I believe the feature with these is that they were "Lemon Squeezers". In order to shoot one you have to squeeze the grip hard enough to disengage the safety, and they were double action only (see it says 'safety hammerless') with a 10 pound trigger pull. So, 90 years ago, this scene was not considered the height of irresponsibility.
Presumably, if the child had a Colt SAA or a M1911A1 it would be bad, and beyond the pale(pail?) for a marketing scheme... Those guns go off if you LOOK at them crooked. Or did in the 1920s.
No word on what happens when your wee bairn gets a certain grip strength.
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The great thing about the internet is that you can look up phrases such as beyond the pale with ease, whereas in earlier days it took a trip to the library with no guaranteed success.
I think it was in an older "Guns and Ammo" article by Wiley Clapp that was talking about the Lemon Squeezers. Supposedly Mr. Wesson came up with the idea for child safety. He brought one of the first ones off the line home, cocked it and gave it to his Grandson ( empty of course), and watched what he did. Supposedly he nearly had a stroke when he heard "CLICK!" about 5 seconds later. Seems the little nipper turned it around, pointed the barrel at his own face, and by grasping it with both hands used his thumb to pull the trigger. But Mr. Wesson had already spent too much on tooling, so they kept making them anyway.
But as for looking at a 1911 and it'll go off, isn't ironic that they forgot to mention that John Moses(PBUH) put the exact same mechanism on the Colt? And what's that weird thing on the back of the Springfield XD's?
John Browning put the grip safety on the 1911 at the behest of the U.S. Army during field trials. It wasn't a part of his original design for the pistol.
Browning wasn't at all averse to grip safeties; they appeared on most all of his pocket pistol designs, all of which predate the M1911.
H&K P7...a squeeze-cock mechanism that gives safety, speed and an incredibly crisp single-action trigger break on every shot. There have been incidents where police officers carrying P7 pistols lost their guns in struggles with bad guys and the bad guys were unable to shoot the officers with the P7 because they didn't know to squeeze the grip when they had it--it's not instinctive, but once the shooter is trained to it, it's reflexive.
All hail the P7M13. It's a great gun and if it could have been made in .45 it would have been perfect.
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