Contributor John Sprague gave us his take on the manual safety in the piece entitled, in a post over the weekend. Mr. Sprague says that for him, a manual safety strikes the perfect balance in terms of safety versus a reduction of readiness. Good for him. That’s a decision we all have to make for ourselves and I’m glad he’s found the right balance for him.
Real world experience has driven me to the opposite side of that equation for everything except 1911-style pistols when it comes to manual safeties.
As a long-time instructor, for most users, I advocate not using the manual safety that your (fill in the blank) gun may on the side. Yes, I know that for some people that borders on heresy, akin to claiming that Bigfoot doesn’t exist or Al Gore didn’t invent the internet.
Why have I become a staunch parishioner in the Church of Leaving the Darn Safety Off? Because during training, I’ve seen countless people fail to disengage it. I’ve also seen them engage it by mistake. In the real world, keeping things simple (of KISS fame) improves survivability. And for me, increasing survivability for the good guys remains a very good thing.
Remember, a bad guy can cover 21 feet in well under 1.5 seconds. I’ve seen men in their 70s do it and I’ve seen younger people do it in under one second. If a bad guy can cover 21 feet in 1.5 seconds, how long will it take him (or her) to cover 9 feet?
The official answer is not very (bleeping) long. A whole lot faster, in fact, than most people can internalize that something’s wrong when they decide to draw and pull the trigger…and nothing happens.
While I hope Mr. Sprague will never have to discover that sometimes “muscle memory” goes right out the window under stress, I’ve seen it plenty of times.
Sure, on a square range in low-stress environment where targets don’t shoot back, it’s easy to remember the fundamentals including usage of the safety. On the other hand, when the body’s alarm condition kicks in, things change. Fast. When the adrenaline flows and your mind goes into survival mode, remembering to flip off that safety may not happen.
In fact, in the body alarm condition, even some gross motor skills become cumbersome, impairing things far bigger than forgetting to disengage that little safety lever.
In force-on-force training, we expose students to a mildly elevated stress levels. The stress comes from fear of getting stung by airsoft pellets. While that’s not nearly the pain penalty paid by a Simunitions round, it still hurts, especially on bare skin.
Couple the fear of getting stung with some decent acting by the role-players in the training scenario and just that added bit of stress makes people do strange things.
In our “Firestarter I” scenario, a religious nutcase verbalizes his/her intention to burn the demons out of a teenage girl who’s screaming for her life. The aggressor pours “gas” (water) from a can and then accesses a lighter to set the sinner on fire.
This good guy not only had his Illinois Concealed Carry License, but he also had additional training in his background above and beyond the state training requirement. In other words, this wasn’t his first rodeo using a handgun. I’m pretty sure no one taught him that particular grip.
What’s more, his faux pas wasn’t even a momentary one. He took three or more steps, continuing to hold his handgun in that very odd position.
When I asked him about his unique grip, he didn’t recall anything odd about his support hand’s placement. Then I showed him the series of photos.
He told me if I didn’t have the pictures, he would have denied ever putting his support hand on the back of his gun. Clearly, his “muscle memory” relating to the fundamentals of gripping a handgun failed him when his brain and body went into the body alarm condition.
Here’s a Front Sight (now PrairieFire) graduate’s reaction to an armed mugger.
Our good guy failed to pick up on the pre-violence cues in one of three role-players in the scenario. Because his cues were ignored, the bad guy produced a gun and proceeded with a mugging (while using a pretty respectable shooting stance at that).
Instead of submitting to the robber’s demand for “the money,” the good guy drew down (yes, on a drawn gun). Big mistake, especially when done out in the open. Obviously, it didn’t end well for him.
And look at that grip. All that excellent skill-building and muscle memory work went right out the window in a cascade of failure when this guy thought he was going to die. While I never attended Front Sight, I’m pretty sure that’s not the high-speed, low-drag grip they taught.
We all know how everyday gun owners can use guns defensively with success. In fact it happens with great regularity.
Trained or not, the greater the complications involved with deploying your gun, the more likely Mr. Murphy will show up for you. It’s why instructors recommend not carrying a different gun for each day of the week. It’s also why I recommend avoiding handgun models with manual safeties. And if yours has one, carry it in a good holster with the manual safety disengaged.
Do some honest self-critiquing. Anything that makes a rapid deployment more complicated or difficult than necessary should fall into the “liability” column for you. (Safety engaged? Check. Empty chamber? Check squared. Gun left in the car or at home? Checkmate and forfeit.)
What else can go wrong with safeties? During malfunction clearing drills, manual safeties can get re-engaged without you even realizing it. Then you squeeze the trigger, nothing happens, then you have to figure out why.
In that time, your opponent could be closing on you, stabbing you, hitting you, or shooting you. Ditto for weapon retention.
If you and a baddie are in a life-and-death wrestling match for control of your gun, the manual safety can easily change position. Of course, magazines frequently end up on the ground during attempted disarm as well. And if your gun has a magazine safety and won’t fire without a mag inserted, well, suddenly you have yourself a paper weight.
By and large though, anything that slows down deployment from a holster falls into the liability category. Yes, things like not carrying a round in the chamber or forgetting to disengage the safety really can cost a good guy or gal their life as it did these two armed robbery victims.
Speaking of “thinking” about disengaging the safety, if you have to think about disengaging the safety, you need more training and practice. We instructors don’t call the optimal state of shooting competence “unconscious competence” for no reason.
One of my fellow instructors summed up the goal of practice and training: We don’t train until we get it right every time. We train until we can’t get it wrong.
If you’re going to carry your semi-auto pistol with the safety engaged, you better train until you can’t get it wrong coming out of that holster. Otherwise you risk a street criminal leaving you bleeding out, face-down in the dirt somewhere if you believe you’ve mastered the manual safety when you really haven’t. Stay safe out there.