[Semi-OT] Blackhawk Down

Diplomacy Incarnate said:
Oh, and as far as "Chickenshit", anyone 
who's actually held a loaded weapon can 
tell you that having your safety on at all 
times is a way of preventing death and 
serious injury.  As a matter of fact, not 
haivng his safety on was the reason a kid 
from the Service Battery of our supporting 
artillery BN in Kosovo put a 5.56mm round 
through the chest of an 8 year old boy.

I reply:
John, there are several ways this kind of 
catastrophe can be prevented. These track 
back to and include not having your finger 
inside the trigger gaurd and having a well 
designed weapon (some weapons are 
actually poorly enough designed as to go 
off when dropped or banged on something 
a little less gently). Having said that, a 
safety _can_ be a useful thing. 

However, your statement is overstatement. 
(Surprise!). The RCMP in Canada uses a 
Smith and Wesson (IIRC) semi-automatic 
pistol. That particular model 
_has_no_safety_. And these are police 
whose principal function is the protection of 
the public and who do not shoot when they 
have any kind of concern over where the 
round might go, obstructions, richochets, 
marginal hit percentages, etc. They have 
safety as a main concern, but they carry 
one up the spout and no safety. Why might 
they do this? (No, stupidity isn't it).

The fact is a safety is a mechanical 
component that requires user operation at 
a key moment. Two problems arise from 
this: 1) it might jam (sometimes do) thus 
making the weapon unable to fire when it 
needs to and 2) the user might (in a 
moment of surprise or tension) forget to 
take it off or be incapable of it. Even 
trained soldiers and police have this 
problem under stress. So, by eliminating 
the safety, they eliminate this potentially 
lethal set of problems. Yes, it requires that 
you handle the weapon with respect - 
anyone who does not is an idiot. You keep 
it ALWAYS pointed away from things you 
don't consider expendable. You keep your 
finger out of the trigger gaurd until you 
mean to punch one into someone. You 
have a heavy enough pull-weight that the 
trigger won't easily depress accidently. You 
have a well enough designed weapon that 
a bang or bump won't set it off. You use 
stable ammunition. Do these things, and 
the odds of a mishap are very minimal 
(probably less than the odds of the two 
problems I described at the beginning, 
which is what the RCMP think anyway). 

Oh, and for the record, some weapons 
have very bad design. I have heard (no 
verification) that some early (perhaps even 
current?) models of the IMI desert eagle 
series had a small part related to the 
safety which fit in the weapon in two ways. 
One of which made the safety operable. 
The other of which rendered it inoperable 
and (I forget) may have disabled the 
weapon. But you couldn't tell if you weren't 
super careful and this was often screwed 
up under field conditions. 

The Delta Dude was being Hollywood or 
Gung-Ho, but the point remains. The best 
safety is a combination of good equipment 
design and a smart operator. [1]

Tomb. 

[1] Safeties like the Thumb Safety on some 
.45 ACP pistols aren't so bad. And police in 
some states have sworn by them (although 
I've often wondered how you could actually 
hold the .45 without having depressed that 
safety - apparently you can and this has 
saved several police officers who've had 
their own weapon taken from them). 

---------------------------------------------
Thomas Barclay
Co-Creator of http://www.stargrunt.ca 
Stargrunt II and Dirtside II game site
"In God We Trust... on Cold Steel We Depend."