A Safety? Or Not?
An S&W M&P 9mm, special-ordered with an ambidextrous manual thumb safety.
Both the manual safety on the pistol, and the Level III retention Safariland holster,
make it more difficult for an assailant to grab and fire the handgun.
So the crise du jour seems to involve striker-fired pistols without a manual safety. There’s a lot of chin-stroking and deep thinking going on about how “We’re seeing more and more incidents of negligent discharge with striker-fired handguns.” Well, do tell. We also see a lot more accidents involving Honda vehicles than in, say, 1972. Is it due to some engineering flaw? Or could it be because Honda sold around 20,000 vehicles in the USA in 1972, and over 1.5 million in 2014?
Say I load cartridges into a magazine, put the magazine in a pistol and rack the slide, chambering a round. Then I shove the pistol into a holster with my finger on the trigger, catching on the holster — firing the gun. Which is what guns do when you load them and press the trigger.
Do I say I was a klutz, ignoring a basic safety rule — “Finger off the trigger unless sights are on target” and let the bullet scar on my leg serve as a warning to the rest of you? No, I blame the pistol maker, or the holster maker, or my instructor, or we say “It’s all because these striker-fired pistols don’t have a manual safety. Why, all you have to do is pull the trigger!” Oh … the humanity.
Actually all of us have used similar handguns for well over a century. They’re called double-action revolvers, and they operate today just as they did before the Wright brothers got their flying machine into the air.
A counter argument is “It’s not quite the same.” A typical DA revolver pull weighs 10 to 12 pounds and takes around a half-inch of trigger movement. A modern striker-fired pistol might have a pull weight of 5 to 7 pounds and a relatively short trigger movement. This is a valid point and one with which I don’t necessarily disagree with.
An S&W J-Frame Centennial Airweight revolver. Eagle Secret Service grips
and Mitch Rosen Pocket Softie holster.
A Tradeoff
Most of us shoot our best using triggers with a light pull weight, a short, crisp, break and a fast reset. At the other extreme we could greatly reduce the risk of negligent discharge by making pull weight of 20 pounds with an inch of trigger movement. We can make a gun so difficult to fire we aren’t able to defend ourselves in time, or we shoot so badly, bullets are flying around to endanger bystanders.
For the typical non-enthusiast my opinion is a “revolver-like” pull is about ideal. In fact one of the cheapest and best ways to get a “revolver-like” pull is, oddly enough — with a revolver.
Very, very seldom (I didn’t say never) is the gun at fault in a negligent discharge. Almost always it’s due to human error, most often a result of inadequate training. When the city gets sued as a result of a negligent discharge, we taxpayers tend to blame the gun instead of (1) inadequately trained police, resulting from (2) lack of police training time, due to (3) lack of funds, thanks to (4) city councils refusing to provide a budget for training, because (5) taxpayers might complain!
What if you’re doing a building search under great stress, finger on the trigger, a figure suddenly pops up and you unintentionally press the trigger before identifying whether the person is a threat or not. Would a manual safety have made a difference? I doubt it. Anyone stressed enough to have the gun out and ready, may also release the safety immediately after the draw. Training, again.
Exposed triggers in holster designs used to be the norm for fast draw so we could “Get on the trigger faster!” The result was occasional leg wounds during the draw. The current trend is covered trigger guards — with the occasional leg wound during re-holstering. Here’s where a manual safety might sometimes prevent a negligent discharge, but I’m not excusing bad gunhandling. The finger should be off the trigger when re-holstering, period.
State of the art circa 1975, an S&W Model 19 revolver in a Don Hume holster. The revolver wouldn’t have dominated for so long if it wasn’t a basically sound defensive handgun. The main advantages of semi-auto duty pistols are higher capacity and faster reloading.
Yes Or No?
My bud, Sheriff Steve Kukowski, is a PPC Grand Master and USPSA Master class shooter. He even thinks he’s a better shot than I am — the ego on the guy! Despite being a very competent gunhandler he has a manual safety on his duty sidearm — in case of a gun-grab by an assailant. Steve feels even a couple of seconds delay while a suspect fumbles is an opportunity for fight or flight.
On the issue of pocket carry, I’m a proponent, but I only pocket carry revolvers and only with a pocket holster, of which my favorite is the Mitch Rosen Pocket Softie, by the way. And the process is, fit the gun properly in the holster; then pocket the holster and gun together — also by the way.
