Here’s my whole train of logic on what to carry.
1. You need to be good with what you carry. That means manual of arms, accuracy, speed to deploy, reload, etc.
2. To be good you have to practice.
3. To practice you need to enjoy enough to train.
4. People who live with you also need to be somewhat prepared to use your weapon, so they should be able to which means another person or five need to repeat steps 1 through 3.
And that conversation stops there, but leads into this one.
If my 11 and 12 year olds are training at all, there needs to be an immediate and positive stop and safe. Hammered pistols and revolvers can have hammers lowered gently if there’s no manual safety. That takes the required energy out of the system which ignites a primer. How do you make a striker fired pistol safe? You unload it which means more time in the hands which is not immediate. If there is necessary hands on instruction for grip, stance, etc, and multiple hands on the gun it needs to be verified that it’s not going to go off accidentally.
So with this second conversation in mind, you suddenly start eliminating a large chunk of the possibilities.
Revolvers are OK but barely. Thumbing down a hammer is not ideal, but it works. So let’s give revolvers a C grade here. It’s passing, but not spectacularly. DAO revolvers are a different animal entirely and they get an A. Single action revolvers are so much fun to use but they still get a C except for those unmentionable ones with the little flip safety that everybody gripes about.
Slide-guns are tricky, and it really goes by type. Strikers like glocks are always partially cocked. That don’t work for me. Still energy to slam a firing pin into a primer. No dice. To get truly safe you drop mag and clear chamber. Too much time. DAO strikers are generally ok in the same way that revolvers are. Hammer fired guns are similar.
But ALL of those different types of gun get a huge chunk of extra credit from a manual safety. I can shout and the kids take finger off trigger, click safety on and range is good. It’s now safe to do that hands on correction, or let the dog run through the yard, get the 2yr old back inside away from noise, or whatever may be going on.
Instantly safe… well safe within a couple seconds.
So now, back to the original thought. What can my kids train with, which means what can I carry that they may end up with in a really awful situation? It’s going to be either a DA revolver, or a semiauto with a safety. Revolvers have slow reloads and carry less rounds loaded. Probably gonna be my EC9s. And yes, it should have a safety for all those reasons Mas Ayoob says, and the other reasons that other people think up, but the one that matters for me is that my kids can train with it and be competent with it because there is a chance that they will need it.
