From: bressler@iftccu.ca.boeing.com (Rick Bressler)
Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1993 21:45:21 GMT
Subject: Re: Gun Lovers (was Re: My Gun is like my American Express Card)
Message-ID: <15240081@iftccu.ca.boeing.com>
Organization: Boeing Commercial Airplane Group
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!crabapple.srv.cs.cmu.edu!fs7.ece.cmu.edu!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!gatech!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!bcstec!iftccu!bressler
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
References: <1993Apr14.201541.29549@almserv.uucp>
Lines: 35

>Hell, a Glock is the last thing that should be switched to.  The only thing
>that I know about a Glock is the lack of a real safety on it.  Sure there is
>that little thing in the trigger but that isn't too great of a safety.

You're getting warmer.  The 'little thing in the trigger' has to be
depressed before the trigger can move.  What this means is the damned
thing won't go off until the trigger is pulled.  This makes it just
about (there HAVE been some problems, but we're assuming the gun is
functioning correctly..) as safe as a revolver.  The gun when working
correctly is totally drop safe.

Now, in police work this is a consideration.  There is not a single
documented case I'm aware of where a police officer was killed because
he failed to operate the safety on his firearm.  There are quite a few
documented cases where criminals got hold of the cops gun and couldn't
figure out how to get the safety off in time to use the gun, thus the
proprietary nature of the safety (to the criminal at least) very likely
prevented the office from getting shot.

The purpose of a safety is to make the gun safe from unintentional fire.
This does not mean it should be so complicated as to slow down
intentional use!  Thus the Glock safety is perfectly adequate from a
'safety' standpoint, but not necessarily the most desirable from the
standpoint of open carry where it is easily grabbed by somebody else.
By this criteria it DOES make a lot of sense as a concealed carry piece.
From the standpoint of police use, it is no better (or worse) than a
revolver as far as being 'proprietary' to the officer in the method of
firing it.

The ideal solution may someday be biometric sensing of the user so that
the firearm can't be used by anybody but it's owner, but for now the
wide variety of safety systems helps, unless the criminal happens to be
familiar with that particular type of firearm.

Rick.
