Why pistols without redundant safety mechanisms…..

[Nathan]

Another thread that I didn’t want to hijack triggered this train of thought….
VIDEO

https://studentofthegun.com/articles/firearms-training/gaston-glock-invent-negligent-discharge/

This article was written in a very pro-Glock, pro-safetyless pistol POV. I’m ok with that, but it proves my hypothesis. We have the ND’s with training, so we are just adding more training??

My hypothesis is that due to human performance variables that safety-
less pistols will never be truly used without ND’s caused by human error.

The argument for why this basic pistol type is prolific is because plastic manufacturing cost is lower and Glock has not been sued out of existence. So, everybody has now jumped in to ride those coat tails.

Human Performance Explained
That is a quick article how even when performing in skill based mode, humans make errors.

Think of it as a pro basketball player. In practice, they can make make free throws one after another for a long time. In the big game, they occasionally miss….human error.

Talk to any highly trained shooter and asked them(or yourself) have you ever not seated your mag fully, have you ever not held the slide in battery when reholstering, have you ever grasped with less than a perfect grip, have you ever pressed out to a bad sight picture, have you ever missed the A zone, has the trigger ever fired before perfect lock out, etc?

Then ask, how could that error not be the error of not clearing your holster, not hanging up on a jacket zipper, not taking your finger off the trigger when holstering, not preloading the trigger, etc.



In comes a manual safety. Now you have to do an action with a feeling (lower error rate) that has consequences in training (lowers error rate). It is a parallel motion so no time is required to disengage the safety.

Now let’s get crazy and talk grip safety. It is a safety that prevents trigger pull with no other action than obtaining a good grip on the gun. We all know a good grip is the foundation of safe gun handling and accurate fire….so why don’t all guns have a grip safety? Because people literally will choose a gun without this safety due to a belief that they cannot reliably grip their gun properly. Does anybody else see the oxymoron here?

Let’s discuss this…

 

[TunnelRat]

Now let’s get crazy and talk grip safety. It is a safety that prevents trigger pull with no other action than obtaining a good grip on the gun. We all know a good grip is the foundation of safe gun handling and accurate fire….so why don’t all guns have a grip safety? Because people literally will choose a gun without this safety due to a belief that they cannot reliably grip their gun properly. Does anybody else see the oxymoron here?

Let’s discuss this…

There’s a lot in this post. I’m going to address the comment above.

I don’t see an oxymoron there. To me it follows exactly with your previous line of thought. People make mistakes, and people under stress make more mistakes. Someone might not have a good enough grip to properly disengage a grip safety, but a grip that is good enough for the shot to hit the target (thinking of a defensive scenario). Take into account the possibility of being hit in the hand during a shooting (something which seems to happen in shootings due to our hands being in a defensive position in front of our bodies) and the injured may not be making mistakes, they might not physically be able to make a grip safety work. Now is this very likely? Probably not, but neither is needing a gun in the first place. I’m not surprised when someone preparing for an unlikely event expresses concern over another unlikely event.

For me personally I don’t have the desire for a grip safety. There are pistols with those for people that want it, though if the market had a big desire for it I think you’d see more options for it. An admitted caveat for myself here is the 1911s I have include grip safeties. I’m not so adamantly opposed that I won’t own or carry a 1911. I’ve also owned XDs and XDms that had grip safeties. I never had one not engage, but I never felt comforted by having them either.

I believe Colonel Jeff Cooper, one of the advocates of the four rules of firearm safety, even had at least one 1911 with a pinned grip safety. I don’t bring it up simply to say we should do the same, but to point out that even professional users of firearms that have a serious regard for firearms safety have at times been opposed to grip safeties.


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[CDW4ME]

I carry a Glock 34/35 in a kydex holster AIWB, round chambered, ready for SD.
The Glock doesn't need a manual safety; I like it how it is.

Bonus thoughts about a Glock 34/35
"better than nothing"
"wouldn't want to get shot with it"
"nobody volunteer to get shot with it"
"meets my needs"

 

[TunnelRat]

Talk to any highly trained shooter and asked them(or yourself) have you ever not seated your mag fully, have you ever not held the slide in battery when reholstering, have you ever grasped with less than a perfect grip, have you ever pressed out to a bad sight picture, have you ever missed the A zone, has the trigger ever fired before perfect lock out, etc?

Then ask, how could that error not be the error of not clearing your holster, not hanging up on a jacket zipper, not taking your finger off the trigger when holstering, not preloading the trigger, etc.

I wanted to point out something that I think makes the above comparison a bit false.

Many of the actions in the first paragraph involve the the shooter moving at some speed. In a defensive situation there’s a degree of urgency in delivering a shot to stop a perceived threat. In competition this urgency would instead be a timer. In both a defensive situation and a competition a mistake like those mentioned may cost more time than would have been the case had the shooter done the technique properly, but we can generally understand the urgency.

Your second paragraph seems almost solely about reholstering and the actions associated with that. There shouldn’t be any urgency in reholstering. In a defensive situation if you’re putting the pistol away you’re doing so because you’ve determined the threat has ended or in a competition setting the stage has ended. There is no reward for reholstering quickly, but there can be quite a bit of danger for the reasons you mentioned.

You ask why is there a push for more training when NDs can happen with training. The point of more or better training is to ingrain behaviors that won’t cause the NDs in the first place. Even when NDs do happen the training is still important because part of the training from a safety perspective should involve muzzle management. We should be mindful of our muzzles so that if the firearm were to discharge no person would be hurt inadvertently.

There are times when a grip safety or manual safety can prevent a ND, like the snagging you mention or a poorly placed finger. To that extent I get the argument that if a mechanical device could prevent that, why not have that device? In my previous post I outlined some concerns a person might have about having a grip safety. For me I believe that just because people can be fallible doesn’t mean we should stop training to not do those things as I think the training is the better long term solution. At the same time I want to acknowledge that training and the mechanical device don’t have to be mutually exclusive, so if a person is willing to accept that mechanical device and train with it that’s reasonable to me.

I’ve spoken before how I have had a ND. It was with a S&W 5903, which had a manual safety, a DA first pull, and a magazine disconnect safety. Basically most of the safeties you can imagine. The mechanical device couldn’t stop me from thinking the chamber was empty and deliberately pressing the trigger. Fortunately my muzzle management lead to no injury, but it was a sobering moment. Most of the NDs I read about are exactly that, a shooter making an assumption that was unfortunately incorrect. That to me is why I think the training is the most important of the two, to emphasize the need for safe handling regardless of mechanical devices.

As an example I read a story some time back where an agency switched to Glocks. An officer had an ND while disassembling the pistol. Their previous pistols had magazine disconnect safeties and the officer here assumed that once he removed the magazine the Glock wouldn’t fire, just as he did before. Now you can look at this two ways. One is that Glocks disassemble in an unsafe manner. Another is that the officer had become complacent from the presence of the mechanical safety.


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[Jim Watson]

I agree that a manual safety, properly employed, does reduce the risk of inadvertent discharge. But training and practice can be short circuited by unusual circumstances.

I have shot action competition for many seasons with 1911 types. I have no problem with engaging the safety before holstering and disengaging the safety after the draw on the way to target acquisition. What Chuck Taylor called "The Stroke," it is reflexive.

But, out of that Load and Make Ready - draw and fire environment, reflexes may not apply. Unstructured shooting at the lane rental range, I have found myself to fire a couple of shots, lower the gun, setting the safety automatically, and peer at the bullet holes. Then I may well "forget" to release the safety as I bring the gun back from the bench toward the target. I saw a friend do the same recently.

So with the thought that self defense might not require shooting, my CCW is DAO and my house gun is DA-SA, I can produce and brandish a pistol, great if that repels the threat; but if shooting turns out to be required, there is no safety to "forget" by an interrupted "stroke." Just pull the trigger all the way.


The grip safety, especially on the 1911 family, is an interesting study.
When Cooper and his students started fast drawing a cocked and locked gun, they found that they might not have a solid grip to depress the grip safety, so they pinned or otherwise deactivated them.

It got worse as ever higher hand hole beavertail grip safeties became popular, easy to get so high on the gun that you are pressing up as hard as you are pressing in.
Makers responded with the "memory bump", gunsmiths with "sensitization", reducing the distance of travel to disengage.
A shooter here had a double size bump built up by welding. I have not had the problem, but a friend did, so I did a hasty bump with a thick pad of hard rubber and glue. It isn't pretty but it has stayed in place and cancels every time.

I have only shot an XD a little and did not even notice the grip safety.

I declined a good deal on one of those 1970 Mauser Parabellum reissues, it had the 1906 style grip safety, very stiff. If it came around again, I might take the deal and do a grip safety delete.

 

[jar]

People do stupid things with ease.

Go to ANY indoor firing range. Look at the signs of damage in the target holders, the ceiling, the wall, the floor ...

Every one of those holes is evidence of a gun owner who should not be trusted with anything even plastic kindergarten scissors. Yet that person has a gun, likely drives a car and might even be a parent.

It is irrelevant whether or not the gun they were using had redundant safeties.

 

[44 AMP]

My hypothesis is that due to human performance variables that safety-
less pistols will never be truly used without ND’s caused by human error.

Due to human performance variables, NOTHING done by humans will ever be completely without error.

We have the ND’s with training, so we are just adding more training??

We add more training because it is the easiest, cheapest, fastest thing that can be done that MIGHT have an effect on the situation. The only other alternative is to change to a different design of equipment, and then TRAIN on that.

Now let’s get crazy and talk grip safety. It is a safety that prevents trigger pull with no other action than obtaining a good grip on the gun. We all know a good grip is the foundation of safe gun handling and accurate fire….so why don’t all guns have a grip safety? Because people literally will choose a gun without this safety due to a belief that they cannot reliably grip their gun properly. Does anybody else see the oxymoron here?

I don't see any oxymoron here, just different philosophies about design and use. Why don't all guns have a grip safety? Because some people believe it is more important to have a gun that could be fired under every conceivable variation of being held (including "just barely") because while it may be a very remote possibility, it is not an impossibility that one's life might depend on it. It's not a matter of believing that they cannot reliably grip the gun properly, it's more a matter of believing it important that the gun work if something prevents them from gripping it "properly"

It might be (as is common) that the gun designer simply didn't think a grip safety was necessary.

I believe Colonel Jeff Cooper, one of if not the main originator of the four rules of firearm safety, even had at least one 1911 with a pinned grip safety. I don’t bring it up simply to say we should do the same, but to point out that even professional users of firearms that have a serious regard for firearms safety have at times been opposed to grip safeties.

First off, there are a lot more than 4 rules of firearms safety, and Col Cooper didn't invent any of them. He was a strong proponent of what he considered the most important 4, and was in no way wrong about them. But he didn't create them. If you need a historical point for when firearms safety rules became written down and generally standardized, you should look to the NRA, founded in 1871 with the mission of improving both accuracy and safety in the use of firearms.

Next point, having a 1911 pattern gun with a pinned grip safety doesn't mean you are opposed to grip safeties, unless YOU had the gun pinned, and even then it doesn't mean you are against grip safeties as an idea it could just mean that you had issues with the grip safety on that particular gun and chose to disable it for convenience.

Every one of us is a bit different, and so are our reasons for what we do, and prefer. I, personally have never had any problem with the grip safety on any (properly functional) gun I've ever shot, but I've seen people who have. I've also never been "bitten" by the hammer of a 1911/A1 pattern gun, or a Browning Hi Power, but I know people who have been. I've had a pinned grip safety gun in my collection before, some previous owner had it done for what certainly must have seemed like a good reason to them.

Didn't affect me in the least, so it was a machts nichts matter, to me.

Several of JM Browning's early pistol designs have only a grip safety. Apparently he felt that was all that was needed. His original prototype for the gun that became the 1911 didn't have a thumb safety, it only had a grip safety. He added the thumb safety at the direct request of the customer (the US Govt).

Getting back to training, the best training humanly possible will not stop a trained individual who becomes complacent and doesn't follow it.

Negligent means exactly that, someone who knew better did not do what the should have done. They didn't intentionally do it wrong, they "neglected" to do it right. Guns or anything else, same princple applies.

 

[TunnelRat]

First off, there are a lot more than 4 rules of firearms safety, and Col Cooper didn't invent any of them. He was a strong proponent of what he considered the most important 4, and was in no way wrong about them. But he didn't create them. If you need a historical point for when firearms safety rules became written down and generally standardized, you should look to the NRA, founded in 1871 with the mission of improving both accuracy and safety in the use of firearms.

Next point, having a 1911 pattern gun with a pinned grip safety doesn't mean you are opposed to grip safeties, unless YOU had the gun pinned, and even then it doesn't mean you are against grip safeties as an idea it could just mean that you had issues with the grip safety on that particular gun and chose to disable it for convenience.

I didn’t say there were only 4 rules. There are 4 rules in particular that are most often repeated and emphasized. Notice I included the use of “one of if not the main”, not “the only”, when it came to attributing those rules. I agree advocate/proponent is a better word choice than originator, though I think this is a bit of a situation of missing the forest for the trees.

You’re right simply possessing a pinned grip safety doesn’t mean a person is against one, but to my knowledge in Cooper’s case it was a deliberate decision on his part. Even if it was just the one pistol it goes to the point that grip safeties can be problematic in some cases, something you yourself acknowledged in your own post (a post which echoes a number of the same points I made).

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[tangolima]

To me, that's how it works.

There are many firearm designs. We get to choose the one we like. No need to make others happy. It is my freedom.

I don't trust anybody with gun except myself. But I accept that others have the same right to keep and bear arms, however incompetent or stupid they could be, unless they are restricted by laws. It is the price to pay for my freedom.

I go do my things.

-TL

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[Sgt127]

I enjoy reading about people who double check their gun. Look in the trigger guard. Check that the holster is clear, brush back shirt tails, drawstrings. look into the holster. Watch the gun go into the holster. Secure the holster.

Or the ones who will only remove, or place, their gun in the holster, off body. And then thread the holster, with a loaded gun, onto their belt.

I literally cannot count the times I’ve thrown the gun into a holster. The Safariland ALS was a Godsend. No having to mess with the thumbsnap.

None of the above works when you are holding someone at gunpoint, and they want to fight. Suddenly take off running and jump a fence. I’m not taking my eyes off him to go through the whole “look the gun in the holster” ritual. I don’t have time. I gotta get that gun secured and my hands free. Now.

I didn’t have the time to holster carefully and slowly. There is a time when you have to holster quickly.

I carried a 1911 for 20 years.

When we were issued Glocks, I handled it like a rattlesnake. The “keep your booger hook off the bang switch” mantra is cute. If, the only thing a trigger recognizes is your finger. But, it doesn’t. Anything that gets in there and applies 5.5 lbs of pressure, it recognizes as your finger.

I prefer guns with off switches. Carrying around cocked and unlocked guns does not seem like a good idea to me.

Any gun that is so prone to fire that it can’t be safely handled without a ritual, just to holster it, is a pass for me.

 

[TunnelRat]

None of the above works when you are holding someone at gunpoint, and they want to fight. Suddenly take off running and jump a fence. I’m not taking my eyes off him to go through the whole “look the gun in the holster” ritual. I don’t have time. I gotta get that gun secured and my hands free. Now.

I didn’t have the time to holster carefully and slowly. There is a time when you have to holster quickly.

Not everyone here is law enforcement. While your points are valid for those that are, they may not be a concern for the average person carrying concealed or defending their home. The time it takes me to holster with care can be measured in the range of a second or so. Even the officers I’ve trained with and under still generally train to holster with care when possible. There are exigent circumstances and there are times that aren’t. At some level you weigh the risk of holstering with care versus not holstering with care. I’ve drawn and holstered pistols without safeties thousands of times and watched hundreds of others do the same without incident. Even still I know incidents can and have happened.

 

[44 AMP]

many things are being mentioned here, things that are basic safe handling rules, things that are favored practices for competition shooters, and things from police duty use and military combat.

Methods that are best in some situations are not automatically best for every situation, and while there is a lot of overlap, blending them all together can create confusion.

My Dad gave NRA Hunter Safety classes. From elementary school until I enlisted in the Army I was "dragooned" into helping with all of those classes every fall. Some of it did kinda rub off. So I consider myself fairly well versed on firearm safety as taught by the NRA through the mid 70s.

The only "combat" firearms training I ever got was in the Army, and none of that was with a handgun.

I've never taken any other shooting classes, don't compete in speed shooting games, and never once in my life can I recall holding the slide in battery when holstering, nor do I ever recall being told I should....

So, I have a different point of view than the competition shooter or those who are or were cops. Their entirely valid ways of doing things doesn't apply in my life like it does in theirs.

The recent post about having to reholster in a hurry is one. One of the many points Jeff Cooper made that I always agreed with was "You always have all the time you need to put the safety ON"

And, until I got to thinking about it last night, I always figured this also applied to holstering the gun. But I got to thinking, where could there ever be a situation where that wasn't so?

The only thing I could come up with was if I were somehow falling off a building or a cliff and immediately needed both hands to grab something to prevent dying, THEN I wouldn't have the time to reholster first.

But, I'm not, and never was a cop, so I didn't think of things like a cop would, but now, I can clearly see how a cop could be in the situation of not have all the time he needed to reholster in a precise, specified manner.

Back to grip safeties, and specifically the 1911 pattern guns made these days. Many of them have a "speed bump" on the grip safety. As I understand it, the idea is so that about any grip will ensure the grip safety is depressed.

For me, who never had any issues with the GI configuration, its an unwelcome pain in the...hand.

My son has one of the S&W 1911s and it has the bump. Otherwise I think its a fine gun . He had me keep it for him while he did duty overseas in Iraq and Korea, and he asked me to shoot in, once in a while. I did, but learned it just wasn't for me. The bump bothers him not a whit, but for me its uncomfortable. Different strokes, right??

My personal preference in semi autos are guns with either a hammer, or a manual safety, and I think those with both are best. When it comes to safeties, I also prefer frame mounted, down for OFF, but I do have some guns with the slide mounted safeties where up if OFF. Can use them fine, just don't like them as well.

one thing everyone should always keep in mind is something the NRA always taught, no mechancial safety should be considered 100% reliable. Anything mechanical can break.

Sometimes the only way you know a safety (or safety feature) has broken is when you get a very lound BANG when you were expecting at most, a click...

Decockers and safeties are wonderful things, but being things, don't put all your trust in them alone.

 

[Sgt127]

The only thing I could come up with was if I were somehow falling off a building or a cliff and immediately needed both hands to grab something to prevent dying, THEN I wouldn't have the time to reholster first.

Funny you mention that. We had an Officer searching an attic for a suspect. Missed a beam. Fell through the ceiling. His hand clenched. Glock fired on the way down. He was pretty conscientious about that finger staying off the trigger. But, that involuntary clench, while falling, still managed to get that finger on the trigger. Or, the debris field he fell through fired it.

Worked out though. Bad guy figured if we were willing to destroy the house and shoot rounds through the ceiling, it was time to give up.

 

[rickyrick]

Lots of long responses to a long post so I did some skimming.

I like the idea of manual safeties. I like the idea of magazine disconnects.
I carry a beretta because it has a safety and a hammer.

However, I do practice when I can, but I am afraid of flubbing it up if the time came and needed the gun for real.
But I would not be afraid of a gun like a glock and others like them, because I strictly and instinctively keep my finger extended.
But, most of us really don’t know how they’re going to perform in the life or death situation.
Practice and training will minimize mistakes. That’s why people do it.

 

[Rob228]

There's another thread going on in the handgun forum where some individuals have stated that they won't carry a Glock as it has no safety and others have said they don't feel comfortable carrying a 1911 cocked and locked, and reading through this thread there seems to be a bit of both going on here as well.

You are only as SAFE and CONFIDENT as your training. When I carried a 1911 professionally we went through a six week long shooting course (it used to be called the USMC SOTG CQB course, I'm sure the name has changed). If you violated any safety rule at any time you were dropped from the course which pulled you out of the platoon. I'm not saying that everyone has to go through a course this strict or long BUT, being uncomfortable with a holstered loaded weapon, IMHO means: You are not confident in your equipment, you are not confident in yourself, or both. Training to a high standard of safety as well as proficiency builds confidence in yourself and your equipment. Equipment in this sense being both the firearm AND the holster.

Because of the intimate familiarity with it, I carried a commander sized 1911 for a while, before switching to a Glock 19, then eventually a Shadow Systems Glock clone. Having carried them both, I much prefer the Glock and/or clone of it. I carried the 1911 in a Milt Sparks Summer II and the Glocks in either a High-Noon holsters Tailgunner or a Garret Industries Silent Thunder. I won't own a pistol that I can't put in a safe, high quality, comfortable holster.

 

[Sgt127]

I like DA revolvers and autos. My Sigs are DAK. I can ride the hammer into the holster.

Traditional Autos with a decocker are about the same to me. That external hammer thing.

Cocked and locked autos are fine. I carried a 1911 for so long when we got issued Glocks, for a couple years, I still swept off the imaginary safety.

Striker fired, I really like a manual safety. Like I have on my P365. It’s intuitive, for me, to sweep down on the safety.

My only gripe with a striker gun is that there is absolutely no feedback if something gets in the trigger. The weight of the gun, and enough force to seat it, would be enough to fire it.

And, I actually like Glocks. Carried one for 10 years. But, unless told to carry one, by someone signing my paycheck, there are better options for me.

 

[TunnelRat]

My only gripe with a striker gun is that there is absolutely no feedback if something gets in the trigger. The weight of the gun, and enough force to seat it, would be enough to fire it.

And, I actually like Glocks. Carried one for 10 years. But, unless told to carry one, by someone signing my paycheck, there are better options for me.

There actually are some striker fired pistols that do have protrusions out the rear of the slide and that protrusion can be used to gauge if the trigger is moving when holstering. The Walther PPS is one such pistol.

For Glocks there is a device that was made some time ago by industry people just to address that concern. It’s been called the “Gadget” as well as the “Striker Control Device” more recently. On that the striker cover plate actually protrudes like a hammer as the striker is drawn rearward. You can use it like you would thumbing a hammer. I mention it as some people really like having it as an option (I do get that for a department issued firearm you might not get approval).


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[Sgt127]

Yep. I think there’s value in “The Gadget”. As it affords some feedback that something isn’t right. Instead of a bang.

It’s interesting that Glock has made their guns with manual safeties. For particular contracts.

 

[Nathan]

This is going pretty well. The why is hard to understand, but why’s can be personal.

To me, I look at the incident wit the FBI dancer and I think:
Trigger action has no manual safety
FBI Dancer acts complacently
FBI Dancer lacks proficiency in keeping finger off trigger (training)
Holster has poor retention


I look at the Cincinnati elevator shooting, I see:
Trigger action has no manual safety
Cin LEO acts complacently during reholstering
Cin LEO lacks proficiency in keeping finger off trigger during reholstering (training)

In both of these popular nd’s have only one hard fix. They also both show the importance of training regularly and not becoming complacent.

 

[44 AMP]

It’s interesting that Glock has made their guns with manual safeties. For particular contracts.

And yet, Glock refuses to do so for US contracts or commercial sale.

From what I heard, Glock submitted a pistol to the most recent service trials (the testing looking for the next US service pistol) and it was promptly rejected. It wasn't that it was tested and failed, it was rejected, without testing. And, for cause, in my opinion.

Glock got mad, made noises about going to court, until their lawyers explained what a barking stupid idea that was, because, the simply had no case.

The requirements to be considered for testing included the pistol had to have a manual safety. The gun Glock submitted did not, and so, was automatically excluded.

Glock could make such a gun, I've never seen one, but I've heard that they have, but chooses not to for the guns we see here in the US.

I don't know why, perhaps they have bought into their own advertising hype, and consider us foolish for rejecting "perfection"......