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M&P Shield Carry with Safety On or Off?


Loaded&Ready

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My opinion is that I would have bought the one without a safety

 

I don't think that model exists...

 

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

 

 

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I have an M&P9c with no manual safety and a 9mm Shield with the manual safety.

 

I like PDPSC's idea of disengaging a safety AFTER the gun is properly holstered...

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If your pistol has a safety, you need to practice drawing and disengaging the safety, whether it's on or off. Every time. Develop the muscle memory. There is no other option. You cannot assume that it is off just because you clicked it off once it went into the holster. You must instead always assume that it is on. When milliseconds matter, there is no time to assess an "accidentally" engaged safety.
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If your pistol has a safety, you need to practice drawing and disengaging the safety, whether it's on or off. Every time. Develop the muscle memory. There is no other option. You cannot assume that it is off just because you clicked it off once it went into the holster. You must instead always assume that it is on. When milliseconds matter, there is no time to assess an "accidentally" engaged safety.

 

Exactly. If a gun has a safety, use it. Don't like a safety , buy another gun.

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can the safety lever be swapped out for a 1911 style one? that's most natural for me.

 

I carry an M&Pc w/o safety and it hasn't bothered me, so I think I'd be comfortable carrying the Shield with safety off too, engaging it just to reholster seems like asking for trouble if you accidentally forget to disengage it, or maybe don't disengage it all the way?

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I'm used to thumb safeties from competition with 1911s, my Ruger SR40c, and now the Shield. Mine stays on. It doesn't slow down the draw one split second.

 

the safety is for cleaning the gun,

 

I'm not going downstairs to check my copy, but I bet the S&W manual says differently. Besides, what the heck would a safety have to do with cleaning? I'd be opposed to wiping a cleaning cloth around the trigger guard of a loaded pistol, thanks very much.

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Safety on to holster. Once in the holster, safety off. That small safety is a fine motor skill to disengage. Unless you practice under stress, you are likely to miss taking that safety off under stress.

Practice how you fight, because you will fight how you practice. Make hundreds of thousands of repetitions disengaging the safety every holster draw and reengaging before reholstering. It will become automatic. I don't have a shield, but I carry with safety on.

 

It's a trade off I make for peace of mind ever since seeing this video. Watch the first 10 seconds... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et33bbA0GeM

 

 

There is NO right or wrong answer to this question, except which ever you decide practice practice practice and make it automatic.

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If your pistol has a safety, you need to practice drawing and disengaging the safety, whether it's on or off. Every time. Develop the muscle memory. There is no other option. You cannot assume that it is off just because you clicked it off once it went into the holster. You must instead always assume that it is on. When milliseconds matter, there is no time to assess an "accidentally" engaged safety.

 

+1. If you forget to click it off when you holster it then you're in for a nasty surprise when you draw it and you haven't practiced disengaging it.

 

Personally, one of the reasons I bought the Shield was because it had a safety. It gives me peace of mind that I won't "Glock leg" myself or someone else while carrying Condition 1. Also, in the event that someone is able to separate me from my gun in close quarters, there's a chance they might not be able to use it if they aren't familiar with the battery of arms.

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Personally, if I carried a gun with a safety, I'd want to train to take the safety off, as noted by others above. My reasoning there is that safeties get accidentally engaged as well as accidentally disengaged, and the one can be as bad as the other. I'd go for the maximum assurance; I figure I'm going to manipulate the gun a LOT more than I'm actually going to fight with it, so I want my manipulations to be as safe as they can be without compromising my ability to fight.

I have no problem with carrying/training/competing with a striker-fired gun with no safety, but if I chose a gun with a safety, I'd train to use it (and I very well may, one day.)

 

Massad Ayoob has a write-up of an incident (a sheriff's deputy shooting a wolf/dog stalking some kids in a residential neighborhood) titled "Dealing With the Dingus." The deputy who shot the wolf/dog trained to deactivate the safety on his Beretta, against department policy, which called for leaving the safety off and basically treating the gun like a G or D model with no safety. The deputy who backed him up and tried to fire before he did was carrying his issue Beretta with the safety off, per department instructions (and he was a SWAT rifleman with a lot of rounds downrange, not a guy who didn't shoot or train.) But he'd accidentally "wiped" the safety on when he'd loaded the gun, as happens with slide-mounted safeties sometimes, so he was pulling the trigger against the safety and cursing. By the time he figured it out hit the safety, the shooting was over.

 

I got the story from the deputy who killed the "wolf" (it later turned out that it was a "wolf mix" family pet that had been reported missing earlier that day.)

 

Does that prove anything? No, it's an anecdote. But it illustrates why I think it makes sense to train in a way that you know works with your equipment. If I were going to carry a safety-equipped model off safe, I'd look into adding "swipe the safety off" to my malfunction clearance drill, and practice it dry until I felt like it was my automatic response when I pull the trigger and nothing happens.

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i have the ruger lc9, it has a safety on the left side of the frame like a 1911 and similar. its ok i dont use it its not in the way and i have used it at the range when ive set the gun down for a spell its loaded ready to go and safety is on. for carry though i likely wont ever use it. one main reason is i also plan to use my xdm compact for ccw and dont want to train for safety release on the lc9 and no safety on the xdm, would be confusing in the heat of the moment situations. if its your only ccw pistol you could opt to use the safety and train for it. picking up the muscle memory for dropping the safety on the draw isnt hard to do and is easy to aquire, having spent years with 1911 pistols and drills with drawing from the holster cocked and locked its something that you get used to and dont notice your doing it. At least you have the option.
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