With guns such as M&P's, Glocks and other similar striker guns the only "safety" in in your head and how your head observes, feels and directs your body parts.
A big part of this head mounted safety is the early understanding that while you want to learn to draw fast that you also want to learn to ALWAYS holster your gun SLOWLY. Every time I see someone position their barrel nose and then snap their gun down into their holster with a Hollywood like flair of the dramatic I first cringe while waiting for the BANG! followed by advising them to slow down and feel for anything unusual. There's no prize for how fast you can get loaded up and holstered.
It's bad enough on guns with safeties that can be bumped off but it's doubly bad on guns with no safety. A trigger finger still in the guard or a loose belt or fold of shirt that gets wadded up and pulls the trigger during that last dramatic shove of the gun and suddenly we have a leaky leg.
Rule books aside learn to holster ANY style of handgun the right and safe way. And the right and safe ways are KNOW WHERE YOUR TRIGGER FINGER IS, HOLSTER SLOWLY and FEEL FOR ANYTHING DIFFERENT. I can't stress these three things enough while handling any gun that is going to be pointed at your hip, leg or feet. And often as not all three during a single holstering action.
Needless to say the "HOLSTER SLOWLY" and "FEEL FOR ANYTHING DIFFERENT" work hand in hand. The idea being that by holstering slowly you have time to react to feeling anything different and lift the gun back out so you can check for what made it feel odd. It's not a time to say to yourself "oh, it's nothing".
And it should go without saying that if you EVER feel the edge of your holster opening touch the BACK of your trigger finger that you need to stop, sit down and carefully consider what could have just happened if the gun were loaded and you'd used a big Hollywood Moment and rammed it home. This applies to practicing you do at home with your unloaded and cleared gun every bit as much as it does when there's a loaded mag and a round in the chamber. Just because you screw up like this during unloaded practice does not make it any more acceptable. Give yourself a severe beat down if you catch this happening at ANY time.
I offer all this not to scare you. Instead I hope it encourages you to simply stop and give the gun your undivided attention like any of us should while handling it when loaded or not.
Luckily this is the sort of stuff which is easy to practice at home. Practice racking the slide of an empty gun and then holster with focus on these three factors. Then draw the gun to some imaginary "BEEP!" and with that same focus on the trigger finger raise it up, meet your support hand and extend forward while putting your finger on the trigger and squeezing off the "CLICK!" while the gun is pointed out away from your feet by a good angle. Rack the slide again and repeat repeatedly.
A close second to your gun hand and holster is how you handle your support hand during the draw. Too many draw the gun and swing their support hand over in an arc and end up sweeping their support hand or arm with the gun. You Tube for "travis haley handgun grip" and watch and duplicate how he uses his support hand during a draw and fire. It comes up to mid chest and waits for the gun to rise up and moves out slightly to cover over his strong hand. This way we don't end up sweeping our support hand or arm.
While doing these drawing, clicking and reholstering drills if at any time you realize you just lost track of your trigger finger or support hand then you need to slow the pace back down. Fast to draw while still maintaining focus is a good thing. Slower to holster sounds lame but it really is a good thing. Keep up the practicing and don't ever let your pace outrun your attention on the safe and effective method.
All those crazy fast guys like Travis Haley and Jerry Miculek are doing these same things while going that fast. They just practiced more than you have. So don't try to outrun yourself. Go as fast as your sense of awareness will let you. And PUSH it by all means. But don't push faster than you can keep up with performing things correctly.
