The Gomer Pyle Test

American Handgunner, Jan, 2001 by Massad Ayoob

To my knowledge, the first study of the "proprietary nature to the user factor" of a semiautomatic pistol with a safety catch was conducted in the early 1980s and published in Police Chief, the journal of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP). Non-sworn police personnel (secretaries, janitors and the like) were drafted for the test.

They were taken to the police department shooting range and given the hypothetical situation that they were a cop-killer, and they had just taken an officer's gun and wanted to shoot him with it. The gun was set on the table in front of them, a scant few feet from a silhouette target representing the disarmed officer. Each test subject picked up the gun and "shot the cop" under time. Two handguns were used in the experiment.

One was the Smith & Wesson double-action .38 Special revolver the agency was issuing at the time. It took, on the average, 1.2 seconds to "point gun, pull trigger."

The other gun was a Colt Government Model .45, cocked and locked. It took the test subjects an average of over 16 seconds to figure out which lever or button on the gun was the one that "turned it on" and allowed the unauthorized person who had snatched the pistol to shoot its legitimate owner.

It is safe to say that 16 seconds is a window of survivability. In that time frame, you can draw a backup weapon or perform a disarming technique. If nothing else, you can run a long way in that much time.