Actually, my point of view has nothing to do with Glocks at all. It has to do with manual safeties and people's false opinions that they somehow make a gun idiot proof. How many accidental shootings do you see where a person uses the excuse of "I thought the safety was on."
Nothing wrong with your preference but you are confusing two totally different functions. A manual safety is to prevent accidental firing and a retention holster is to maintain possession of a weapon.
) I'm in both camps with thumb safeties. I own pistols with thumb safeties and others without. On a pistol with a very light zero-take-up bang button I want a thumb safety. With something with a longer heavier trigger I'm fine without one. The reason that I say that it is no slower is that after you've trained yourself to properly use a thumb safety you'll find that your thumb sweeps down across the safety automatically during the draw itself. It doesn't matter if I'm drawing a 1911 or safetyless plastic pistol my thumb sweeps where that safety ought to be. That becomes as automatic as breathing with very little practice. Getting back on track - the Serpa is very dependent on everyone having the same size hands in order for the trigger finger to land reliably on the release, and that no grit, gravel, or lint balls will be blocking the mechanism. The bottom line is whatever works for you and you are comfortable with is the best choice.That's all well and good until you carry something that is DAO with a decocker. Then you are going to be in trouble.
Yeah, I personally do not care for manual safeties (for the reasons I stated before) and I am not the biggest fan of retention holsters. However, I do sometimes find a need for retention holsters (whether I like them or not) but have never found a "need" for a manual safety (although I do have carry guns that have them).
Of course when the weapon being retained has an easier time being fired unintentionally due to a short, light trigger pull devoid of manual safeties then the positive locking feature of a Serpa holster for such a weapon becomes a device for preventing accidental firing.
I am not following you on that one. Are you saying there is a risk of firing the gun while it is in the holster? Or is there something about the Serpa (never used one) that prevents accidental firing while drawing the pistol?
Not very likely at all. It falls under the whole "how likely are you ever even use your gun? and then how likely is that event going to require split second action?" thing. Since most willnever use a gun for defense and over 90% of gun defenses do not even involve firing he gun the odds are pretty much negligible. It is kind of like the S&W lock issue I mentioned before. If we start dealing with only "likely" topics these boards would get awfully boring, awfully fast. It would pretty much just be thread after thread about cleaning your guns and preventing rust.
Gotcha...I think that most guns are pretty safe drop test wise these days. I am not really sure though. Even most revolvers have transfer bars now. I think that issue would be more to do with "internal" safeties than with manual ones though and I am not sure which autos have them and which do not. They might all have them now for all I know.
Some are race guns, competition guns and yes some have even been carry guns.