Semi Auto pistol: Safety or No Safety

Don't pull the trigger unless you are ready to fire. I have an M&P and love it. You can drop it while loaded and the firearm not go off. Whereas a lot of firearms with a safety can go off if not on safety and is dropped. I don't mind not having a safety on a pistol. On a rifle is a different story. I only have one rifle without a safety. It is a varmint rifle meant for bench rest only.

Nay

You are the safety. Everything else is a crutch for people who probably shouldn't be holding a weapon.

My two main pistols are both. Oftentimes the safety seems silly and a waste of time, except with kids around it gives some sense of security, but not enough that I'd leave it around loaded. Hence the issue.

I think one ideal is no safety secured in a retention holster.

1. Almost every modern make of semi-auto pistol has one or more internal safeties. For example, Glocks have three of them (although the "trigger safety," like that of the XD, was designed to serve as an "import point" and has little practical benefit).

2. Very few of today's highly respected trainers advocate external safeties for self defense handguns. It's no coincidence that the vast majority carry handguns that have no external safety.

3. Target pistols ... sure. Hunting rifles and shotguns ...sure. Target pistols and hunting weapons aren't carried in holsters.

4. Self-defense handguns should be carried in a holster. And every good holster will cover the trigger. So, in effect, you have an extra external safety right there. Your primary safety is your brain -- and your trigger finger. Follow the 4 universal safety rules and you'll be fine -- and, as was said earlier, "Just don't pull the trigger."

5. Most folks who advocate external safeties have little actual experience and/or training in deploying a self defense handgun. There is a huge practical difference between "being able to switch the safety off" and "being incapable of failing to switch it off." As Givens and Yeager preach, "Amateurs train until they get it right. Professionals train until they can't get it wrong."

6. Fans of external safeties make the (valid) point that it only takes a fraction of a second to make the gun ready to fire. This is true if you get it right the first time, and assumes (in the best case) that you have fractions of a second to spare.

7. Those who have shot in competition have probably seen the guys who, in their first match, screw up on the first few stages. That relatively low level of stress quite often results in people failing to disengage the safety, or flipping the lever in the wrong direction. The penalty in a pistol match is limited to embarrassment and the loss of time on the stage. The penalty in a gunfight is .............. ??

8. If a person is so fearful, or unsure of his own skills and judgment, he probably needs one or more external safeties. If he is squared away (well trained, and practices regularly) he is probably far better off without one.

9. I could be wrong about all of the foregoing. But if I am, based on the overwhelming number of professional trainers who recommend against external safeties, I am in pretty good company.

edited to add: TigerOnTheHill's post on page one is spot on -- as are virtually all of his gun-related posts. I don't know him, but am certain he has had some solid training. It shows. And FWIW I see little, if anything, in Fisherbm1112's posts that's at variance with mainstream doctrine.

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What's the boards opinion on the safety issue?

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Cocked and locked on any 1911 I have around me loaded.