A safety exists to prevent human error. Not touching the trigger doesn’t solve this.
The primary argument of “you might forget to disengage it in the heat of the moment” is complete bullshit. If you can’t reliably disengage a safety you can’t reliably not pull the trigger during a draw, shooting yourself in the femoral artery or hand. Either you practice your draw until it’s muscle memory or you don’t, removing safety features to simplify the process doesn’t make you safer.
Well glocks don’t have safeties and require you to pull the trigger to disassemble. Negligent discharges when trying to show them off to people absolutely do happen, and with how you have to hold the gun to take it apart the “don’t point at anything you don’t wish to shoot” rule gets overlooked a lot.
They’re the default “modern” handgun but I’ve always said they are a terrible design.
This, I always get slammed for it in gun communities but I think Glock convincing everyone that pistols don’t need safeties (and later that safeties are a liability) is the single most dangerous action in the gun community in my lifetime. Safeties aren’t there to keep the gun from firing on its own, that’s just any modern gun that doesn’t malfunction, they exist as a final measure against human error.
If you buy a gun without a safety and allow anything to touch the trigger when it’s pointed at something you are not fully comfortable with shooting, you are negligent.
Cool, so only criminals who are slightly dedicated to breaking the law get guns and no one else. Got it.
They are highly effective at ensuring that people who do not break laws cannot get guns easily.
The JetBlue pilot has no idea what the other crew was doing. The military flies due regard all the time and when they do, it is on them to deconflict with traffic. The JetBlue pilot might have been surprised by them but they almost certainly weren’t surprised by JetBlue and would have deviated if it actually got close.
Most of the world doesn’t have decent primary radar, especially out over international waters like where this occurred. Likely just a low frequency radar that can say “yup, there’s something out there” but not “he is right there.” The world works on transponders.
So they were 3-ish, maybe 5 miles away with altitude separation over international water? That’s actually fairly routine.
I’m a fan of grip safeties but I still want some form of manual switch I can use to render the gun safe. I honestly think that the FN Five seveN is the best solution but standard 1911 thumb safety (or an HK version with decocker) does the job just fine.