Empty or chambered?

RemyR said:
That looks like a shitty holster for that gun. I’m quite happy with my leather holster for my 380 bodyguard. Between the holster and me keeping the safety on (yeah I know some people dislike this but it’s personal preference) I just don’t see how that’s possible. I do also have a kydex holster for my sig p365 and like that as well. The bodyguard is just such a comfortable carry though.

kkjTeZ9.jpg
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I also carry in a quality leather holster sometimes...actually every carry gun I have has a quality leather holster and a good kydex holster.
 
Always carry chambered. Also +1 for kydex holsters, although sometimes I carry my harmeless smith in a leather ankle holster.
 
Chambered (in a holster, of course).
 
Chambered. If the idea of a negligent discharge related to a holster issue is a big enough worry for you that you'd consider carrying unchambered then you'd be better served by getting a firearm with a manual safety.
 
Just some questions to consider...

- given that the difference of speed between Israeli draw and chambered carry and draw is less than a second for a trained shooter, then do most self defense incidents occur as a quick draw situation where one gets suddenly ambushed and where difference of speed of les than a second are the difference between life and death? Or would the defender more often have some advance warning of at least a couple of seconds?

- supposing one gets the best training and regularly, can one completely negate the possibility of making a mistake leading to unintentional discharge of a firearm? Can one achieve perfection meaning one never makes a mistake or gets complacent or goes on autopilot or tired etc for the rest of ones life carrying a firearm? This is an important question given that one concealed carry company did research and estimated that one has a 1 in 3 chance of causing injury or death to others as a result of a ND and given that most people who carry ccw are likely to have family and friends around them often or at home.

- therefore is the very slight increase in speed in carrying chambered instrad of unchartered and getting trained in Israeli draw worth the extra risk of causing death or injury to one self and especially to others including the people more dear to you than your own life? Especially since most people who carry will never discharge their forearm in an actual self defense situation in their entire lives...and especially since it is only human for even the best trained to make mistakes or become complacent at least after times in their lives with their guns...

I suspect many people have so imbibed this myth that you need to be able to be draw and shoot instantaneously without any warning due to the influence of shooting teachers...but outside the states, many countries have historically has the opposite tradition. Both are valid but it is a question of risk vs reward. If you look at almost all hostile engagements, the intended victim has usually had at least a few seconds of warning and if he were in condition yellow state of mind readiness, he would have more than enough time to draw Israeli style and chamber a round before opening fire. On the other hand I suspect even the best pistol teachers can tell hair raising stories of mistakes that almost caused a terrible accident...
 
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An empty chamber means you are carrying a $500 paperweight when you need a weapon to defend yourself and costing you a seconds when you don't have them to spend.

Keep one chambered for when you need it.
 
For the first time ever, had to draw my pistol after getting followed home by some road rage asshole that threatened like he had a gun. Had my 4 year old in the back seat. Was not fun. I really thought in was going to get in a gun fight.

Stay safe out there.
 
Sanserif said:
Just some questions to consider...

- given that the difference of speed between Israeli draw and chambered carry and draw is less than a second for a trained shooter, then do most self defense incidents occur as a quick draw situation where one gets suddenly ambushed and where difference of speed of les than a second are the difference between life and death? Or would the defender more often have some advance warning of at least a couple of seconds?

- supposing one gets the best training and regularly, can one completely negate the possibility of making a mistake leading to unintentional discharge of a firearm? Can one achieve perfection meaning one never makes a mistake or gets complacent or goes on autopilot or tired etc for the rest of ones life carrying a firearm? This is an important question given that one concealed carry company did research and estimated that one has a 1 in 3 chance of causing injury or death to others as a result of a ND and given that most people who carry ccw are likely to have family and friends around them often or at home.

- therefore is the very slight increase in speed in carrying chambered instrad of unchartered and getting trained in Israeli draw worth the extra risk of causing death or injury to one self and especially to others including the people more dear to you than your own life? Especially since most people who carry will never discharge their forearm in an actual self defense situation in their entire lives...and especially since it is only human for even the best trained to make mistakes or become complacent at least after times in their lives with their guns...

I suspect many people have so imbibed this myth that you need to be able to be draw and shoot instantaneously without any warning due to the influence of shooting teachers...but outside the states, many countries have historically has the opposite tradition. Both are valid but it is a question of risk vs reward. If you look at almost all hostile engagements, the intended victim has usually had at least a few seconds of warning and if he were in condition yellow state of mind readiness, he would have more than enough time to draw Israeli style and chamber a round before opening fire. On the other hand I suspect even the best pistol teachers can tell hair raising stories of mistakes that almost caused a terrible accident...
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Not sure where you’re getting the notion that the victims usually have a few seconds? A few seconds from what to what, exactly? This sounds like something your assuming, rather than any real data.

It’s also generally a terrible idea to talk about averages when you’re talking about life or death scenarios.
 
jericksen5 said:
Not sure where you’re getting the notion that the victims usually have a few seconds? A few seconds from what to what, exactly? This sounds like something your assuming, rather than any real data.

It’s also generally a terrible idea to talk about averages when you’re talking about life or death scenarios.
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I am sorry to hear of your encounter - good that u were armed and able to deter the aggressor without needing to use the firearm. That sounds like a very good outcome for not only u but for him who will hopefully reassess his road rage tendencies after that...

If you do not mind me asking...how long elapsed between the time u became aware of the imminent threat and u displaying your firearm ? I am suspecting that it was not a quick draw situation and so u had at least 2 or 3 seconds to present your firearm to deter him...

If so then Israeli draw wouldn't have hindered u at all if u practiced doing it under stress regularly.

I dont have any stats and I don't even think that such stats exist but i have watched a lot of videos of actual shooting events and I do not recall ever seeing a quick draw situation- where from draw to firing both micro seconds were the difference between life and death because the intended victim only realised the attacker's hostile intent literally a split second before the latter opened fire. Usually there were at least a few seconds of warning...

On the other hand u will spend literally many years in the immediate vicinity of your loved ones where a single mistake may end up with one of them accidentally shot...on a risk benefit balancing exercise which event is more likely to happen?
 
Sanserif said:
I am sorry to hear of your encounter - good that u were armed and able to deter the aggressor without needing to use the firearm. That sounds like a very good outcome for not only u but for him who will hopefully reassess his road rage tendencies after that...

If you do not mind me asking...how long elapsed between the time u became aware of the imminent threat and u displaying your firearm ? I am suspecting that it was not a quick draw situation and so u had at least 2 or 3 seconds to present your firearm to deter him...

If so then Israeli draw wouldn't have hindered u at all if u practiced doing it under stress regularly.

I dont have any stats and I don't even think that such stats exist but i have watched a lot of videos of actual shooting events and I do not recall ever seeing a quick draw situation- where from draw to firing both micro seconds were the difference between life and death because the intended victim only realised the attacker's hostile intent literally a split second before the latter opened fire. Usually there were at least a few seconds of warning...

On the other hand u will spend literally many years in the immediate vicinity of your loved ones where a single mistake may end up with one of them accidentally shot...on a risk benefit balancing exercise which event is more likely to happen?
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I have seen videos where the victims had zero time and their weak hand was trying to defend/create space from an attack. There are examples of animal attacks as well that needed immediate firing. Other examples where people were biding their time to present and fire keeping the element of surprise. Racking the slide (motion and noise) you can give an attacker an advanced notice.

His point was even if you take averages that doesn't mean the average applies to you. You get attacked from behind, tackled, etc. Anything where you need to defend, create space, etc needing to rack the slide is absolutely a detriment.

Carrying unloaded you also introduce a higher chance to induce a malfunction from stress or an attacker getting his hands on the firearm.

But you are suggesting that in stress while driving a car that taking both hands off the wheel to rack the slide. It just adds unnecessary steps. A quality firearm in a quality holster is safe.

There is no reason a gun should be left out unholstered in front of loved ones that don't know (or aren't old enough) and respect guns. It won't magically go off. It would have to be unholstered and fired.
 
Sanserif said:
I am sorry to hear of your encounter - good that u were armed and able to deter the aggressor without needing to use the firearm. That sounds like a very good outcome for not only u but for him who will hopefully reassess his road rage tendencies after that...


If you do not mind me asking...how long elapsed between the time u became aware of the imminent threat and u displaying your firearm ? I am suspecting that it was not a quick draw situation and so u had at least 2 or 3 seconds to present your firearm to deter him...


If so then Israeli draw wouldn't have hindered u at all if u practiced doing it under stress regularly.


I dont have any stats and I don't even think that such stats exist but i have watched a lot of videos of actual shooting events and I do not recall ever seeing a quick draw situation- where from draw to firing both micro seconds were the difference between life and death because the intended victim only realised the attacker's hostile intent literally a split second before the latter opened fire. Usually there were at least a few seconds of warning...


On the other hand u will spend literally many years in the immediate vicinity of your loved ones where a single mistake may end up with one of them accidentally shot...on a risk benefit balancing exercise which event is more likely to happen?
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After re-reading my post I realize I probably came off like a dick, my apologies.


I can share what happened in the whole encounter in another post, but the tldr is that it ended without incident thankfully.


I actually completely understand where you’re coming from, as I’ve had a lot of the same fears of a mental lapse leading to some kind of negligent discharge leading to a loved one being hurt or worse. I actually would have a hard time thinking of a more frightening scenario to be honest. If someone wants to carry unchambered, for whatever reason, I’m not going to tell them they shouldn’t. Those are of course valid concerns.


Where I disagree with your post is where you begin to make the argument that the disadvantage of carrying unchambered is minimal, or typically irrelevant in most self defense situations. This just isn’t true, and you don’t want to mislead yourself into thinking otherwise. If you decide to carry unchambered, do it. But at the same time recognize that there is a significant disadvantage there that you will have to make up for if you find yourself in a situation where you must defend yourself.
 
jericksen5 said:
After re-reading my post I realize I probably came off like a dick, my apologies.


I can share what happened in the whole encounter in another post, but the tldr is that it ended without incident thankfully.


I actually completely understand where you’re coming from, as I’ve had a lot of the same fears of a mental lapse leading to some kind of negligent discharge leading to a loved one being hurt or worse. I actually would have a hard time thinking of a more frightening scenario to be honest. If someone wants to carry unchambered, for whatever reason, I’m not going to tell them they shouldn’t. Those are of course valid concerns.


Where I disagree with your post is where you begin to make the argument that the disadvantage of carrying unchambered is minimal, or typically irrelevant in most self defense situations. This just isn’t true, and you don’t want to mislead yourself into thinking otherwise. If you decide to carry unchambered, do it. But at the same time recognize that there is a significant disadvantage there that you will have to make up for if you find yourself in a situation where you must defend yourself.
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If I'm honest with myself, I have some mild ptsd, if you want to call it that, over my negligent discharge in early June. It shook me up.

I'm a heck of a lot more careful now though and no longer train with a loaded magazine.

Curious about your road rage incident. Can you give more details on how it started, escalated, and ended
 
Robocok said:
If I'm honest with myself, I have some mild ptsd, if you want to call it that, over my negligent discharge in early June. It shook me up.

I'm a heck of a lot more careful now though and no longer train with a loaded magazine.

Curious about your road rage incident. Can you give more details on how it started, escalated, and ended
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I can but probably a long story to lay out. Also a small part of the end that I’m unsure if I should really post on an online forum.

That being said, I was carrying unchambered. And I can tell you first hand it’s not ideal having to rack a slide with 2 shaking, clammy hands while at the same time driving fast and all your thinking about is your kid in the backseat. Probably the biggest adrenaline dump of my life.
 
jericksen5 said:
After re-reading my post I realize I probably came off like a dick, my apologies.


I can share what happened in the whole encounter in another post, but the tldr is that it ended without incident thankfully.


I actually completely understand where you’re coming from, as I’ve had a lot of the same fears of a mental lapse leading to some kind of negligent discharge leading to a loved one being hurt or worse. I actually would have a hard time thinking of a more frightening scenario to be honest. If someone wants to carry unchambered, for whatever reason, I’m not going to tell them they shouldn’t. Those are of course valid concerns.


Where I disagree with your post is where you begin to make the argument that the disadvantage of carrying unchambered is minimal, or typically irrelevant in most self defense situations. This just isn’t true, and you don’t want to mislead yourself into thinking otherwise. If you decide to carry unchambered, do it. But at the same time recognize that there is a significant disadvantage there that you will have to make up for if you find yourself in a situation where you must defend yourself.
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Thanks for your reply. I understand what u mean and yes carrying unchambered is really willingly accepting a tactical disadvantage as part of a considered decision after weighing the long term risks. There is definitely a cost to pay if one decides to do so and there is no right and wrong cookie cutter decision for everyone where this issue is concerned. Obviously for Israeli draw as well as for chambered carry, a lot of training needs to be done by the user to be able to make it work without thinking.

But my concern is that American concealed carry users tend to dismiss unchartered carry out of hand too quickly as not even an option as the overall tendency tends to be to only seriously consider chambered carry and to blame all concerns on a lack of training or a lack of courage of conviction - which is not a helpful attitude and may take off the table an option that is in fsct used in many other countries trues successfully All over the world.

In your real life scenario, I hear what u r saying about the difficulty of racking the slide back while driving fast. It does occur to me though that what if you were carrying chambered position ? The same clammy shaking hand is drawing a fully loaded pistol while u r driving fast with a child in the child seat. If you have a Glock then you didn't have a manual safety and so if you happened to put hour trigger finger inside the trigger guard while driving and accidentally clenched upur hand or finger.... so the same consideration cuts both ways and a ND in that circimstance would be disastrous had u shot yourself by accident while driving fast...
 
jericksen5 said:
Yep.
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Thanks for sharing that video. My observation is that carrying chambered would t have saved the first guy who was attacked because his attention was completely not on his surroundings and his first awareness of being under attack was when he felt the machete hack into his body. He then did the next best thing which was go flee after that.

As for the other occupants of that room they had at least a couple of seconds to react and a person well trained in Israeli draw should have been able to draw and fire before the attacker reached them.
 
RerouteToRemain said:
I have seen videos where the victims had zero time and their weak hand was trying to defend/create space from an attack. There are examples of animal attacks as well that needed immediate firing. Other examples where people were biding their time to present and fire keeping the element of surprise. Racking the slide (motion and noise) you can give an attacker an advanced notice.

His point was even if you take averages that doesn't mean the average applies to you. You get attacked from behind, tackled, etc. Anything where you need to defend, create space, etc needing to rack the slide is absolutely a detriment.

Carrying unloaded you also introduce a higher chance to induce a malfunction from stress or an attacker getting his hands on the firearm.

But you are suggesting that in stress while driving a car that taking both hands off the wheel to rack the slide. It just adds unnecessary steps. A quality firearm in a quality holster is safe.

There is no reason a gun should be left out unholstered in front of loved ones that don't know (or aren't old enough) and respect guns. It won't magically go off. It would have to be unholstered and fired.
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As I said in my other post above, I agree that carrying unchambered is definitely accepting a possible tactical disadvantage and increased risk in event of a violent life threatening attack in exchange for preventing a possible tragedy if a mistake is made one day.

So sure, it is always possible to construct a possible scenario where carrying unchambered may result in you losing out and getting killed by an attacker. I would concede this even though the averages favour the likelihood that such a scenario will ever happen to a given user, and even though it seems to me that many of those scenarios wouldn't favour chambered carry either. An example of this is the idea that you need to hold off an attacker with one hand while drawing and fiiring with the other hand. Ibwould take it that one is holding off a person armed with a knife or a machete since shooting an unarmed aggressor would be much more difficult to legally justify. An maniacal assailant armed with a knife or bladed weapon intent to kill you is a formidable adversary even for a person armed with a holstered firearm - Toeller's rule being the result of research into and training over such encounters. If one tries tries use merely one hand to hold off such an assailant.there is an extremely high chance one will sustain several stabs and slashes in a matter of a couple of seconds and any one or more of them could be fatal and lead to exanginuation in less than a minute. So while drawing and shooting him may happen after sustaining such injury that would be cold comfort as the victim expires along with the assailant. You really need to either flee and get out of Dodge at top speed (like the first victim in the hacking incident shown in the video on this page) or you need to focus all your attention and both arms at stopping the weapon from reading your vitals and disabling and disarming the assailant.

Another scenario you suggested was what if ypu were tackled from behind. Again u r in a situation where carrying chambered would not help u much better as the assailant has control of your Lower body and is presumably on top of you as he brought u down with u on your front. U are now in grappling situation where he could easily get control of your chambered pistol and use it on you...

Also ones chances cam be increased if one trains a lot under competent instructors in Israeli draw technique where eg single handed racking of the slide against the thigh etc is practiced under stress etc. Of course it will not completely eliminate the tactical disadvantage but it will increase one's chances of pulling it off if it happens happens for real.

My objection is mostly on the fscf that proponents of chambered carry seldom take cognisance of a hidden assumption behind their common refrain that one just has to practice better and more ans follow Jeff cooper's mandates. That hidden assumption is that with enough training you can eliminate the risk of an accident.

But just as no amount of training can guarantee success in the field, no amount of training can eliminate the possibility of an accident. Nobody Is and can be always on the ball, always vigilant, never complacent and never careless. Nor can we account for the actions or mistakes of others, like the incident I read about where a woman who hugged a man around the waist during a party unexpectedly from behind somehow accidentally caused the pistol he was wearing on his hip to fire...

A mistake will be made at some point. And so the question that has to be weighed is the risk of unchambered carry getting u killed in a violent encounter should one of those scenarios posited actually happen and the risk of a ND that ends up hurting or killing you or others around you...
 
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Robocok said:
I've heard arguments for both and have actually changed my view on this. I was carrying empty for safety reasons and have decided to stop it.

The reason being is that my gun should be ready when I need it. If I have to rack my slide first, that's something that could potentially go wrong. Besides that, I actually have an additional safety in place for my holster setup in this molded trigger cover so it's already pretty safe. It snaps on and off quite solidly.

Fully holstered
View attachment 858341

Trigger guard (string goes around belt, guard pops off when you draw)
View attachment 858340

Unfortunately, this won't be useable anymore if I add a light.

What do you do? Empty or chambered?
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Buy yourself a stun gun that's rated for 500lb+ pigs and use that for protection. It's legal and non lethal(barely)


Problem solved
 
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