I never understood the reasoning behind the Glock’s safety - but that’s just me and my limited experience. I bought a Springfield XDM as a first pistol as I liked the safety on the rear of the grip and the way it felt and shot.
Is always in a holster, and always has a round chambered.
The reasoning behind the Glock’s safety is as follows:
1. If you want to fire the weapon, you depress the trigger.
2. If you want to fire the weapon, you must release the safety.
3. One way to be assured that you have depressed the safety when you want to fire the weapon is to put it where it must be depressed when you pull the trigger.
4. The striker in the Glock is about 1/3 cocked before you depress the trigger, not enough to discharge the primer on the round in the chamber. This pre-cock somewhat reduces the trigger pull.
5. The partially cocked striker can not hit the primer unless the internal safety (located in the center of the trigger) is depressed.
The Glock is made to balance reliability, safety, and speed of operation. It is the preferred sidearm of some people, as designed. Because of relatively high rate of inadvertant discharge, some police departments required changes, such as the higher trigger pull variant called the “New York Trigger” required by the PDNY.
Other people disagree with the balance struck by its designers, and so make different choices.
I have a Smith and Wesson double action revolver in .45 ACP. It will also discharge if you pull the trigger, and it has no external safety at all except the operator, and the trigger mechanism. It is not normally carried about while cocked. Not very concealable, but that is my choice. Yours may differ.
Russian approach: “Is gun. Is not supposed to be safe.”
XDM is a solid choice.
The early XD versions, like the Glock required dropping the striker by pulling the trigger, hopefully on an empty chamber.
To me that is a “Rule 3” violation, which I didn’t want to sign up for as a matter of routine. Does the XDM still require that to disassemble?
My fiancee’ bought his XDM for the same reason.
Although the pull through on a Glock is so hard I can’t believe you could discharge it accidentally.