Why the lack of pistols with a grip safety

I guess this all answers the OP's question then.

There is no reason for the manufacturer to spend extra time, money, and effort to implement a mostly nostalgic safety that if done incorrectly could cause more problems than it solves.
 
Why add a feature that isn't needed?
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If the purse-carried handgun the NDed in VA about a week ago had had a grip safety, the ND might not have happened.

Not everyone grips a handgun exactly the same
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Does anyone grip a 1911, a Springfield XD, or a Remington R51 in a way that won't depress the grip safety? I realize it would be a problem when trying to do trick shots with my feet, but ... .
 
John Moses Browning only added a grip safety as it was a requirement for the US Army (horses were still a thing) so its existence was never meant to change the handling procedure (in fact I think the military standard for carrying then was loaded magazine with empty chamber and hammer down).
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I have't read the entire thread, so I don't know if the above has yet been corrected.

The US Army's specifications for a semiauto .45 pistol required a manual safety. Browning submitted his Colt M1905 for consideration, which had a grip safety but no thumb safety. The Army took its time evaluating the guns, enough time that Browning submitted later revisions for further testing, incorporating certain comments received from testers. His penultimate submittal was the M1910, which still had only the grip safety and no thumb safety. The Army essentially agreed to adopt the gun if a thumb safety was added -- voila!, the M1911 was born. As noted, the Army's concern was the ability to safely reholster a cocked pistol having only a grip safety, because if a soldier is mounted on a moving horse in battle, the user can't ensure his trigger finger won't inadvertently stray inside the trigger guard.

The thumb slide lock was an easy addition. I believe Browning thought the grip safety superior, because it is essentially passive, requiring no thought or conscious effort to deactivate when you want to shoot. If the M1905 would have been designed with a thumb slide lock safety and no grip safety, I'm guessing the Army would have never insisted on the addition of a grip safety.
 
I guess this all answers the OP's question then.

There is no reason for the manufacturer to spend extra time, money, and effort to implement a mostly nostalgic safety that if done incorrectly could cause more problems than it solves.
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Sounds like your reply answers all of your questions...
 
Dropping the gun on the muzzle could result in the gun firing because the weight of the firing pin overcomes the resistance of the firing pin spring.
A sailor was killed from a dropped-gun discharge in the '20s or '30s, and the navy investigated how readily a pistol would discharge if dropped, and it was determined that an in-spec pistol would have to drop something like 20 feet before it would fire from a muzzle impact.
That said, I've heard of guns "going off" when dropped while drawing from a holster, which would result in something closer to a three-foot drop, so your mileage may vary.
I was discussing the topic with a fairly well-know gunsmith, and he said when he tried to perform such a test, he could not get the gun to land on the muzzle, which adds dramatically to the odds of a gun firing if dropped.
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There's some drop testing results right here:

http://www.1911.net16.net/drop1/drop1.htm

There's also a YouTube video showing one of the drops:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_QkWEiX2eE

I was going to purchase one of the Wiley Clapp Colts until I found this.
 
The US Army's specifications for a semiauto .45 pistol required a manual safety. Browning submitted his Colt M1905 for consideration, which had a grip safety but no thumb safety.
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The M1905 never had a grip safety.

Edit: I stand corrected it was a later modification where some 1905s with the grip safety were still called as such before/during the 1907 designation. My mistake, as well as the original comment. It does appear though that the origins of the grip safety were other Colt employees, not JMB directly:
http://unblinkingeye.com/Guns/1905ACP/1905acp.html
 
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Any engineer will tell you, the more moving parts, the higher potential for failure. Some folks like things simple, due to reliability.
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Any engineer that would tell you that hasn't dealt with calculating mean-time-between-failure (MTBF). More parts does not automatically equal a higher failure rate. That's an Internet meme that gets repeated ad nauseam simply because "it sounds logical."

You have to look at the interacting parts, materials, stress on the parts, and number of actuations to failure. Those are the basics - there are more factors that have to be taken into account. If you'd care to look into it for yourself, simply search for MIL 217f - Reliability Prediction, it should be available as a PDF on line.

In general, a grip safety (and related parts) are not a high stress parts, are under a minimal loads, are over-built for the actual loads (due to the size of the parts and materials), and the parts have a relatively small number of actuations for the life of the gun (for most guns, I would guess well under 50K actuations).

Not really a valid point - but, it "sounds good."

If you want a valid argument for less parts, it goes like this - fewer parts cost less to manufacture and assemble.

Any manufacturer, given the choice of more parts or less parts for the same function, will go for less parts simply because of reduced costs.
 
@TunnelRat

Thanks for the informative link that I read in entirety

http://unblinkingeye.com/Guns/1905ACP/1905acp.html

There is somewhat of a contradiction:

Automatic pistols were required to use the “Cal. .45 U.S.A. Experimental Cartridge” provided by the Frankford Arsenal
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and then:

The Colt’s pistols were tested with both commercial and Frankford Arsenal ammunition
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How can an experimental cartridge during trials be compared to supposed commercial cartridge of same design in the same testing session?

One can never be sure of info. Even Flayderman's book on antique firearms corrects itself when new, better info comes to light.
 
For those who have Glock Pistols, there is one problem with the trigger, I have never seen addressed.

Take your favorite Glock, carefully unload it. No booze, no distractions.

Magazine, spare cartridges, in a drawer, gun is empty, rack it three times, no rounds coming out?

Rack the slide to cock the action. Hold the pistol, in the strong hand, as though you had picked it up in a hurry! So as the tip of your trigger finger is pushing the trigger sideways.

The gun will not go click!! Will not fire (simulated discharge) there is two little nubbins that block the rearward dissemble the pistol, pull the trigger bar out,
use a any tinny blade to trim those bits off.
 
If the purse-carried handgun the NDed in VA about a week ago had had a grip safety, the ND might not have happened.
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Sounds like the anti-gun line of thought, blame the gun instead of the operator, and require manufacturers to add "safety" features instead of encouraging training. Keep going with that and you wind up with what we have in California... I can think of several things that might have kept that incident from happening, all of which are less onerous than requiring extra "safeties" on guns that don't need them.
 
The anti-gun faction would never have thought of that because those folks have no clue about a grip safety (or "the thing that goes up"), never mind anything else about pistol operation concerning ANY handgun or semi-auto rifle.

They are just ditzy women with nothing better to do than battle a non-existent perceived threat to their unrealistic ideas of how the world should work. They forget that there are certain and many folks who do not abide by law and just do as they please.

If Shannon Watts did not have Bloomberg's militia surrounding her she would be cowering in her bedroom.
 
Call me a heretic, call me a luddite, call me a taxi, call me late for dinner, I don't care, but I like external manual safeties. And the more redundant the better. I am a big fan of "OFF" switches on weapons. I like grip safeties, I like thumb operated frame and slide safeties. I especially like hammer drop (de-cocker) safeties. I like the set up on the 1911, the P38 (P1), and the Beretta 92. I carry my 1911 in condition "1" - but only in a holster with a retaining strap that passes between the cocked hammer and the frame. In over half a century of shooting and 25 years of concealed carry, I have never had an unintended-accidental-negligent discharge with any firearm. I attribute that to two reasons, consistent use of manual safeties, and being anal-retentive (paranoid as hell) about safe handling procedures. I would own a Glock only if I won it in a raffle or inherited it, and only as long as it took to sell it, trade it or give it away.
 
Rack the slide to cock the action. Hold the pistol, in the strong hand, as though you had picked it up in a hurry!

So as the tip of your trigger finger is pushing the trigger sideways.
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Operator error isn't a design defect
It's not happened with my Glock that I've owned since the early 90's
 
IMO my biggest concern with the Glock is there is nothing preventing the gun from firing if something snags the trigger. A grip safety would be a solution for this.
 
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