The amount of training is kinda-sorta irrelevant. The amount of training you should be putting in is way higher than the amount you need to master the safety. But, the amount of training you need to put in is also high enough that you won’t ever have to rely on the saftey to prevent the gun from firing. So for me, if I can handle the gun without having to rely on a safety, that’s just one less thing that could go wrong and prevent me from firing my gun when I want to.
A pistol can be carried so that either
- the trigger is inaccessible
Or - The gun is in my hand
You also set up your draw-stroke so that there’s no risk of the trigger catching on anything. With those conditions, the only thing a safety would do is prevent you from pulling the trigger. You shouldn’t have your finger on the trigger unless you’ve made the decision to fire, so the safety isn’t adding any value.
The safety does have value on a rifle, where it’s harder to prevent things from hooking inside the trigger guard (since you will be carrying it uncontrolled with the trigger exposed) but a pistol doesn’t have the same manual of arms and, in my opinion, your carry gun shouldn’t have a safety.
That’s not how defensive pistol use works. I would suggest watching a bunch of videos from the Active Self Protection YouTube channel if you want to see how self defense pistol encounters go. But no, there’s not enough time or space to pull your gun out and then contemplate using it. If you have that kind of time for reflection, you have the opportunity to disengage or de-escalate which should always be what you’re working towards.