Great post. I’ll try to copy links of prior similar entries. So poignant, that it still comes up for discussion. You’ll probably hear lots of good responses here.
I appreciate that one chooses to carry, and respect how you are extra careful not to have an accident which can hurt you or someone else.
I’m biased, in I want “responsible” law-abiding CCW holders to carry. I’d rather you not carry one in the chamber, if that’s your preference, than to leave it at home.
If having a safety lever helps you be more comfortable, then good for you. If possible, maybe consider another one with a safety lever, to replace your S&W sigma .380, if you prefer.
I carry the same calibers as you do.
This is part of the reason I was careful to seek fire-arms (FA’s) of better quality, within my budget.
At home: IDK, it depends, if there someone else at home who can gain access to it, I might prefer to take extra safety measures.
What comes to mind is how the brain works, habits, and learning. In the heat of the moment, God-forbid, are we for certain to know if we have one in the chamber, do we need to rack it, or do we need to flip the safety switch?
For that reason, personally, I tend to want to have all my FA’s set to the exact same stage of readiness, so that I have less on my mind, and focus on the safety business at hand, and doing the right thing.
To support protection around young children, and intellectually disabled in my family, I carry a portable light weight lock box with key entry for ease, instead of using a thumb safety.
As someone else mentioned, it does take a lot of skill to keep one’s finger and other items away from that trigger. I tend to think of it as an obsession to the point of “there is no over doing it” when it comes to trigger safety.
One fear I have is when holstering, being extra careful not to allow one’s finger, or “shirt “, to get into the trigger guard, nor scarf, or any other cloth.
Exercise:
With one’s firearm completely unloaded, nothing in the pipe, and pointed in a safe direction, imagine or pretend to have a shirt swoop by the trigger guard, and one can see how easy it is to get it trapped in the trigger, and as one pushes the FA into the holster, the cloth acts just like a finger tugging on the trigger, an innocent cute & tiny shirt button – a dangerous anchor.
Food for thought:
Think further, could such a firing ever have occurred, an accidental shot, then the person pulls their FA out of the holster to look at it and try to figure out what happened, blaming it on the gun, but if a shirt got tangled in it - how on earth would they ever even know?
I commend you for raising the awareness.