I’m genuinely surprised when very little children manage to fire a gun. The safety is usually quite sturdy, the slide is usually far more robust than movies make it appear, and even the trigger can be hefty depending on the gun.
The gun would have to be chambered with the safety off for a three year old to pull the trigger effectively.
Which, to me, speaks of gross negligence that warrants a strong punishment.
The reason many kids shoot themselves is due to many design choices of these guns.
1- no safety, as in theory the officer’s gun should only be drawn in life or death situations.
2- a round is already chambered for the same reason as above
3- the trigger pull is probably too heavy for young children to pull it with their pointer finger. This ends up with them reorienting the gun to where the muzzle is pointed at their chest and they use their thumbs to depress the trigger.
It’s horrific and every employer whose employee’s have firearms should provide a safe of some sort and require it’s use while off duty.
The thumb on the trigger pull makes so much sense. I remember the first time I fired a pistol being surprised at how difficult it was to squeeze the trigger. I’d fired a .22 rifle quite a bit and the pistol felt ridiculous by comparison.
You’re assuming that implementing a safety feature makes something safer. That’s not always the case.
No sarcasm here, just adding switches and blockers can actually make something less safe. Autopilot features that keep cars in the center of the lane can make the driver less attentive, so it can make the car less safe overall. Softer boxing gloves encourage more head punches, making brain trauma worse. More padding on football players make hits harder, causing more damage overall.
If a manual safety switch on a gun makes people complacent, they could cause more negligent discharges. If people feel that a manual safety switch would make using the gun in an emergency more difficult, they may leave it off, causing the gun to be less safe than if it didn’t exist (because the manufacturer would need to design around that).
I don’t have a strong opinion as to what types of safeties make sense, but a safety is really intended for preventing accidental discharges, not stopping the thing from being fired by a kid playing with it.
I think that the answer is “don’t let the kid play with the gun”, rather than “add another safety”.
Like, it sounds like she got home and just dumped her radio and gun out. The answer to that is to put it away, same as all kinds of poisonous and dangerous other things that you wouldn’t want a 3-year-old playing with.
They’re intended as a safety to reduce the chances of a malfunction, or a dropped gun causing it to discharge. It’s not intended as a safety in terms of accidentally pulling the trigger.
I’ve always heard that safeties provide a false sense of security and complacency. Not sure if there has been any study on that. Trigger safeties are intended to prevent discharges if the gun is dropped or something impacts the trigger.
The Glock has 3 safeties that prevent it from firing unintentionally. They are extremely reliable but they do not have a locking safety. A locking safety is great when the gun is being handled by someone that shouldn’t but this should never be the case. The #1 safety on a gun is the owner. No amount of mechanism on a gun can override the owner. A gun is a tool. I am all for more gun control because there is a gun problem but there is also a people problem and we can’t just blame everything on the guns.
I’m genuinely surprised when very little children manage to fire a gun. The safety is usually quite sturdy, the slide is usually far more robust than movies make it appear, and even the trigger can be hefty depending on the gun.
The gun would have to be chambered with the safety off for a three year old to pull the trigger effectively.
Which, to me, speaks of gross negligence that warrants a strong punishment.
The reason many kids shoot themselves is due to many design choices of these guns.
1- no safety, as in theory the officer’s gun should only be drawn in life or death situations.
2- a round is already chambered for the same reason as above
3- the trigger pull is probably too heavy for young children to pull it with their pointer finger. This ends up with them reorienting the gun to where the muzzle is pointed at their chest and they use their thumbs to depress the trigger.
It’s horrific and every employer whose employee’s have firearms should provide a safe of some sort and require it’s use while off duty.
The thumb on the trigger pull makes so much sense. I remember the first time I fired a pistol being surprised at how difficult it was to squeeze the trigger. I’d fired a .22 rifle quite a bit and the pistol felt ridiculous by comparison.
Most modern pistols no longer have a mechanical safety separate from the trigger.
Most modern pistols are intended to be carried with a cartridge in the chamber.
Most modern pistols are designed around being handled, stored, and used, without human error.
Every sentence you made should be illegal. Designing guns to be less safe should land ceo’s in prison.
You’re assuming that implementing a safety feature makes something safer. That’s not always the case.
No sarcasm here, just adding switches and blockers can actually make something less safe. Autopilot features that keep cars in the center of the lane can make the driver less attentive, so it can make the car less safe overall. Softer boxing gloves encourage more head punches, making brain trauma worse. More padding on football players make hits harder, causing more damage overall.
If a manual safety switch on a gun makes people complacent, they could cause more negligent discharges. If people feel that a manual safety switch would make using the gun in an emergency more difficult, they may leave it off, causing the gun to be less safe than if it didn’t exist (because the manufacturer would need to design around that).
I don’t have a strong opinion as to what types of safeties make sense, but a safety is really intended for preventing accidental discharges, not stopping the thing from being fired by a kid playing with it.
I think that the answer is “don’t let the kid play with the gun”, rather than “add another safety”.
Like, it sounds like she got home and just dumped her radio and gun out. The answer to that is to put it away, same as all kinds of poisonous and dangerous other things that you wouldn’t want a 3-year-old playing with.
Reducto ad absurdum
Americans have always to be ready to shoot someone in the face. There is not time for safety
Congress passed shield laws to protect the companies a very long time ago.
It might have a trigger safety, but those are pretty damn useless.
What… What’s even the point? You can’t pull the trigger, unless you pull the trigger? This is one of the most useless things I’ve ever seen
They’re intended as a safety to reduce the chances of a malfunction, or a dropped gun causing it to discharge. It’s not intended as a safety in terms of accidentally pulling the trigger.
So it’s a safer, not a safety?
Meant to prevent misfires. The trigger doesn’t directly cause firing: there’s a hammer to strike the primer
I’ve always heard that safeties provide a false sense of security and complacency. Not sure if there has been any study on that. Trigger safeties are intended to prevent discharges if the gun is dropped or something impacts the trigger.
The Glock has 3 safeties that prevent it from firing unintentionally. They are extremely reliable but they do not have a locking safety. A locking safety is great when the gun is being handled by someone that shouldn’t but this should never be the case. The #1 safety on a gun is the owner. No amount of mechanism on a gun can override the owner. A gun is a tool. I am all for more gun control because there is a gun problem but there is also a people problem and we can’t just blame everything on the guns.
Yup. The safety can vary, but there absolutely was a round loaded up in the chamber.