Re: Do I really need a safety ?
The Rem 700 accidental discharge issue that I linked-to above is probably not related to the safety itself - it's that under certain conditions the safety fires the rifle due to the design of the trigger. If so, then without even using the safety the rifle could, under some circumstances, fire when the bolt was rotated.
I've heard it said that some LE rifles were designed so that the bolt could be run with the safety on. This makes sense, for example look at the AE vs the AW bolt design, but I don't design rifles and have no information regarding whether or not this is true. Perhaps Tom or Dave could chime-in on this one.
Of the departments that I have trained with over the past year: One used the safety all the time on their R700s, but no one on the team could explain to me why they do that; the other used the safety and also kept the bolt open and a round out of the chamber until ready to fire (Think: Hot rifle from a car, outside deployment in a the blowing winter snow, wet chamber and frozen bolt); and the third didn't use the safety - it was bolt up until the entry team passed-by.
I am not advocating a specific method, what I am saying is that it is important to have a policy that makes sense and to be able to articulate why it is in place. Because I know of some departments, with inexperienced training staffs, that make policy based on what they read on the internet. Doing that is at best comical and at worst dangerous.
For example, I have seen policy which mandates that no white T-shirts be worn on duty in order to avoid the 'Triangle of Death' (an internet rumor that has surfaced three times since 1995 - the most recent version being that gang members are 'training' to shoot officers in the patch of white visible above the vest). Of course, mandating the color of a patrolman's undergarments probably doesn't put him in any more danger than he was in before. On the other hand, I have seen departments that have no objective standards of selection, training or qualification for their tactical teams - which makes it only a matter of time before an innocent person gets seriously injured or killed.