetting one. But decocks fine...