Gun Control & RKBA

You may be thinking of one of the other "baby Berettas," like the Tomcat or Pico. The Nano is striker-fired, and reminds me very much of a Glock 26, except slimmer.

Striker-fired pistols are fine as long as you are careful that nothing enters the trigger guard while you are reholstering. This means not only your finger, but your shirttails, jacket drawstrings, etc. If this is a problem for you, there are striker-fired pistols with manual safeties. The Ruger LC9S is one.

If you want a small pistol with an exposed hammer, a SIG P238 is hard to beat. It is single-action-only, with a thumb safety. It is meant to be carried cocked-and-locked, and is perfectly safe to carry that way. It has an additional safety feature in that you can rack the slide to remove the round in the chamber without taking the safety off, unlike traditional SAO pistols like the 1911. It is slightly heavier than pistols like the LCP, but this is an advantage in that additional weight means less felt recoil. Lightweight polymer handguns like the LCP (and the LC9S, for that matter) feel to me like a firecracker going off in my hand. The P238 is much milder and more pleasant to shoot, and I'm of the opinion that you should enjoy shooting the pistol that you're going to carry for defense or you won't practice with it, and if you don't practice with it, you really shouldn't be carrying it.

NB: With a single-action-only pistol, your thumb action when reholstering will be different. Instead of placing your thumb behind the hammer so that you could feel if started to come back, you would place your thumb in front of the cocked hammer to block it in case it starts to fall. And if you remembered to engage the thumb safety (which is one of the reasons you practice), it's very unlikely that you'll encounter such a problem.

EDIT TO ADD: I think the danger of "Glock leg," AKA shooting yourself in the foot while reholstering, has been oversold. There have been a few well-publicized incidents that were probably the result of poor trigger discipline on the part of police officers who were transitioning from the heavy triggers of their double-action revolvers. Since the 1980s, there have been millions of striker-fired pistols in use by citizens and cops alike, and there are very few incidents. But ultimately it's up to you; if your not comfortable with it, don't carry it.