DAO with exterior safety?

[kbm6893]

This guy gets it.

There was an article I was reading a while back, and I wish I had it bookmarked now, about things people don't often take into account regarding self-defense situations. The author of the article was some type of law enforcement or military, I don't recall which, and in the article he used a lot of statistics and highlighted many cases involving other law enforcement and military, who are highly trained.

One of the things he discussed was that in the vast majority (something like over 80%) of self defense situations, the defender ends up firing their handgun with only one hand. In light of that, he suggests carrying a handgun/caliber that you can easily manage with one hand.

He shared cases from highly trained military and law enforcement who had to use their weapons in self-defense. One was a police officer who drew his weapon and accidentally hit his mag release. A second police officer drew his weapon, disengaged his safety, but then accidentally re-engaged the safety. Another case was of an army ranger who got into a combat situation, but in spite of all his training, he panicked and couldn't remember what to do.

The point is, if you are attacked, you're not going to see it coming and you're not going to have time to prepare. It will be sudden and it will be in your face. You can have all the training and practice in the world, but once panic sets in, all of that training goes out the window. If that happens to highly trained military and law enforcement, then it will be even more true for the average citizen. I know everybody wants to think they are a ninja, but reality is different from fantasy.

Not using a safety because of the .001% chance of actually firing a weapon in self defense, while ignoring the much better odds of an ND during routine handling is pretty stupid, if you ask me. Not to mention all those people who have successfully used a weapon with a safety in self defense. Were they ninjas or just people who were competent with their weapons?

Glock used to have a slogan. Something like "no safety levers to fumble with". Do we really want people to be so lax in the handling of a deadly weapon, that they can't take 10-15 minutes a day to draw and disengage a safety (unloaded of course)?

And why wasn't there a "revolver leg" catch phrase like there is "Glock leg" like there is today?

 

[Sidnne]

Not using a safety because of the .001% chance of actually firing a weapon in self defense, while ignoring the much better odds of an ND during routine handling is pretty stupid, if you ask me. Not to mention all those people who have successfully used a weapon with a safety in self defense. Were they ninjas or just people who were competent with their weapons?

Glock used to have a slogan. Something like "no safety levers to fumble with". Do we really want people to be so lax in the handling of a deadly weapon, that they can't take 10-15 minutes a day to draw and disengage a safety (unloaded of course)?

And why wasn't there a "revolver leg" catch phrase like there is "Glock leg" like there is today?

I guess not everyone is as elite as you.

 

[Mister X]

"Civilian defense encounters generally unfold very suddenly and occur at extremely close distances. You may be very adept at disengaging the safety at the range or in competition, but that is very different from having to do it while engaging and accessing your weapon against an armed(gun, knife, bludgeon etc.) assailant or even multiple unarmed attackers at 0-5 feet. You may have to draw while moving, while using unarmed defensive skills, shootone handed with a less than ideal grip and all of this tends to get messy and chaotic with manual dexterity being in very short supply."

The above pretty well sums up most law enforcement armed encounters, as well. You generally don't get to plan your gunfight.

Time is not a factor in using a thumb safety. It takes much, much longer to draw and point your handgun than it does to work the safety. You work the safety during your draw stroke. It won't slow you down at all, IF YOU HAVE BEEN ADEQUATELY TRAINED AND YOU HAVE ADEQUATELY PRACTICED, such that the safety is an automatic part of your response, like looking at your front sight

Next you are going to tell me you can't use your sights in a gun fight, too, it's too complicated, and there isn't enough time...

Like I said, learning to use a thumb safety is based on proper training and proper practice to make those trained responses automatic. People failing to disengage the thumb safety of a 1911 or a Hi Power or similar weapon have either had insufficient or inadequate instruction or insufficient and inadequate practice. It's like the clutch pedal in a stick shift car, you learn to drive it, you drive it a lot and you soon work that clutch without thinking about it.

Thumb safeties aren't rocket science. Many firearms trainers in and out of law enforcement have to gear their training to the lowest common denominators in their classes. A thumb safety is one more thing to learn, if a person isn't willing to learn it and make it an automatic part of their draw stroke, that is certainly their choice. If they don't, then they are probably better off with a simpler, less complicated weapon. I prefer to have the extra layer of safety that a thumb safety gives me.

The KISS principal is not a universal rule. Always remember the second S.

I just don't see a whole lot of commonality between police work/shootings and civilian personal defense. While there is overlap, opposing directives of one being primarily proactive vs the other primarily reactive leads to the dynamics being very different.

A flaw in the analogy about driving a stick shift is when learning to drive a car with a manual transmission, you're performing the action and becoming skilled at it in the exact conditions/environment that you actually use and apply the skill. It's often difficult to apply a particular skill effectively in conditions completely different from the context you're familiar with or on which your training was based.

And regarding sights; At 0-5 feet, yes I would definitely say don't concern yourself with your sights. You may even(probably) have/want to fire from a compressed or retention position. In a reactive defense scenario inside 5 yards or so, sights are mostly irrelevant. And it's not "gunfights" that civilians should only be concerned about since gun vs gun shoot-outs are exceedingly rare, but that often seems to be the sole focus. It's in these same ECQ scenarios where a manual safety would most likely be a potential problem.

The best way to pressure test issues such as these IMO is with reality-based Force on Force training.

A contradiction I keep seeing is the idea that proper training eliminates potential mistakes for operating a manual safety, but no amount of training can overcome mistakes leading to unintentional discharges.

 

[BUFF]

I guess not everybody wants to put in the time to learn something.

"Panic is the absence of a trained response." I'm no ninja, I'm a clumsy, uncoordinated old man now, but I got good training because I thought I might need it someday and practiced because what I was taught rang true. And when I needed it, I responded the way I was trained and the way I practiced, because the training and practice became ingrained enough that it became my natural response.

Jeff Cooper was criticized that his "Modern Technique" was too complicated, that people would forget what he taught and do whatever. He had many students come back to him after they had needed their gun and told him, "Hey, it happened unexpectedly and then it was suddenly over and guess what, it worked!"

There's lots of guns with lots of mechanisms out there. We are lucky that, in this country, anyways, we can choose which piece of gear we like and are comfortable with. My hands are medium sized with short fingers. I can't reliably operate a slide-mounted safety with my gun hand thumb. So I chose another system that my hand can reliably operate.

Everybody should do that.

That's my take. I'm just repeating myself now, so I'll stop.

 

[ladder13]

Same ol' dance different song. Reminds me of the OC and mandated training threads.

Someone even mentioned in one of those, grandma had no right to defend herself because she couldn't afford training.

Everyone but those that think like me are stupid.

There's gun owners and then there's 2A supporters, don't confuse the two.

 

[ou1954]

Haven't we had enough of "I'm right and you don't understand" here?
Everyone has a point of view and continuing to argue doesn't help convince someone who is convinced otherwise. And yes, I can see that some of the comments are in jest.

 

[kbm6893]

I guess not everyone is as elite as you.

Elite? far from it! Elite is pronouncing a device that has been on weapons for a couple hundred years as "dangerous". we've had one person on here who has actually been in a gunfight. His safety didn't "get him killed". He is competent in the handling of his weapon. Carrying a weapon is a responsibility. We ALL owe it to the rest of the world to be competent with them. When I got my SR9, I had to adjust. I used to carry S&W 3rd gen's and berettas. Slide mounted safety that is up to fire. The SR9 and LC9-S have down to fire, so it was an adjustment. So I spent about 10 minutes a night just picking up the weapons and taking off safe, then putting it back on safe as I put it down. Took about 2 weeks before it became automatic. So much so that when I take my Beretta's or Smiths to the range I get it backwards. But the Beretta's and Smiths aren't carry guns anymore. They're range guns for pleasure.