This. ^ I’m always amazed by people who act as if a gun being drop safe is somehow a bad thing.
Absolutely.
It seems like I’ve told this story here before, but it’s worth re-telling. My brother-in-law’s (Dave’s) birthday is on the 4th of July, and my sister always makes a big deal out of it – lots of guests, a barbecue and fireworks.
At Dave’s birthday party about 15 years back, one of the older guests, who was somehow related to Dave, was carrying a .25 ACP in some kind of inside the waistband holster. He might have been intending to conceal the gun, but anyone who looked could see it.
At any rate, as the older guy sat down to eat, the gun fell out of the holster, hit the patio, and went off. The bullet creased Dave’s right wrist and went into his belly.
Luckily, one of Dave’s daughters, who was an Army Medic just home from Iraq, was there. She slowed the bleeding from Dave’s wrist and stomach until the ambulance arrived.
They transported Dave to the hospital, where he was treated and released with a patched up wrist and belly. The .25 ACP bullet had disintegrated in Dave’s stomach, doing little damage. The doctors said he’d “pass” the bullet fragments in a few days. I guess he did. But we saw the x-rays from when he arrived at the hospital, and they looked like Dave had a bunch of pepper in his stomach. Naturally, we called him “Pepper Belly” for a long time after that.
At any rate, it was only by God’s grace that one of the dozen or more children that were at that party wasn’t between the old guy that dropped his gun, and Dave. Dave was standing at the grill, grilling burgers. And he’s tall enough that the bullet, on its upward trajectory, creased his wrist and entered his belly. But if there had been a child in that bullet’s path, it could have easily struck that child in the head. And that child would be severely scarred, minus an eye, brain damaged, or dead.
The danged news media made a big enough deal out of the accidental shooting as it was. I can’t imagine how much more bad publicity there would have been if a child had been shot.
There’s no reason for not carrying a drop safe gun. No reason at all. For heck sakes, I’m 69 years old, and even as a child, my dad taught me how to load a Colt single action – load one, skip one, load the other four, cock and lower the hammer. And nowadays there’s no reason, no reason at all, why gun manufactures shouldn’t build drop safe guns.