I believe it was their attempt to allow the gun to be dry fired without damaging the gun. Many rim-fire guns are not the most dry fire friendly. The gun was made more so for recreation than say...self defense, no? I think that safety feature is fine given the heritage's purpose.
It's not about whether or not a gun should have a manual safety. This seems to be a relatively unheard of thing, and I just want to see just how many models have such an abnormal addition to the gun.
When I first saw a heritage rough rider, I saw that there was a manual safety on it. I remember thinking "well, that's something you don't see every day," but that also makes me wonder. Are there any other revolvers on the market that has something like this? I know that Dutch police revolvers...
Yeah, what the heck is up with the heritage prices? They're getting sold as well, so somehow, people deem that the prices are fair for whatever reason.