There's a trend among the handgun buying public these days toward semi-automatics that do not have manual safeties. "Safeties are for sissies," perhaps is the attitude.
Some of the fans of the no-safety guns claim their opposition to the manual safety is that it takes too long to flip it when they need to shoot fast. The prospect of a typical concealed handgun license holder encountering a scenario where split second timing counts wouldn't seem to occur all that frequently. But what the heck, let's assume that does happen.
They might be better of with an old west six gun. Take a look at some of these fast draw competitors at this undated video of a World Fast Draw contest in Durango, CO. When the light goes on the shooter draws a single action six shooter, fans the hammer with his/her free hand, and tries to burst a balloon with a wax bullet. The shooters accomplish all of that in less than a half second. The winner did it in less than a third of a second.
That's fast.
Granted, it takes a lot of practice and some naturally quick reflexes to be able to do that. But regardless of that, anyone who can't muster up the dexterity to flip a manual safety on a modern handgun really should admit that they just don't want to spend time practicing. And that tells us they don't really expect to encounter a situation in which the time it takes to flip the safety will make a difference.
Aside: In a previous post I tried to blame slow fingers on the obesity epidemic. But some of those competitors look as if they succumbed long ago to the lure of the high fat diet. There goes that reason.
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