Do you want a safety on a defensive pistol?

[TMan]

I've always been one to want a safety on a pistol. I guess that is one of the subliminal reasons why I don't like Glocks.

Then yesterday my friend was shooting the LS9 when he turned to me and said: "It won't fire." I checked and it was in battery, then I noticed the safety. While firing it, he had accidentally knocked the safety on.

That got me thinking what if you needed the gun to fire in an emergency situation and you accidentally had the safety on?

If someone was pointing a pistol at you, instead of trying to knock it out of battery would it be better to grab it and push up the safety?

That revolver is my pocket is feeling better and better.

[5ontarget]

My main defensive pistols are my Kel-tec .380, and my Springfield XD. Neither has a traditional safety. The KT has no manual safety mechanism, strictly relying on the DAO as the safety mechanism. The xd has the grip safety, and the mostly pointless (IMO) trigger safety. So, I guess I have a minimalist approach for gun safeties on defensive pistols.
That being said, I think it comes down to training. If you train enough with any pistol, it can become a good defensive pistol. Muscle memory, ingrained motor patterns, whatever the current catch phrase happens to be...practice, practice, practice.

[MLB]

The details on "how" are interesting, but sometimes I think we forget that the handgun is not the threat, the person is. Stop the person, not his tool.

Just a thought.

["DoubleAction"]

My 1911s are the only handguns which I have with manual safeties and I have been on the 1911 since the Army. I don't want to hit a sour note here but I fear if the democrats are elected in the White House, we will see required safety locks on all our firearms if we are allowed to keep them.
I don't care much for manual safeties but I'll accept the 1911 because I've grown to know it. I think cops should have manual safeties on their duty pistols because they carry open and many have been known to have been shot by their own weapon after the weapon had been grabbed.
I have had several people, including a cop, not know how to disengage the thumb safety on a 1911. When I was growing up, almost every toy replica automatic was modeled after the 1911. The popular Crossman BB/Pellet/Dart pistol had a thumb safety below the slide but the actual trigger safety was where the magazine release would be on an actual 1911.
I often looked back and wondered if we were intentionally being geared up to handle firearms as children through the replicas. My brother began obtaining die cast replicas of Lugers, Walther PPKs, and a few other pistols.
When I was 16, I walked into a sporting goods store and asked of the most powerful pistol which I could legally purchase. The store clerk was very quick to point me in the direction of a pump action single shot pellet pistol, telling me it would take squirrels with no problem; I told him I would take it. That pellet pistol cost me as much as any good pistol or revolver at the time.