Grip safety that blocks the movement of the slide

[Ozzieman]

This month’s American Rifleman Magazine has a write up on the Springfield Armory’s XD (M)-9.
One item on the guns numerous safety features has me questioning if this is really a good idea.
The gun has a grip safety, to me this is a good idea, easy to use. But they made the gun so that
“Also the grip safety blocks the movement of the slide until its depressed, thus locking the striker,,,,,,, You cannot even chamber a round unless you are holding the pistol correctly and depress the grip safety” to quote the American Rifleman magazine.
This makes the gun very difficult to use if your one handed or if you get disabled in a fight.
My poll question is this. Do you think that a grip safety that blocks the movement of the slide is a good idea or not?
Thanks every one for your input.

[Cemo]

Probably a lawyer thing.

[David the Gnome]

Seems like an extra part to break to me.

[Shane Tuttle]

Hard to say. I can see the safety aspect of it. I can also see your point of being disabled in a fight. Haven't checked to confirm, but I think my regular XDs have the same feature. Tens of thousands of rounds between the the two XDs and XD(M) of mine and I don't recall. Anecdotally says it isn't even an issue if you ask me.

Of course, those rounds fired hasn't counted in saving my bacon. But many of them were in some intense training courses with firearm manipulations....

[AK103K]

I always used the grip safety (did not depress it) while doing a press check on my 1911's. That wouldnt work to well if it locked the slide.

[lee n. field]

It's a non-issue.

Haven't checked to confirm, but I think my regular XDs have the same feature.

Regular XDs do also behave that way.

[chris in va]

I sold my XD9 because my large hand size wouldn't reliably disengage the grip safety.

[Double Naught Spy]

“Also the grip safety blocks the movement of the slide until its depressed, thus locking the striker,,,,,,, You cannot even chamber a round unless you are holding the pistol correctly and depress the grip safety” to quote the American Rifleman magazine.
This makes the gun very difficult to use if your one handed or if you get disabled in a fight.

I can see the safety aspect of it. I can also see your point of being disabled in a fight.

Okay, I don't follow/understand how locking the slide via the grip safety is for safety. Is that so as to keep the slide from being pushed out of battery and potentially the slide getting stuck out of battery for some reason and hence the gun not being able to fire until the gun is returned to battery?

So you can't chamber a round unless you have a proper grip depressing the safety? That seems like a strange claim by folks I would think would know better. The gun doesn't know if you have a proper grip or not so long as the grip safety is being depressed. You can hold the gun improperly and be depressing the grip safety to free the slide for charging the gun.

With that said, under what conditions would you want or need to be chambering a round and not have a proper grip on the gun?

Why would the slide being locked by the grip safety make the gun difficult to use one-handed (either by choice or if one hand is disabled)? Obviously folks don't have any real issues with the grip safety when to comes to shooting one-handed. So the grip safety doesn't seem to make the gun difficult to shoot.

If not during shooting, then what does the grip safety make difficult to do? Chambering rounds or clearing malfunctions? The one-handed methods that I know for doing these tasks involve having a proper grip on the gun, grip safety or not.

[jmr40]

I had an XD for a while. Hated the grip safety and sold the gun. The gun has potential, but I'll never own another as long as it has the grip safety.

The grip safety on a 1911 is useless also, but it is much better designed and I can live with it.

[RT]

Because of AARs like the one below, I would never want a grip safety on my CCW. However that is just personal opinion.

When he pulled me up, he was at my 5 O'clock position. I was still trying to keep him from seeing my gun until I was able to turn into him, so when I came up, I basically had my right hand (holding the pistol) tight to my stomach/chest with the muzzle pointed in the direction of my left shoulder. I don't know why I did that, except to conceal it and maybe so he couldn't take it away from me. I started turning to my right, into him, flipping the safety at some point along the way. He either saw the gun or heard the safety click as I had turned into him enough for him to be at my 3 O'clock and shoved his revolver inside my open jacket against my stomach and fired the first round. Luckily, his angle was off and it only grazed my stomach. Unluckily, I had my left hand tucked against my left side and the round passed through my palm and out the base of my thumb at my wrist.

I continued turning toward him while lowering my pistol to return fire, which evidently put the right hand directly in the line of fire as he squeezed off another round. I can only assume that my hand blocked the shot from hitting my stomach or chest as we were practically face to face at that point. It took me just a second to recover and he started retreating toward the door, backing away from me and shooting. I got two shots off as he was backing away, both missing him. I had the little problem with the next round not going off, thinking I had a jam, I ducked behind the table to clear the gun and yelled for everyone to stay down. I looked down and saw how bad my hands were as I cleared the round out, and stood back up to continue fire. (Looking back on it, I think I realized that I wasn't getting a good grip due to the screwed up hand and neglected to engage the grip safety) He had his back to the door by now and we exchanged a couple more shots (which is when I scored my hit and near miss) until his revolver hit on spent rounds. I will NEVER forget that. There were three clicks. He realized he was out of ammo and was out the door before I could get another shot off. Even in the heat of the moment, I did not attempt to shoot him in the back or pursue him.
http://www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=1&f=5&t=988015

[Ozzieman]

Double Naught you bring up some good questions.
Okay, I don't follow/understand how locking the slide via the grip safety is for safety.
In this sentence you seem to agree that it’s not a valid safety feature. If it’s not a valid safety feature then I ask you why it is needed.

Why would the slide being locked by the grip safety make the gun difficult to use one-handed (either by choice or if one hand is disabled)? Obviously folks don't have any real issues with the grip safety when to comes to shooting one-handed. So the grip safety doesn't seem to make the gun difficult to shoot.

Since I don’t own one, I can’t answer that. I do agree that there are methods that you can load a gun one handed if you have something to press the end of the slide against. But what do you do if you don’t have a ledge or flat object to use? Hold the gun in your hand with the slide held between your legs and work the action?
I can come up with numerous ways to work a gun like the 1911 with one hand and use nothing other than what I have on my person, but I can’t come up with one I would consider safe with having to hold the gun with a proper shooting grip caused by the slide lock grip safety.

I was not trying to start a discussion of the pros and cons of having a grip safety that blocks the slide from moving but a question if you (all of us here that carry) think that this is a good idea.

For me, a grip safety on an auto IF it functions with no action other than holding the gun in a natural manner and in no way affects the shooter is a good safety item on the gun.
The only safety value of a slide lock due to the grip safety is to keep a child from loading the gun and I’m not sure that would work with someone older than 8 or so.
But to have a grip safety that must be held closed to perform a reload or to clear a failure is not a good idea in my mind and a high percentage of the people that have logged there choice agree.
I have never owned or shot a Springfield Armory’s XD so I have no comment on how good or bad the grip safety works on the XD. But it’s like a magazine disconnect. I own several guns that had (the proper term is HAD) magazine disconnects. I had them removed or got rid of the gun or it’s not a carry gun.
The last thing I want is a loaded gun that will not shoot with a round in the chamber when I pull the trigger.
I count rounds, I know when there is only one left and that’s when I change mags not when the slide locks back. To me a gun that has to have the grip safety depressed to cycle the IS as bad as a gun with a magazine disconnect.
As David the Gnome put it “Seems like an extra part to break to me.” Well said.

If you like this feature and it works for you then it’s a good thing. For me it's a reason to never own one or any gun that comes with the same feature.
It would be interesting to find out the REAL reason that Springfield put that feature on their gun.
Was it by design or by lawyer?

[balance]

I don't see the positive to this feature, and I'm curious if anyone can come up with a good reason for it. I'm also curious about what happens on these pistols if you hit the slide release with an improper grip, does this grip safety block forward motion of the slide as well?

[Jake Balam]

The grip safety only stops the slide from going back, on my xd (not xdm) I can release the slide without the safety depressed.

I don't really see how it would effect one handed reloads at all.

[Double Naught Spy]

Interesting story, RT. You want to have a gun that will shoot despite having both hands having first been shot, but not shot so bad that you can't grip the gun or shot so bad that your fingers won't pull the trigger. That does seem like an excessively narrow set of parameters, but I do see your point. I would think that you would also want a gun that is exceptionally easy to aim after suffering such injuries as well given that the guy was unable to hit his opponent at extremely close range.

Safeties are funny things. People can point to lives saved and lives lost because of them. There are a lot of police officers who have been shot, many killed, with their own guns that didn't have safeties on them such as revolvers and Glocks. There are a bunch of officers who have had their guns taken away and despite repeated attempts, the perp can't make the guns fire because of the safeties.

They all have some advantages and have some disadvantages. The story you cited is the only one I have ever seen where a person has been shot through both hands and was still able to use his gun at all.

[Sgt Pepper]

It does not matter what features your gun has or does not have, what material it is made of, what sights it has, what cartridge it shoots, how many are in the stack, what trigger it has, how proven or reliable it is - "stuff" can and will go wrong. The unexpected always happens. The original question was a loaded question at the outset. If you are worried about being able to retract a slide, then stick to wheelguns.

[Sixer]

External safeties like this just leave you exposed to more potential issues to deal with in a high stress situation. Fortunately for most, these are optional and we have the ability to choose a gun with or without them.

I personally wan't nothing but my trigger finger as a safety on my CCW. Just my preference...