Stop Safety Discrimination! All Safeties Deserve Respect!

[CJW]

I have decided that, clearly, the best way to get people to buy into an idea is to go an an "Occupy" style rant and get a bunch of crowds with appropriate signs and chants. Unfortunately my budget is too limited to buy that much astroturf.

On a serious note, I had a beavertail mod done to my 2011 last year—a "hard tail" conversion that splits the grip safety and hard welds the tail to the frame, leaving only the portion below the cross pin as the active grip safety. After the welding was done, the 'smith asked me if I wanted the grip safety disabled, pinned, or fully functional. I thought about it some and finally said, "Well, it doesn't matter for USPSA, but there's this one 3-gun match I am thinking about shooting that recognizes the grip safety for safe grounding conditions."

Wouldn't you know it, I shot Blue Ridge this year, and on Stage 3, getting up from prone beneath the Jimmy, I dropped my STI in the dump bucket...and apparently it slid down towards the top of the gun and the bucket pushed the thumb safety off. Clearing guns, the RO showed it to me, still in the bucket (and that's another rant—nobody should ever be DQ'ed for an improperly abandoned gun that was not shown to the shooter before anybody handled it—they did it right at BRM3G), no thumb safety. My heart sank, until I realised this was that one match! I asked the RO to check the grip safety, so he cleared it out, pointed downrange, took an awkward grip around the grip safety, and the trigger didn't move. Yay! The match went on...

The point is, of course, that a 1911 or 2011 with a functional grip safety is no less safe than a Glock or an M&P in a dump barrel. Since we do not require 1911 type guns to have Series 80 firing pin blocks, it follows that our current grounding rules merely require that the trigger not be operable when "on safe," and the grip safety does just that.

On a side note, the reason that USPSA rules (and others derived or inspired from them) don't recognize the grip safety for grounding purposes is that those rules refer only to the "primary safety mechanism" as being relevant. A little study of the history of the M1911 shows that the grip safety alone was present in the M1907 and the early M1911 prototypes, and that the thumb safety was added as a requirement of the Army Cavalry to facilitate locking the slide during reholstering to prevent pushing the slide out of battery. That is to say, the grip safety is the primary trigger safety mechanism in the M1911 design.

Kudos to Andy Horner for recognizing this obvious truth, and I really, really want to see more matches adopt this simple, common sense interpretation of safe grounding for 1911/2011 style pistols.

Edited November 3, 2014 by CJW

[Vlad]

Too many people disable their grip safety, so you would need to test every single gun dropped without the manual safety on. Instead of just looking at it and saying its good, you would now need to "fire" (dry or wet) each gun after each dump to prove it works.

[CJW]

Too many people disable their grip safety, so you would need to test every single gun dropped without the manual safety on. Instead of just looking at it and saying its good, you would now need to "fire" (dry or wet) each gun after each dump to prove it works.

And I don't have a problem with this. This is exactly what happened for me at BRM3G—the gun was tested. It doesn't really add any time. Besides, all (most) of us 1911/2011 shooters know that grip safeties can and do wear out, so I figure most shooters would keep using the thumb safety anyway; the grip safety can just be the extra margin of safety for a grounded pistol.

[Vlad]

Well instead of clearing each gun, you are now test firing each questionable gun. I think from a match management point of view thats an issue. Plus who does it? RO or shooter? Is there a question about the RO not pressing hard enough or pressing too much or whatever? I personally think it is a bad idea.

[kz45]

I think it can be used as a safety net incase it gets knocked off! I don't believe shooters will stop using the thumb safety, it's to ingrained, I know I can't set one down without engaging the safety, it's done subconsciously

[Ssanders224]

Are you familiar with the internals of a 1911?

The thumb safety (sear block) and grip safety (trigger bow block) are not equal in regards to how they prevent an AD.

[CJW]

Well instead of clearing each gun, you are now test firing each questionable gun. I think from a match management point of view thats an issue. Plus who does it? RO or shooter? Is there a question about the RO not pressing hard enough or pressing too much or whatever? I personally think it is a bad idea.

What we are talking about here is that, with almost no exceptions that I have seen, pistol dump containers are, to some extent, not very compatible with external thumb safeties. I have yet to see a good way to redesign the dump bucket to avoid this, so the end result is that, every match, a couple or three shooters will go home, their time and money wasted, because they dumped safe pistols that then had their safeties swiped off through contact with the bucket. I think a little bit of time spent checking grip safeties is well worth the benefit in shooters not getting screwed over by this problem.

You seem to think this would be some huge time sink, and yet Blue Ridge does it just this way, and I would be shocked if more than half a dozen grip safeties had to be checked for the entire match. The RO showed me the pistol. It was cleared. Then the RO racked the slide, grabbed the grip below the grip safety, pointed it downrange, and pulled the trigger. The hammer did not fall and I was good to go. This took maybe ten extra seconds, tops. If you really want to make sure it takes no extra time, then clear and score the stage as shoot, mark it as a 'potential DQ,' have the RM come by and take the shooter in question to the safe area. There the grip safety gets checked—if it works, no DQ, otherwise DQ. That takes no time away form the stage reset.

[Moltke]

The fact that a striker gun has passive safeties that are 'good enough' has always made me wonder why a passive safety (grip safety) on a 1911/2011 isn't also 'good enough'.

Obviously, if the mechanism is disabled then thats not 'good enough'... but if its active and the gun can't fire, isn't that the whole point?

[CJW]

Are you familiar with the internals of a 1911?

The thumb safety (sear block) and grip safety (trigger bow block) are not equal in regards to how they prevent an AD.

Yes, I am, and they don't have to be "equal." They just have to both work as advertised. And a Series 70 can theoretically be inertia fired with both safeties engaged, so it's not like there is a 100% AD free solution, regardless.

[Stlhead]

Rules are rules, and they don't need to make sense or be reasonable. There is no reason for the gun to be on safe in the first place, it's in a dump box pointed in a safe direction and no one is touching it. Mark will be here shortly to argue that we need many layers of safety (bubble wrap) to keep our sport from being overrun by lawyers, best to close this thread now.

[Jadeslade]

Not sure any of this is actually safety oriented. It is a convention we have arrived at to facilitate throughput in a match. Nothing unsafe about any inert gun, until handled by someone. There are so many threads on this already. Yes, handgun dump buckets suck and safety on rules for 1911 style and trigger safety is adequate for striker guns are arbitrary match directors decisions. What's your solution?

[Moltke]

It would seem he's advocating for functioning passive safeties on all guns be treated as such, safe. Which seems like an OK idea unless there's some huge reason not to have it that way.

[Jadeslade]

I agree. But the thundering heard who have heard of ADs NDs and "guns going off", that no one else seems to have heard about will be along to complain about passive safeties and 1lb Glock triggers.

[Vlad]

Well you guys should be quite happy with the move towards time penalties for guns abandoned without the safeties on. It is only one step closer to not caring about safeties at all.

However, are you guys ok with holstering your 2011 with the thumb safety off? I mean they have a grip safety, right?

[Jadeslade]

Perfect timing! Holstering a gun for use is an entirely different issue. Kind of like a parked car vs. moving vehicle.

[Sterling White]

Guns do not go bang by themselves. They do go bang with some kind of divine intervention

[dcloudy777]

Mechanical safeties are completely irrelevant to the Safe condition" of a weapon in the first place.

Guns are "safe" when they are pointed in a safe direction and nothing is in the trigger guard. Period. Proper grounding container design and placement is all that matters.

The 4 rules work... I have no idea why gun matches try to mess with them.

[CJW]

Jadeslade, exactly what I was thinking. Even in my own mind, I have to admit, I had conflated "safe holster condition" with "safe grounding condition," but of course that need not be the case. For a striker fired gun, it obviously is the case, since there really is no other condition (other than empty) to worry about. For a DA/SA gun, I am fine with both being the same, i.e., decocked. But for that mythical beast that is the 1911 design...

Assuming the goal is to somehow make ADs less likely, then the question is, what causes ADs? Three things, I can think of—bang switch, inertia induced firing, and mechanical failure. The theory behind the passive SafeAction system is that it is drop safe (striker block prevents inertia/drop firing) and the swing-wing inner trigger means the trigger can't be pulled other than intentionally with something in the trigger guard. Wonderful. if internal parts fail at the wrong time, well, them theoretically a striker could fall and boom, you get an AD and not much you can do about it. That's why grounding containers need to have safe muzzle direction.

Now, with a 1911/2011 system with no firing pin block, you will never get a (more or less guaranteed) drop safe pistol, no matter what. If internal parts fail, well, that is what the safety intercept notch is for, right? So the third cause is the bang switch. So, whether the thumb safety prevents the trigger from operating the sear or a grip safety prevents the trigger from being pulled (like the Glock's swing wing), you cover the booger-hook induced AD.

Vlad's interest as a practicing RO aside, I just do not see the administrative overhead of the occasional grip safety test as being a prohibitive burden on this approach (and I both MD at my club and RO at various places, so I see this from that side, as well). And drawing from my comments above, I don't see a mechanical reason not to trust functional grip safeties in otherwise well designed grounding conditions.

So, as Moltke put it, the point is to advocate for all passive safety systems being treated equally in the sport of 3-Gun for the purposes of safely grounding firearms.

Last two random thoughts: (1) Have you ever seen a match check the functionality of passive safeties in striker fired guns? No, we just trust them, though I am sure it is entirely possible for home-gunsmithing to result in non-functional or reduced margin safety systems. (2) I am of the opinion that the current attitude towards safeties traces all the way back to USPSA/IPSC pistol rules about "primary" safeties; since those sports don't (really) deal with abandoned guns, they only concern themselves with safety in the holster, and that's the axiom from which our current rules have been derived.

[CJW]

Mechanical safeties are completely irrelevant to the Safe condition" of a weapon in the first place.

I basically agree with this statement, but from a match admin point of view I need to side with MarkCO's "defense-in-depth" approach to safety and liability, so I have no problem with requiring the use of safeties where present, while still opening up the discussion to what constitutes a sufficient application thereof.

[openclassterror]

The grip safety on an XD-series pistol blocks the SEAR not the trigger bow, which prevents striker drop by mechanical interference. The grip safety on a 1911 only prevents the trigger from moving, and in drop tests has been shown insufficient to prevent ADs ( the sear can still bounce since it is not blocked. That is the reason for the half-cock notch, to catch the hammer if it falls). The thumb safety provides mechanical interference to hammer fall, in a similar manner to the XDm grip safety. The Firing pin block in a 1911/2011 is deemed unnecessary because the manual safety provides the mechanical interference. With a grip safety only, you need one or the other (manual safety or FP block) to achieve the same level of resistance to ADs. All modern striker-fired guns contain some variation of a striker block to effect mechanical interference when the trigger is not fully rearward.

[Vlad]

Perfect timing! Holstering a gun for use is an entirely different issue. Kind of like a parked car vs. moving vehicle.

Sorry, it doesn't answer my question. I assume though that you mean that you wouldn't feel comfortable with a cocked and unlocked 1911 being holstered with the safety off but you are ok with it a bucket?

What is the difference? In either case the gun is not under the active control of its owner. Heck I can argue the holster is a LOT safer then a bucket, the trigger is well covered, the shooter is mindful of the gun as they grab it instead of rushing to dump it, it is almost in every way safer.

So please explain to me how is a different issue? Are you saying the designed for the purpose holster is less safe then the NOT designed for the purpose huge blue "hoster" that is a bucket?

I have ZERO issue with the notion that a gun should be abandoned in ANY condition that we accept for a holstered gun. For example some match rule say if I start with empty chamber hammer down safety off, and I draw my gun that way and dump it without charging it first that is unsafe because the safety isn't on. Yep, thats goofy, but that is not what we are talking about.

[Tyro Shooter]

I've shoot a match or two here and there for a few years and seen a lot of rules for the condition of guns to be abandoned in their proper dump boxes.

the one way there is never any questions is when the match director says at the shooters meeting and points out to the assembled masses that first morning

"ALL FIREARMS ABANDONED IN THEIR RESPECTIVE DUMP BOXES WILL BE COMPLETELY DEVOID OF AMMUNITION, NO MAGAZINES IN THE RECEIVER - EMPTY OR NOT, NOTHING IN THE TUBE, NOTHING IN THE CHAMBER, NOTHING ON THE CARRIER"

reasonably straight forward, easy to enforce, if it's jammed = unjamb it before you leave, if it's stuck = unstuck it.

this will get you to make sure of all of your equipment and movements and stage planing before you get to the box.

(in all fairness I'm not the poster boy of pre planning on a stage . . but i still like the idea of empty guns in the dump boxes)

Edited November 3, 2014 by Tyro Shooter

[SonOfSpartans]

If someone owns an M&P with a thumb safety what is the required dump condition? Supported by?

Is there not an issue with timing on striker guns that can damage the block thus rendering them inoperative? Do we ever check for this.

I know of an AD upon holstering a Glock. Not from clothing but a pin worked out.

Be careful. Check your kit.

[dcloudy777]

So please explain to me how is a different issue? Are you saying the designed for the purpose holster is less safe then the NOT designed for the purpose huge blue "hoster" that is a bucket?

You aren't going to thrust your hand into a blue bucket and bring a pistol out as fast as you possibly can. That's a huge difference.

Honestly, a 1911-style gun, even without a grip safety, would be perfectly safe sitting in a proper holster with the thumb safety off. It only becomes "less safe" when you start trying to draw it, especially since you're likely trying to do it in a hurry.

[Vlad]

You are however going to shove it in there as quickly as possible while running by with your mind on the next section of the stage. I've seen people miss the bucket completely. I've seen people grabing it back out because they forgot a target.

Oh, and i've seen them land backward with the muzzle towards the shooter.

Edited November 3, 2014 by Vlad