I dont trust Glock clones not to accidentally discharge due to their lack of decocker, thumb safety or grip safety or heavy revolver like DA trigger pull. Simply depress the trigger safety and BANG! Safety rests entirely upon a specially designed holster. I do trust the S&W 3rd Generation semi autos like the CS9, CS40 and CS45. In my opinion, daily safety issues far outweigh the marginal difference in effctiveness in the unlikely event of actually having to fire the weapon. I find the CS9 about equal in weight to the steel frame J frames. The CS40 and CS45 are far bulkier, unsuitable for pocket carry. The alloy frame 642 & 442 are about perfect for daily carry.
I am anything but a Glock fan, but I can't agree with your statement. Glocks don't discharge themselves, the fire when someone pulls the trigger. Its true that they don't have a manual safety or in most cases a heavy trigger. The operator has to be a good gun handler and follow the safety rules. Assuming he does, the gun will only fire when he wants it to. If he doesn't, then he can cause it to fire when he doesn't intend to, by pulling the trigger. That is true with any gun, its just easier to foul up with a light trigger gun that doesn't have a manual safety.
I'd much rather have something like a 4516 than a Glock for a carry gun, but the Glock design isn't unsafe, it just requires the user to follow correct safety procedures.
Yes, the criminals weapon will almost certainly be superior to yours. In fact, criminals choose to strike when conditions are to their advantage not yours. Since they know that they are going to pull a weapon, they will bring the most that they can possibly hide, which may in fact be a sawed off shotgun. About the best you can do is regularly carry a weapon that you are comfortable and proficient with.
In my experience (14 years and counting as a cop), crime guns are usually trash. Lorcin, Davis, Bryco, Hi-Point, etc. Bad guys rarely carry spare ammunition (and often not even fully loaded magazines in their guns), and I've never encountered one wearing a holster. When thugs win armed encounters it seems to be for one of two reasons. One of which is as you stated, they know they are going to act before their victim does. The victim has to react to a threat that they may well have never seen coming. The other reason is more common, thugs these days live in a culture of violence. Most of them have seen people killed on the street, been in shootings, many have been shot and shot at other people (usually rival thugs). They have the experience, and that experience makes them sure of themselves. On the other hand, most honest citizens don't have the experience. Most have never shot at anyone, been shot at, or been shot. The majority have never had cause to draw a weapon and point it at someone. Others are hesitant to use their weapons for fear of the legal consequences (and the bad guys don't care about the legal consequences) or are unsure when they can legally use force, threaten force, etc. Good people are at a serious disadvantage, not because they might not choose to carry a bottomless magazine semi-automatic, but because they don't have the experience of the street.
As I said, you misread my intent. I know this is a revolver collectors forum, but I was taking the entire concept of self-defense into account, beginning with the tool; specifically, the evolution of the tool.
If SA revolvers were getting it done so well, we would never have had the DA. If DA revolvers were getting it done, we would never have had the 1911. If you always knew how many you'd face in a fight, we wouldn't have the Glock 17. Every iteration of the sidearm is an engineering answer to real world problems that the OP may or may not have thought of. I saw his post count.
The evolution of handguns isn't necessarily linked to the shotcomings of the pervious generation of weapons. SA revolvers might not seem like ideal weapons for defensive use these days. However, there are a large number of folks out there (cowboy action shooters for the most part) that can handle a SA revolver well enough to make it a serious defensive weapon in these "times of the bottomless bottomfeeder". There was a gentleman open carrying a SA revolver in a store in Richmond, VA sometime in 2008 or 2009 that got into a shootout with a robber. During the course of the shootout (and before the robber was disabled) the trigger on the gentleman's revolver somehow got broken off when he dove for cover. After the trigger broke off he was still able to fire his revolver and stop the robber (who eventually died of his wounds). What other handgun could the gentleman have been carrying that he could have successfully fired without a trigger? None of the "better" designs for sure.
There will always be disagreement in the auto vs. revolver debate, and we won't solve it here. However, the reason the debate exists is because the revolver is still a defensible choice for self-protection. The 1911 and the Glock are both fine defensive pistols, but that doesn't make them the only sane or effective choices. Any quality handgun can serve the defensive role, and all have strong and weak points.
But my point was not about high capacity as the whole answer. It was about the semi-auto's advantages as an organic whole: a single action trigger pull, a faster reload, the option of a bigger bullet in a slender profile, and yes, a higher capacity generally. In every way, it's a better tool suited to the task. It's not a dirty little secret. Find a police department that doesn't issue one. But if you can't hide one on a hot day, you can't hide one.
The reasons for police departments movement to semi-automatics is complex and varied, but in general the switch happened because it could, not because it had to. Cops like toys, and new toys are better than old toys. A number of high profile, but also very unusual, incidents happened in the mid to late 1980s that prompted the switch to semi-automatics. Those incidents gave the folks in charge an excuse to get new toys, so they did. We heard a lot in the 80s (and we still hear it today, though not as often) that the "police are outgunned". We usually hear it from someone trying to sell something, be it the media or government selling gun control, or the police powers that be selling spending taxpayer money on new handguns.
The real answer to the seldom encountered (but sometimes real) outgunning of the police was long guns, not large capacity pistols. Of course long guns required more training, more money, and more "selling" to the public since rifles are seen as military weapons. A prime example of this is the Bank of America shootout in 1997. Two guys with automatic rifles held off scores of officers armed with 16 shot 9mm pistols for quite a while. How did having high capacity pistols help the officers? Would officers with .357 Magnum revolvers and M1 Garands have done better? We hear talk about the police being "outgunned" we get shown pictures of seized long guns, submachineguns, shotguns, etc. or we are told stories about criminals (like in Miami in 1986) killing multiple LEOs with long guns. The solution to an opponent armed with a rifle is a rifle and some friends with rifles, not large capacity pistols.
One has to wonder why American police dumped accurate, reliable, effective sidearms wholesale and spent tax dollars on new, often less effective per shot handguns? Wouldn't that money have been better spent on more ammunition for training and patrol rifles? The .38 Special and .357 Magnum worked quite well for decades. If given the option of keeping my .38 Special or .357 Magnum and getting a quality patrol rifle, or getting a brand new 9mm or .45 automatic, I've have kept the .38 or .357 and taken the rifle.
None of that has anything to do with citizen CCW. Of course, what the police carry and why shouldn't be considered when choosing proper CCW equipment. What is chosen by government is often not chosen for any good reason.
There are a lot of good reasons to carry a semi-automatic. There are also a lot of good reasons to carry a revolver. Just because modern semi-automatics are newer technology doesn't necessarily make them better choices. New and better are not the same thing.
