CCW, 1 in chamber?

[Sgt01]

Always one in the chamber. May not have time to rack one in in an emergency.

[Cheapshooter]

I could care less that you are unhappy left without all of the juicy details as I have no intention of providing them, -

Nobody is looking for "juicy" details. Just some facts. And wouldn't that go a long way toward preventing someone else from having the same "accident"?

No facts lead to a lack of credibility in any account of an incident. Could the facts that you choose to leave out tend to make the AD actually more of a ND? Therefor rendering the whole story useless in your argument against "one in the pipe".

[ripnbst]

Another reason one would carry chambered is capacity. People who carry officer sized 1911's are at a capacity disadvantage as compared to the modern polymer 9's that between loaded gun and spare mag is almost a box of 50. Carrying a 1911 chambered allows you to carry one more round.

[Bigjim3]

with a ccw why wouldnt you carry it ready to go.. I wouldnt have a gun on me unless it was loaded and i could trust it.. Just my opinion..

[Cheapshooter]

Didn't Barney Fife carry one in his pocket!!!

[Lonestar06]

if your carrying a revolver would you leave the chamber under the hammer empty? doubt it.

I guess I am just ignorant, how can you equate carrying a revolver on an empty chamber to a Semi-auto without one in the chamber?

[tenusdad]

Many of the TFL experts have apparently achieved "Perfection", never make a mistake, never have an off day, always recite, achieve, and perfectly execute all the rules of safe gun handling no matter the situation. Hats off to ya. I stand in awe of perfect people.

They are also all in great peril no matter where they are. However, they still go to ballgames at schools, post office, New York City and many other places and live to tell the story. They must live charmed lives to make it out of the Post Office without their daily Bruce Willis encounter, most uncommon valor. BTW - AD's do happen frequently, anybody with a Google can check it out. If you think they don't, sometimes with drastic results, dream on. Saying I haven't had one is like saying, I haven't had an auto accident. Nobody plans to have an accident. If anyone knew they would have an AD, I bet they would leave the gun at home.

I hear the "one more round" line. Gee, how many times have you emptied your pistol to defend yourself? The FBI reports most will need 3 rounds, thats reality. Well could be attacked by the 10 iron pumped meth crazed bikers with swords I guess, not to real. Or how about the, "may not have time to rack the slide"? How much time is really lost? The bikers could be very quick I guess.

If you look like food you will be eaten? How does that make any sense when discussing an empty chamber? Are perps outfitted with xray vision and 6th sense now? You can look at a ccw man and tell he is empty chamber? Nonsense!

BTW - the ficticous Barney Fife carried his whole revolver empty.

Next we will hear - "I even heard one firearm instructor say that carrying with an empty chamber is so dangerous it causes impotence, acne and bad breath and perps can see right through your gun and know. "

[ibewbull]

http://pistol-training.com/archives/183

I recall reading about Israeli carry AKA empty pipe some time ago.
I am not sure of if or why it came to be but my guess is that the various weapons carried may not always belong to the carrier. Thus the safeties etc. or lack of them may be confusing to an unfamiliar person. Also if you recover a weapon from a fallen combatant knowing the drill as a habit may save you from snapping a hammer on an empty. This is ALL SPECULATION AND A WILD GUESS FOR ME.
If the situation calls for arming folks in a hurry and with what is at hand I could understand the point.
My first Glock took a bit for me to get accustomed to plus my first Glock holster was soft suade. I did not trust it with a loaded "safe" action gun. I had been a 1911 fan for a long time .So it took a while and a good Milt Sparks holster before I packed it in condition one.
Another reason which could be an older striker fired weapon with a small safety. Browning 1910/22 comes to mind. I can rack the slide faster than get the safety off on this one.
I would still carry an empty in a Colt SAA as always.
Well lets see what you think now. Anything else said here would be redundant.

[Cheapshooter]

BTW - the ficticous Barney Fife carried his whole revolver empty.

My point exactly. The one in his pocket was his only "bullet" Might have been fine in Mayberry, but not in today's world!!!

[daliff89]

i don't understand the logic of 'you can what if all you want...'

somebody said that carrying without one in the chamber is like skydiving without a chute, but that's inaccurate

carrying without one in the chamber is like skydiving without a backup chute

most of the time, you'll have time to draw and rack the slide and everything will go off without a hitch.....just like most of the time you'll have no problems at all with your main chute functioning properly

but there's always that chance, no matter how small of a chance it is, that main chute is going to fail and that backup chute is going to save your life

i understand having one in the chamber is unnecessary 99.9% of the time, but it doesn't hurt anything to have one in the chamber

if you're worried about someone getting the gun who shouldn't have the gun (like your young children) then you shouldn't carry around them at all.........you either need to be more comfortable in securing your weapon or not carry it at all.........if a 3 year old can get to your pistol, i'm positive a 33 year old can

if you're carrying a pistol and you DON'T feel like you may get into a dangerous situation that requires a split second reaction, why are you carrying a loaded pistol at all? why not carry a separate magazine in the pocket? or just leave it loaded in the car? or carry a knife?

there may never be a need to use that pistol the instant it comes out of your holster, you may always have time to rack that slide, but you can't deny that doing all that increases time elapsed before the shot and chances of failure

increased time elapsed before the shot and chances of failure decreases the efficiency of the weapon, why would you want to purposely decrease the efficiency of your weapon?

[Cheapshooter]

It all boils down to a simple matter.
If you don't feel you have the training, experience, responsibility, and confidence to carry one in the tube...then don't
If however you are confident in your training, competence, responsibility, and and experience, by all means do carry one in the tube.
Simple chocolate or vanilla if you think of it like that!

[TXGunNut]

I carry in case something really bad happens. Seems when something really bad happens it usually happens very fast. I don't want to be fumbling at a time like that. I've made my decision but I'm OK with an empty chamber if that makes you feel safer. A ND may be more of a concern than an armed encounter for some folks. I understand.

[Alexander]

Many of the TFL experts have apparently achieved "Perfection", never make a mistake, never have an off day, always recite, achieve, and perfectly execute all the rules of safe gun handling no matter the situation. Hats off to ya. I stand in awe of perfect people.

They are also all in great peril no matter where they are. However, they still go to ballgames at schools, post office, New York City and many other places and live to tell the story. They must live charmed lives to make it out of the Post Office without their daily Bruce Willis encounter, most uncommon valor.

God only knows why you keep wasting your time and everyone else's time repeating this nonsense.

Very likely I will never need to draw my CCW, but in the event I do I will probably need every second I can get to have a favorable outcome. If you're ever attacked it's not likely your attacker is going to give you much time to prepare a response. Most criminals have figured out that surprise and speed work to their advantage. If I ever have to draw my weapon I don't want to have to spend any precious time making complex motor movements that carry a great risk of temporarily disabling the gun if executed improperly to get the gun ready. I'm going to be bet that's the reason why people who carry with a round in the pipe do so. It's a totally rational reason. Nothing paranoid about it. I don't walk around in fear in my daily life. I still go places both where I live and in other cities/states/countries where I can't carry and I'm not overwhelmed by worry either. But if I'm going to be able to carry I'm going to do it in the way that I feel is most effective.

The hilarious thing here is watching you try to make some kind of great distinction about the paranoia of people who carry with a round chambered compared with people who don't. You sound a lot like the antis sound talking about people who carry concealed in general regardless of whether they carry with a round chambered.

[Mr. James]

tenusdad is hilarious. I believe there are more scarecrows propped throughout that cornfield of a post than any other I've read here. So, because most of us haven't been required to throw elebentybillion rounds down range in a personal defense scenario, the idea of being properly ready to at least get one round down range in the most expeditious manner possible is laughable.

Really?

As to the FBI, they haven't changed their statistics, but they sure changed their weaponry and tactics (for the worse, largely, in this citizen's opinion) after the Miami-Dade shootout. Why do you think that is?

We make 99.99 percent of our car trips without needing our seatbelts. But that 0.01 percent is a nasty female dog, isn't it. I've never needed my seat belt. I've never used a fire extinguisher. I used my homeowners' insurance once, in my fifty years of life, when my house got trashed by a storm. Go figure.

Hey, stay safe however you choose, friend.

By the way, and this amazed me, I have a friend, a Marine, an honorable man I trust with my and my family's lives. He loves to shoot, in his back yard. He knows more about guns than I ever will. Just yesterday, he estimated he'd thrown between 100,000 and 200,000 rounds down range (hey, his MOS was machine gunner). But twice, most recently yesterday, he saw me clearing handguns before we went to our impromptu range. The first time it was my personal carry weapon, a 1911. Yesterday, it was a S&W 629.

Both times, he expressed shock that I had (a) a round in the chamber; or (b) six in the cylinder. He doesn't and never will carry concealed or openly. In the first case, I suggested an empty handgun would be of little use in a personal defense situation; in the second, I bluntly said why wouldn't I?

I must presume the empty-chamber deal is from his training in the mid-1980's?

[Alexander]

i understand having one in the chamber is unnecessary 99.9% of the time, but it doesn't hurt anything to have one in the chamber

I don't agree with the first part of that statement at all. 99.99999% of the time you'll be fine without carrying a gun period but if you ever need one the odds are good that the situation you're in is not going to develop slowly.

[Deaf Smith]

Many of the TFL experts have apparently achieved "Perfection", never make a mistake, never have an off day, always recite, achieve, and perfectly execute all the rules of safe gun handling no matter the situation. Hats off to ya. I stand in awe of perfect people.

tenusdad,

If you keep the gun in a good holster that covers the trigger guard and then don and doff with the gun kept in the holster, then it's mighty hard to have an accident.

Nobody is God. But by the same token few are so fumbled fingered they can't keep their weapon in the holster till it's needed to be used. If they are that bad off, how do you expect them to chamber a round under pressure, or chamber a round while grappling with an opponent?

I mean all you do when carrying C3 is add one more step that takes two hands to execute. Why not just carry it in a flap holster while you are at it. Or C4! Yes chamber empty and mag out. Real hard to have an accident that way, right? Do it for the children tenusdad!

Yes there are exceptions to packing chamber loaded, but worrying about the safety rules is not one of them. If you are that worried, leave the gun home.

Deaf

[egor20]

"keep your booger hook off the bang switch."

Sorry couldn't resist.

[Frank Ettin]

The safest way to carry a gun is unloaded, disassembled and in a locked case. The best compromise between safe and tactically sound, assuming a modern, properly designed firearm in a good holster, is with a round in the chamber.

Safety is primarily a matter of training, practice and experience. Whether or not you have an ND is entirely within your control. If you have an ND it's because you did something wrong. If you want to avoid an ND, don't do anything wrong -- and train and practice enough so you know how to not do anything wrong and have the skills to do things correctly.

And while your safety with a gun is within your control, the circumstances in which you might need to use your gun are not. Those circumstances will be determined at least in part by the guy who decides to attack you. So there is no way that you can count on having both hands free to rack the slide and make your gun ready. There is no way you can count on having the time to make the gun ready. Maybe you will and maybe you won't.

In the event of an emergency, you can't know ahead of time how fast you will have to be to prevail.

It's a question of how long it can take us to perceive the threat, determine the need to fire, deploy our gun and engage the threat with accurate fire, having made the decision that shooting is warranted. So how much time will we have in which to do all of that? I have no idea and neither do you. It's going to all depend on what happens and how it happens. We might have lots of time, or we might have very little. We simply can't know in advance.

If we can't get done what we need to do in the time circumstances allow us, we will not be happy with the outcome. So if there's something I can do to save time, any time, that's a good thing. And the better trained and prepared you are, the luckier you will be.

To put time in some perspective, at Gunsite we are expected to draw and fire accurate shots within certain times at certain distances.

So you might want to have a look at my article, specifically post 9:

...We started by shooting the school drills for score. This would be part of our final evaluation.

The school drills are as follows:

• 3 yards, single shot to the head, 1.5 seconds with movement (a step to the left or to the right), performed twice
  
  
• 7 yards, two rounds to center of mass, 1.5 seconds with movement (a step to the left or to the right), performed once
  
  
• 10 yards, two rounds to center of mass, 2 seconds with movement (a step to the left or to the right), performed once
  
  
• 25 yards, two rounds to center of mass, 3.5 seconds with movement (a step then kneeling), performed once
  
  
• 35 yards, two rounds to center of mass, 7 seconds with movement (a step then dropping to rollover prone), performed once

...

One can safely carry a 1911 in C1, if he does his part. And carry in C1 also allows the most effective and efficient deployment of the pistol under the widest variety of circumstances and if you only have one hand available. And that is why it is the "correct" way to carry a 1911 for self defense, as taught at Gunsite, by Clint Smith, Massad Ayoob, Louis Awerbuck and other of the most respected trainers.

You are certainly free to carry your sidearm however you wish.

[vito]

I recently was told about a senior LEO in the Milwaukee PD who was fired a few years ago after being found carrying his weapon WITHOUT one in the chamber.

[dgludwig]

...I hear the "one more round" line. Gee, how many times have you emptied your pistol to defend yourself? The FBI reports most will need 3 rounds, thats reality...

So, tenusdad, if you carry at all, can we assume that you carry a pistol with no more than three rounds in it-and an empty chamber? Do you carry a concealed pistol around just to make yourself "feel" better, never imagining that you'll ever have to really use it because, "statistically speaking", you never will? Do you actually believe that those of us who plan for the ultimate, if unlikely, reality are being paranoid just because we don't live in your "real" world? And a final question, if your reason for carrying a handgun is because even you concede that an extremely unlikely but still possible bad and evil event could encroach on your world of "that's reality" statistical improbability, what's the downside to more bullets and a loaded chamber?

[vito]

The only "downside" is the higher risk of an accidental discharge, possibly right into your leg. Despite training, if and when the real event occurs it will likely be a highly frightening incident, where drawing a firing prematurely is more likely than most readers of this forum probably imagine. Of course, that type of fright and adrenaline rush also might make it harder to chamber a round when needed. Its a balance between risks. When serving in Vietnam a lifetime ago I was not a combat soldier, but had the reality of being suddenly fired upon. It is a scary and confidence rattling thing to go through. My training and mindset kicked in and I returned fire and the threat ended, but I do not doubt that it could have ended differently.

[dgludwig]

The only "downside" is the higher risk of an accidental discharge,

Such an event would not be an "accidental" discharge but would reflect poor gun handling behavior. Even a modicum of decent training (keep your finger off the trigger until you're ready to fire) will prevent negligent discharges. Having a round in the chamber does not pose a higher risk of an ad or an nd if the gun is handled safely. If the gun is handled unsafely, all bets are off.

[Skadoosh]

vito wrote:

I recently was told about a senior LEO in the Milwaukee PD who was fired a few years ago after being found carrying his weapon WITHOUT one in the chamber.

...and you believed that?

[ChrisJ715]

I personally can't see the logic to not carrying one in the chamber. If you need a handgun, you need it NOW. I prefer to be as ready as possible for whatever bad stuff might happen, I alos carry a first aid kit, a flashlight, a knife, a multi tool, and a cell phone. For those that don't want to carry one in the pipe, we can agree to disagree.

[Yung.gunr]

Did you ask him if he keeps his bullet in his shirt pocket as well?

http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...ohAQO7Qs0YwP8A