I've always been taught to not place your finger on the trigger until you have made the decision to shoot, would negate any negative for turning off early in the count.
I've always been taught to not place your finger on the trigger until you have made the decision to shoot, would negate any negative for turning off early in the count.
Per current Gunsite doctrine- On the Presentation/ Step Three, otherwise known as ROTATE, - The gun hand, wrist and arm as a single unit are rotated from the shoulder, moving the pistol towards the target until the pistol is approximately horizontal. IF YOU HAVE MADE THE DECISION TO SHOOT, and your handgun has a thumb safety, you will now disengage the thumb safety, Your trigger finger is still on the frame. This is also the position for shooting from retention should you find yourself in an arm's length or less confrontation.
Deactivation of the safety is consistent with the four rules. If drawing to the READY the safety should be on as you do not yet have a target that you have decided that you need to shoot. If you are moving and not currently on target (IE shooting or covering an identified target) then you should also be on safe/ decocked. I keep my thumb on top of the safety unless I am actively placing the pistol back onto safe with a 1911/ 2011 style pistol.
If you are drawing to a target then once the pistol has come to ROTATE it is on target and it would be appropriate to deactivate the safety at this point. The pistol being on target has to do with the relation of the bore of the pistol with your intended target and not with the relation of the pistols sights to your eyes. This concept is hard for some of the students to grasp at first. The flash sight picture will allow you to confirm that your presentation was accurate before you press the shot.
" The State is what it is because the citizens are what they are. We may not expect better States until we have better men." - Plato
A simple verbal challenge, such as "Who's there!" or ""I have a gun, I will shoot you!" can easily prevent shooting a loved one.
But many believe verbal challenges either aren't "tactical" or "give away your position" or are seeking to exact punishment on a perceived home intruder.
To quote myself, from an earlier post in this thread: “My problem with reflexively thumbing-off a 1911’s thumb safety at the #1 point in a 3-or-4-count draw stroke is that I may well want to manage a threat, rather than simply immediately start shooting at a threat. I might well have to walk or run before I have a target in sight.”
To elaborate, I will emphasize that a 1911 has a quite short trigger stroke. It may or may not be a light trigger pull weight, but, it is a quite short trigger stroke, and, my personal 1911 pistols do have “nice” trigger pull weights. If I have to move about, after the draw, I want that thumb safety to remain engaged. Things other than fingers may find their way inside that trigger guard! Notably, a nearby National Reserve, which is similar to a National Wildlife Refuge, is The Big Thicket. Things grow here. Things that can enter trigger guards, as one moves. This being the wet, green edge of Texas, folks like to use shrubbery in their landscapes. So, urban or rural, one has to deal with things that can touch uncovered triggers.
So, I am going to keep a 1911’s thumb safety engaged, until I have the muzzle oriented toward a legitimate threat, assuming that I am shooting right-handed. (My currently-owned 1911 pistols do not have “ambidextrous” safety levers.)
Notably, one aspect of “safe” gun handling that has INCREASED the likelihood of things entering trigger guards is that we now train to have our trigger fingers indexed, a.k.a. “in register,” somewhere higher on the weapon than the trigger guard. Back in the day of the “straight trigger finger,” the trigger finger covered one side of the trigger guard, blocking entry of objects from that side. To a degree, the support hand can provide some level of protection from entry of objects from the support side. In my personal, individual hand’s case, my support side thumb does a good job of covering the support side of a 1911 trigger guard, due to the way my support thumb “naturally” points, when holding a 1911. (When holding other pistols, such as my Glocks and SIG P229, my support thumb naturally finds a place on the frame.)
Retar’d LE. Kinesthetic dufus.
Don’t tread on volcanos!
With so many types of pistols on the market, striker no safety, striker with safety, LEM, SA, DAO, DA/SA with safety, DA/SA without safety, it would seem to me that a trigger would be the only real safety one could rely on. The trigger is the safety.
Personally, I don't like manual safeties on a carry. Mostly because I don't train with my carry as much as I should. I haven't been to the pistol range in over a year. Lots of reasons but it's a fact. I would bet that many fall into that category. I do have a lot of time on my P-239 however which has no manual safety. Like the LEM, the trigger is the safety.
Manual safeties are great if you train with one. So are manual transmissions if you drive a vehicle that has one. I haven't had one of those for almost 20 years. I could drive one today however if I had to because that's all I had for 40 years.
Last edited by Borderland; 01-27-2025 at 10:50 AM.
In the P-F basket of deplorables.
1. I do miss my P239. Wish I had kept that one.
2. I haven’t had a manual transmission for… 2 weeks. I feel I will miss that as well, despite looking forward to its in route replacement. However, it’s not as practical holding on to old cars as it is old guns, especially pistols.