I'm not a big fan of manual safeties on striker fired pistols, but it is what it is.

Picking up an M17, I noticed that the manual safety is at least in a position to where when it is on the 'fire' position, it will stay out of the way of my grip as well as almost let your thumb ride on it like a 1911 does.

While I'm 99% sure I know the answer to this, I thought I'd still ask just because there may be someone with some knowledge on this that may have some surprising information.

Dumb, yet curious question is:

If I simply ignore the manual safety and leave it in the 'fire' position, forever, and treat it like every other striker fired handgun I have, is there some sort of weird mechanical reason that this could cause a problem or be unsafe?

My thought-process is, its a striker fired gun. Treat it like a striker fired gun. Keep your finger off the trigger and have a good holster and your GTG. The only 'problem' I can see is that magically the manual safety may get flipped up at some point.

Other than that, is there something I'm missing with basically ignoring the safety is there?

If you don’t make a habit of resting your thumb on top of the safety and actively pressing down, one day the safety will inadvertently get activated and the gun will not go bang when you want (need) it to.

If it were me, I’d sell it and get a no-safety equivalent.

IMO, it's a good practice to get into to point your thumb at the target.

When you draw, your thumb is pointed at the target. When you raise the firearm, your thumb will be pointed at the target... and will have magically swiped off any 1911-style safety that's there.

If you practice this way, you'll never have a problem with the safety, and if the gun doesn't have one, you'll never have a problem with that, either.




The caveat is that if you have something like a Beretta 92, with a slide-mounted safety, you are potentially flipping it the wrong way. But really, those are pretty hard to accidentally manipulate. It did happen to me a couple times, and I put a 'G' kit in my 92FS to 'solve' the problem. Now, if I swipe it, I've just decocked the gun and have a DA pull - but it goes bang. There are some S&W's that have this style safety, and of course Walther P38's, PPKs, etc. But I don't own any of those that I'd ever intend to use for defensive purposes, so I'll put up with it.

I've had a M17 for about two years.  I've put about 5000 rounds through it in various drills.  Safety has been on fire since day one and I've had no issues.  At least with my grip, I've never accidentally engaged the safety.  It stays in the fire position pretty well.

No, the manual safety P320 variants maintain all of the same internal safeties of the standard P320s. A M17 with the thumb safety in the fire position is no less safe than any standard P320. You’ll be fine if you just treat the manual safety as a thumb rest