The Glock does not have manual safety mechanism, which means that if there is a round in the chamber, that gun is ready to shoot.
How the fuck is this legal? Seems like requiring a manual safety mechanism on all firearms is a no-brainer.
Any of the folks who place more value in their ability to end another person’s life on a split second than the safety of their own children want to chime in and explain this one to me?
Glock, an Austrian company, uses a variety of common sense safeties that are automatic in nature.
With a manual safety the user has to remember to engage / dis-engage it as appropriate. This means a weapon can be left in an unsecured state simply because the user forgot (or elected not too) engage the manual safety. Conversely if the user forgets to disengage the manual safety the weapon will not fire when they need it too, which makes an awful lot of sense when you know that Glock designed these weapons for Law Enforcement.
To work around the weaknesses of a Manual Safety Glock designed what it calls its “Safe Action System” which you can read about here.. In a nutshell a Glock will not fire unless the trigger is intentionally pulled in the correct way.
Other pistol manufacturers will have some, or all, of those feature and may have other things such as “Grip Safeties” where you have to be holding the pistol both correctly and tightly enough before it can discharge.
On balance these kinds of automatic safeties are at least as effective as a manual safety and there are valid arguments with empirical evidence showing that they can be safer.
Any of the folks who place more value in their ability to end another person’s life on a split second than the safety of their own children want to chime in and explain this one to me?
Could you explain why you are using such inflammatory language? NO safety can or is meant to make a loaded firearm safe from a child. It’s arguably easier for a child to flip the selector lever on a manual safety than it is for one to grip a firearm a specific way or pull its trigger in a specific way (or both).
Loaded weapons, regardless of their type(s) of safety mechanism, should not be left where they can be handled by children.
It doesn’t have a switch or button you have to manually toggle. There are safety devices that automatically disable by pulling the trigger or holding the grip, these are more common on pistols.
Glocks in particular are incredibly safe when it comes to accidental discharge. They physically can’t fire without the trigger being pulled.
My favorite pistol is a Para Ordinance Tac Four LDA. The LDA acts in a very similar manner to Glock’s once a round is chambered (hammer cocked). The Light Double Action still requires a full pull to discharge but it has a similar trigger tension to a Glock rather than a traditional double action. The reason this weapon is my favorite is because in addition to the accidental discharge safety feature it also has a full grip safety which requires you ti actually palm the weapon, and a manual thumb safety. There is absolutely no way to argue accidental shooting with that weapon. Even if you chamber a round, cock the LDA, palm the pistol, disengage the manual safety, your finger was on the trigger and it somehow twitched, the LDA’s travel and tension is such that the weapon would still not discharge.
Does it require extra training to get the safety on/off motion to be muscle memory? Yes. Does the weapon have a slower “rounds per second” than a Glock? A little bit. Do I feel more comfortable with it in my hand than a Glock? Absolutely. I wish Glock had an model that integrated all of the features that used to be in the Paras.
How the fuck is this legal? Seems like requiring a manual safety mechanism on all firearms is a no-brainer.
Any of the folks who place more value in their ability to end another person’s life on a split second than the safety of their own children want to chime in and explain this one to me?
Glock, an Austrian company, uses a variety of common sense safeties that are automatic in nature.
With a manual safety the user has to remember to engage / dis-engage it as appropriate. This means a weapon can be left in an unsecured state simply because the user forgot (or elected not too) engage the manual safety. Conversely if the user forgets to disengage the manual safety the weapon will not fire when they need it too, which makes an awful lot of sense when you know that Glock designed these weapons for Law Enforcement.
To work around the weaknesses of a Manual Safety Glock designed what it calls its “Safe Action System” which you can read about here.. In a nutshell a Glock will not fire unless the trigger is intentionally pulled in the correct way.
Other pistol manufacturers will have some, or all, of those feature and may have other things such as “Grip Safeties” where you have to be holding the pistol both correctly and tightly enough before it can discharge.
There’s quite a variety of automatic safeties in use in the pistol world. If you are interested you can read about them here.
On balance these kinds of automatic safeties are at least as effective as a manual safety and there are valid arguments with empirical evidence showing that they can be safer.
Could you explain why you are using such inflammatory language? NO safety can or is meant to make a loaded firearm safe from a child. It’s arguably easier for a child to flip the selector lever on a manual safety than it is for one to grip a firearm a specific way or pull its trigger in a specific way (or both).
Loaded weapons, regardless of their type(s) of safety mechanism, should not be left where they can be handled by children.
It doesn’t have a switch or button you have to manually toggle. There are safety devices that automatically disable by pulling the trigger or holding the grip, these are more common on pistols.
Glocks in particular are incredibly safe when it comes to accidental discharge. They physically can’t fire without the trigger being pulled.
My favorite pistol is a Para Ordinance Tac Four LDA. The LDA acts in a very similar manner to Glock’s once a round is chambered (hammer cocked). The Light Double Action still requires a full pull to discharge but it has a similar trigger tension to a Glock rather than a traditional double action. The reason this weapon is my favorite is because in addition to the accidental discharge safety feature it also has a full grip safety which requires you ti actually palm the weapon, and a manual thumb safety. There is absolutely no way to argue accidental shooting with that weapon. Even if you chamber a round, cock the LDA, palm the pistol, disengage the manual safety, your finger was on the trigger and it somehow twitched, the LDA’s travel and tension is such that the weapon would still not discharge.
Does it require extra training to get the safety on/off motion to be muscle memory? Yes. Does the weapon have a slower “rounds per second” than a Glock? A little bit. Do I feel more comfortable with it in my hand than a Glock? Absolutely. I wish Glock had an model that integrated all of the features that used to be in the Paras.