This applies to all people and is rather obvious.
I agree, but just because something may appear obvious to some folks, that doesn't mean it's prudent to allow the 'obvious nature' of something to result in complacency.
This is the argument I anticipated you'd use, and in fact it's why I mentioned it above. So because an extremely small percentage of officers both have poor muzzle discipline and make a mistake when it comes to activating a weapon light, then a citizen will do the same? The use of a firearm by itself is dangerous and there are plenty who have negligent discharges and kill loved ones. This does not mean other private citizens are doomed to the same fate. The same logic applies to weapon lights. There will always be those that lack proper diligence when using a product and result in injury.
My point was that if people who have received some degree of training, supplemented by experience, may still make mistakes when following their training, then it might be prudent for folks without the benefit of such training and experience to approach such practices with due care and consideration.
A straw man if I ever saw one. Yes humans are fallible, no one is saying they aren't. Not all drivers hit the accelerator instead of the brake. Not even most drivers, it's a small subset. You're applying what happens to a small minority and casting it on the whole. By the same logic we wouldn't allow anyone to own firearms in the first place because far more people will die in a year from violating the fundamental rules of safety than anything as specific as weapon lights.
I don't see it as a "strawman argument" in the commonly accepted sense. It wasn't intended as being a superior or misrepresented effort to refute your comments. Instead, it was offered as an example of how a seemingly simple and common skill - like using controls of a car - may get confused in unexpected emergency situations by anyone.
If you'd rather, I could use the example of people using switches on everyday appliances and power equipment may unintentionally try to use them contrary to the desired manner, and stress (or hurry) can sometimes result in mistakes. Making mistakes around triggers (or chainsaws, table saw, etc) can have tragic, albeit unintended results.
It's not a criticism, but an observation and cautionary example using other equipment that's not unfamiliar to a lot of us.
Please point out to me where I said training and experience are not helpful. In fact I said the opposite.
Didn't say you did. Again, it wasn't a criticism, but a simple observation.
... What I'm doing is pointing out that low risk events, while they should be considered, don't condemn a practice on the whole because of the negligence of a few. That was the point of my original response to your article.
I think you meant 'high risk' events?
Risk management and decision making using the combinations of high & low risk and high/low frequency events has been used often enough to help people understand how to gauge risks, and especially in help create training to try and identify and deal with the different combinations of them.
High risk situations that don't occur with common frequency may catch us unprepared to make the correct decisions under stress, and if the potential consequences for the wrong decision/action are dire, it makes sense to try and prepare to deal with such situations without having to 'wing it.
I wasn't 'condemning a practice'.
I was recommending approaching the handling, operation and application of equipment to help prevent unintended problems. Same thing I'd suggest when operating any other inherently dangerous equipment (like chainsaws, table saws & other power tools, operating motor vehicles ... and firearms).
FWIW, I caution the same things when helping train people using hand-held lights at the same time a firearm is being employed, in both training and for actual real world use.
Attention to safety is critical for all of us, especially when using a new type of equipment, including a new configuration of a piece of existing equipment, like attaching a light to a familiar firearm.
That's all.
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