seekah...I understand what you meant...

I know most people here don't have their safety on while in the field. It's a bit strange, isn't it?

I thought in real life combat, we don't put safety off until engaging the enemy to avoid accidents. Maybe I'm a bit old school (1990s)? Has the rule been changed recently in combat?

Gun up on target, safety off, gun down, safety on.

It's muscle memory, you just need to practice it.

On Semi, finger away from the trigger in game.
Off game, safety, no mag, clear the barrel.

Thats exactly it. It goes you more time to decide if your engaging friendly or foe, it also gives you time to decide if semi is all you need, or if full auto is better suited.

If any of you guys plan on moving to real steal, and plan on doing any tactical courses, I highly suggest you start developing that muscle memory.

If you're worried that you won't get the safety off in time to engage a target...

Practice, practice, practice.

Soon enough you'll be so used to it, that you won't even notice there's a safety.

It's good to get in the habit now, you never know when you'll make appearance at a gun range for some plinking.

When I'm in the field and not expecting to be engaging targets,,,,I switch to semi with finger off the trigger. Only because you never know where the enemy is, and i've been in the situation where I've had to react to a missed shot and a quick double tap to keep heads down while I escape/evade has been a godsend.

Big thing being sudden ambush from close range and dealing with it, is enough to dive for cover and figure out what is going on, nearest cover and such, and being at the ready out of safe mode with finger off trigger is one less thing to deal with. Also explains, besides ammo usage, why those experienced ones that use Armalites use semi often, the Armalite selector is a pain to move to full auto as it is with a shooting grip, let alone during high stress while under fire.

My VSR doesn't have a safety...

But I've got the trigger pull set to about 6-7 pounds.

My M24 doesn't either, and has a heavy trigger pull too, but is lighter and smoother than Piper's Remington 700 lightweight .308 hunting (sorry Joe, SNIPER) rifle! I was surprised at this, I thought I had a very heavy trigger pull until I started shooting his rifle, then found out what an annoyingly bad trigger pull is.

Full auto, however my FAMAS has basically two safetys so I can leave the trigger guard one on while the selector switch is set to auto and jam my finger in to turn it off and fire in a second.
My M14 on the other hand also has a trigger guard located safety so I tend to keep it on and have a finger ready to turn it off at a moments notice

While actually in game I'm on full auto with my finger outside the guard. When I'm actually engaging the enemy my finger is on the trigger riding the break. On the way to respawn or any other situation where I'm in the game area but not playing it's on safe. In the safe zone safety on, mag out and barrel cleared.

This. It also prevents all instances of "I would have had you but my safety was on."

I second this one. With practice it can be done just as quickly and is a very good safety and weapon skill that is transferable to other airsoft and real steel.

except my woc is stiff as hell to turn safety, I can do safe to semi, semi to safe basically sight on sight off type now, but auto to safe....gotta get my index finger to move all the way back so my thumb can extend far enough to push it to semi then safe. Oh god, I really cant understand why they made the default M4/M16 on sided selector.

Always have my gun on safe then switch to semi when the SHTF. Though, the few times I've used uncivilized guns (AK) I find proper safety use impossible and it had to stay on semi all the time (a contributing factor to my distaste in them).