SHARING AN EXPERT’S THOUGHTS ON THE MANUAL SAFETY

In the context of this article, should a trigger safety pistol, such as a Glock, be considered as “dangerous” as a pistol with a thumb safety that is not used?

I follow Paul on UToob and love his “get to the point” teaching style refined in the furnace of combat. I don’t carry striker fired guns for a reason, and that reason is assurance of weapon status when I holster. I carry a Beretta 92FS with the G safety, which is really a decocker. I chose this because my build allows concealed carry of this weapon and I know where the hammer is at any given moment because I holster with my thumb on the hammer. When I draw I know the first trigger pull is long and heavy. I also know I won’t have a dead trigger on a draw.

I also carry the 1911 which IS locked and cocked with a manual safety, but I sweep my thumb down the left side of the frame on both weapons anyway reinforcing a standard manual of arms under stress.

No, I am not a professional trainer or a weapons expert, but this philosophy has served me well in both flat range and tac house training. In each case, both weapons have become an extension of myself.

⁹Did you intend to post his article?

Its not here.

Thank you,
George

The recent death of the unfortunate, belligerent anti-ICE female driver in Minneapolis appeared 100% typical, deliberate, heedless homicidal/suicidal insurgent strategy. Where does anybody. get the idea that law enforcement is a crime? It would be a good place for ICE to deploy an accurate match-grade 1911 with a precise trigger under control from secure 1911 safety. Good job to the fortunately surviving ICE agent!

The Paul Howe articles have made me think. First of all, on my likable Ruger EC9s, I am now practicing conscious coordination of index finger and thumb, paying considerable attention to the different movements between on-safe (thumb isolated, vertical), off-safe with keep-trigger-above-trigger(with safe action) & a more full grip than pushing to off-safe), and trigger press, basically including finally depressing the safe-action upon my shooting decision. I practice keeping the grip constant, putting the trigger press well forward of the first joint, almost to the finger tip. All this fits together well for my accuracy, although I can shift to a fuller grip with trigger finger (index) at the first joint. I will sometimes carry my spurless Ruger Sp101 at right-front appendix in a Bianchi holster, but I make sure to fully control the spurless hammer with thump press, reach in front of the trigger guard to draw, and index until triggering until time to shoot, should the time come. I am not sure about carry at the appendix with anything else. Could be called being “nervous in the Service”?

Right up front I have nowhere near the credentials that Howe, Ellifretz, or, Ayoob have and this is not a criticism or contradiction of anything they are saying.
This is all about me and what I personally feel comfortable with.
IMO, mechanical devices fail and therefore a mechanical safety can fail.
According to Murphy’s Law, it will fail at the worst possible time.
When it comes to pistols, I own nothing with a manual safety.
In my early days of ownership, I owned several that did have safeties, but the problem is that the direction for engaging and disengaging safeties on semi-automatic pistols can vary by model. Some safeties may pivot downward to disengage, while others may work in the opposite direction.
I found that training with all of them, even while just punching holes in paper, I was constantly double-checking the safety because under stress I wanted to be sure which way was which for what I was carrying.
I did not have this stress when using my wheelguns and I determined that I wanted to totally eliminate that possibility of stress, hesitation, etc. and just train with the semi’s as I did with the wheels . . . that I am the safety.
Some told me that I should just keep the safety disengaged. If I was just going to keep the safety off, then the point of the safety is useless anyway, and under the stressful conditions of a need to use it, I didn’t want to worry that somehow, someway it gets engaged by accident.
Nothing worse than getting a click when you expect a bang.
Also, I wanted to be sure that my wife was comfortable using whatever is in the house she can get her hands on and not have to worry about is it on or is it off.
Under a high stress situation, having one less thing to stress about is important to me.

Thanks for another good discussion of the appropriate use of safeties, Mas!

I am a devotee of thumb safeties–to the point that I have installed them on all of the Sig P365 variants that I use for EDC. This not only gives me added protection in holstering, but it also keeps the manual of arms similar between my striker-fired Sigs and the Wilson X-9 variants that I also use for EDC. The safety comes off only when I have identified a target worthy of shooting and a dearth of “friendlies” between me and the lead-worthy target.

Many may view me as over-cautious, but knowing that I require a second or two of “wake -up time” when aroused from the deepest levels of sleep–and knowing that my bedroom has deadbolt-secured, solid doors, giving me a few additional seconds of time between the time a home invader breaches an outer door and the time they can enter the bedroom–I prefer to force myself to take one more step to be sure I’m fully awake and that I really want to start slinging lead, so I keep my night time bedside gun in Condition-3 (Israeli Carry). However, I would not carry my CCW/EDC in this condition. For on-body guns, Condition-1 is the way to go.

The one exception is for newbies, who are trying to get accustomed to carrying. I have seen Israeli Carry serve as a useful crutch to get them used to carrying without being too nervous about a gun being cocked and locked. This is a psychological crutch and mostly applies to guns with external hammers. Striker-fired guns where the cocked striker is not visible don’t seem to generate the same angst.

A titanium firing pin can improve “drop-safety” in a Series-70 style gun that lacks the trigger-actuated firing pin safety of the Series-80 guns.

It occurs to me that while a 1911-style grip safety will not prevent accidental discharges from holstering your gun with a full grip and your finger on the trigger, it would prevent ADs that happen when keys or other foreign objects slip into the funnel-like openings of modern light-bearing duty pistol holsters. The Springfield XD series has this feature. A grip safety would likely have prevented many of the so-called “Uncommanded Discharges” attributed to the Sig P320 (which were in many if not all cases, I believe, unrecognized trigger actuations by fingers or foreign objects).

That said, I do not feel that a grip safety is an imperative. I have personally experienced a failure to fire due to an imperfectly-gripped grip safety. It cost me a second to correct in a match. It might have carried a greater penalty in a defensive application. While that problem is partly remediable with training, obtaining a perfect combat grip with either hand under all circumstances is susceptible to failure under stress. None of my current favorite EDCs have grip safeties and I don’t find myself worrying over this.

Also, Mas’ technique of holstering any gun with the thumb on the hammer or backplate allows any present grip safety to be activated. The more I carry and handle guns, the more I appreciate all the small nuances Mas taught me in MAG-40. One might begin to suspect that he has been a serious student of pistolcraft for more than 60 years…

I prefer the manual thumb safety to help prevent ND during holstering (in/out). I have guns with no manual safety which makes me a little more anxious when carrying. So manual thumb safety or decock or double action revolvers are my carry choice. I am at the range often enough and hope the muscle memory in practice will get me through a stressful situation if needed.

You really have to keep on your toes to keep ahead of Spellcheck these days. Thumb may keep coming back as thump. If you don’t follow the ghost-ahead verbatim, you may never get straight on-path again today. You can lose a whole word any time. Like having a jumpy, fast high school runner on first base with a confused base umpire on board, and the uninformed visitors’ bench shouting “balk, balk, balk” like a noisy chicken coop. Too likely a thought-control policy of the Speech Police. Groom everybody into a docile stupor.

PS: Regarding the recent Minneapolis ICE shooting incident: The NYT claims that the fact that the car wheels just starting to turn to the right at the moment the agent commences shooting indicates that the shooting was not appropriate. Such an analysis reflects ignorance of, or deliberate dishonesty regarding the human reactionary gap–the fact that it is humanly impossible to “un-pull” or stop the pull of the trigger instantly in response to seeing the wheels turn (if the ICE officer could even see the wheels from his position in front of and above the hood of the car). The same NYT “analysis” states that while it appears that the car struck the officer when viewed from one angle, that another angle shows that the tire did not touch his foot. Huh? The car hit his thigh, not his foot! And one can see his upper leg propelled backwards rapidly as the car lurches forward while the agent leans over the hood with his gun extended. As the car lurched forward, he could not be reasonably expected to assume that she would turn her wheel to the right at the last fraction of a second, such that she only clipped him and didn’t run him over! Had she survived, she should rightly be charged with interfering with law enforcement, evading arrest & fleeing from a valid law enforcement order to stop and get out of the car, reckless endangerment of the officer standing beside the car whose hand was entangled with her car door latch and whose foot barely escaped being run over by her “peel-out” and, finally, aggravated assault of the officer she clipped with her left-front fender/bumper.

Many of the incidents where officers are charged with excessive force start with the suspect attempting to evade or resist arrest. We need to get rid of the notion that it is acceptable to resist arrest. Most if not all of these instances would have been resolved without injury to anyone if the suspect had simply complied with the legal requests by the officer.

It is often-times referred to as “The Talk” that thoughtful black fathers have with their sons–that it is better to submit to detention and arrest peacefully–even if one thinks one is being disrespected and the victim of racism–and then address the disrespect or unlawful actions by the police later in court. But, I can tell you that I have had the same talk with my children and that it applies regardless of race. We must all do our best to rid society of the notion that it is OK to resist arrest or to flee (especially in a vehicle). Unless you have a solid, well-founded belief that you are about to be murdered by a corrupt cop, it is best to submit to arrest and sort it all out in court. Fleeing from police in a vehicle endangers others of death and great bodily harm and should result in significantly enhanced penalties. Moreso than whatever we are doing at present, which is clearly insufficient to discourage such behavior.

Sorry for the rant–but I am frustrated with uninformed “narratives” and the vilification of officers who are simply trying to carry out the reasonable laws society has charged them with enforcing.