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This is one time in your life it's way better to give than it is to receive

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good video. He makes a lot of sense. I didn't realize though that concealed carry with an empty chamber was even an option.

Bender.........Thanks for sharing. Jerry is very humble.......I would consider him an expert. That being said it brought up good points...........most important is TRAINING. Like all things....to be proficient on just about anything it takes consistent training and practice. We do LTC classes at our place and the one thing we stress is for the applicants to realize that they must continue to regularly shoot and practice with their carry weapon. Lots of folks we see purchase a handgun...take the LTC class then never go practice or shoot again but do carry.
Good points for sure on carrying hot or not. One point not brought up would be the carry of a DA revolver. Can carry on an unloaded cylinder and you don't need two hands to work the slide.
My dad was LEO for 38 years and he carried his service revolver that way. However he did carry his service 1911 cocked and locked.
Again thanks for sharing the video!

So, it can be done but you have to be aware of the limitations it might impose and you have to prepare to engage (practice) with that starting condition in mind.

IamGroot said:

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good video. He makes a lot of sense. I didn't realize though that concealed carry with an empty chamber was even an option.

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It's unfortunately a semi common thing with people who don't have enough training.

ETA: we had a thread here where people got really mad when I called it dumb. Ha

I don't think there is any good point to be made here for not carrying hot. I just don't.

You have a well trained guy, ready, hand on the pistol, finger on the guard, anticipating the shot, in ideal circumstances by all accounts...and the BEST case scenario is that he is .6 seconds slower than he would have been.

I have not been in a fire fight, but I have been in some hairy instances and I can tell you without a doubt that .6 seconds will get a LOT longer when time matters and things are going down. I want to reduce my variables and time and make less things to think about. I started carrying a Sig P938, and even that has a safety that I despise. It's yet another thing to make sure to deal with. I carried a .40 Glock for a long time and practiced with it and even now with a lot of practice, the Sig requires conscious effort. That means I need a lot more practice. The G was second nature.

I liken the argument against not carrying one in the pipe to the notion you'll snap your seat belt before you get in a wreck.

I've never been in a situation where I needed to draw and fire...but from all accounts, it's just as sudden (as getting into a wreck) and just as jarring. You may only have fractions of a second to react.

I carry my Shield chambered and no safety.

This always comes to mind, if your not stupid about your carry piece there won't be an issue.

I carry cold. It's my junk in my shorts, so I will carry as I please. To each his own.

JSKolache said:

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I carry cold. It's my junk in my shorts, so I will carry as I please. To each his own.

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1) use a quality holster
2) don't finger **** the gun

There, I just solved 99.999999% of what causes accidental discharges.

But just because I understand being *ahem* attached to your junk, I'll add a number 3.

3) don't point a gun at your love gun

Problem solved.

I always carry piped, even in a pocket. But I'll only carry DAO/hammer-only that deep. DAO strikers and SAO (sig/colt mustang type frame's w/external safety), both give me the heebie jeebies. Too much can go wrong on the draw from a pocket.

One issue that hasn't been brought up yet with SA pistols carried without a round in the chamber, is the chance of a failure during the manual cycling of the slide. Under duress, the user has an increased chance of failing to cycle the slide correctly. In addition, for many who carry (and don't practice a lot), it is very common to have the first round of a full mag fail to feed. This occurs because uses have not vetted their ammo, their weapons are not broken in, and/or the mags have issues. Carrying with a round in the chamber, trained, eliminates this possibility. Just something to consider. If you carry with one in the chamber, you will be able to fire one round before the SA needs to cycle and pick-up the next round. Food for thought.....

BenderRodriguez said:

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JSKolache said:

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I carry cold. It's my junk in my shorts, so I will carry as I please. To each his own.

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1) use a quality holster
2) don't finger **** the gun

There, I just solved 99.999999% of what causes accidental discharges.

But just because I understand being *ahem* attached to your junk, I'll add a number 3.

3) don't point a gun at your love gun

Problem solved.

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I carry appendix, so my love gun and my gun have a pretty close relationship.

Aggiebrewer said:

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but on tv, the cops always rack a round when things get hairy!

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My favorite is *hammer cocking sound* as someone points a Glock at someone.

hunter2012 said:

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This always comes to mind, if your not stupid about your carry piece there won't be an issue.

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While it wasnt a defensive situation, had a marine puff up and tell me that one morning on the banks of the Brazos. It was in the heat of things and against my better judgement I moved him to the left side of the group and let him keep hunting. Next flock of birds in, his "safety" malfunctioned and he blew a 6" hole in the mud before his gun even made it up.

For defensive carry Im in the carry chambered camp but gun either needs a manual safety or long/heavy trigger. Chambered strikers should be reserved for LEOs or the extremely well disciplined.

This topic is great because it makes it real easy to determine who can be safely dismissed when any carry topics come up.

I know of at least one fatality in the Houston area due to practicing Empty Chamber, Condition 3, Israeli carry whatever you want to call it. An Israeli instructor was teaching a course at a north Houston gun range. Students were practicing quickly drawing, racking the slide and shooting. One student lost grip on the gun while racking the slide quickly. He dropped the gun, tried to catch it and in the process shot himself in the thigh, bled out and died.

I appendix carry with a round in a chamber. I do holster the gun before putting the holster in my pants. With a modern unmodified handgun (except possibly Sig P320), in a quality holster your pistol is not going to discharge just sitting in your pants. You botch a trigger job or have a holster that doesn't hold your pistol securely and completely cover the trigger guard then you have something to worry about.

JSKolache said:

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I carry cold. It's my junk in my shorts, so I will carry as I please. To each his own.

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I've tried to make a witty response to this multiple times, but all of them sound mean or dumb. I chalk it up to the sound reasoning behind this strategy. So I won't try to be funny.

I read this as I carry in a bad place, in an unsafe way, and I understand this and I'm scared of doing so. To compound this bad situation I make it worse by making my tool less effective when needed in a high stress, quick reaction situation that will require me to fish out a weapon from around my balls.

I knew Izzy carry would eventually come up in this thread, like it always does when this topic comes up (though usually people reference it as a positive). Side note, that is why I have taken medical classes and have aid gear when I go shoot. Sad stuff.

People cite "Well the Izzys teach it" without understanding why they taught it.

The Israeli military at the time was a draftee force. They had to beg, borrow and steal to supply themselves, and their handguns specifically were a crazy hodge podge of different makes, models, designs, etc.

If you had to teach a bunch of inexperienced 18 year old draftees a method to carry a secondary weapon that they probably wouldn't ever use anyway, you'd probably settle on condition 3 carry and teach them to rack the slide on the draw too.

But since we're not a bunch of inexperienced draftees using weapons we don't get to pick....there's probably a better way for us.

lexofer said:

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I know of at least one fatality in the Houston area due to practicing Empty Chamber, Condition 3, Israeli carry whatever you want to call it. An Israeli instructor was teaching a course at a north Houston gun range. Students were practicing quickly drawing, racking the slide and shooting. One student lost grip on the gun while racking the slide quickly. He dropped the gun, tried to catch it and in the process shot himself in the thigh, bled out and died.

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Not arguing which way is better but crap happens. Very similar story. Good friend of mine that has a ton of gun experience came in the house, unholstered his glock and set it on the counter (don't know why he didn't remove it in holster). Accidently knocked it off the counter and instinctively caught it mid air discharging a .45 gold dot through his thigh. He's a firefighter with good medical training and actually had a tourniquet. Doctors said he would have died without it. Lots of smart people make small/ stupid mistakes and sometimes that all it takes.

BenderRodriguez said:

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I knew Izzy carry would eventually come up in this thread, like it always does when this topic comes up (though usually people reference it as a positive). Side note, that is why I have taken medical classes and have aid gear when I go shoot. Sad stuff.

People cite "Well the Izzys teach it" without understanding why they taught it.

The Israeli military at the time was a draftee force. They had to beg, borrow and steal to supply themselves, and their handguns specifically were a crazy hodge podge of different makes, models, designs, etc.

If you had to teach a bunch of inexperienced 18 year old draftees a method to carry a secondary weapon that they probably wouldn't ever use anyway, you'd probably settle on condition 3 carry and teach them to rack the slide on the draw too.

But since we're not a bunch of inexperienced draftees using weapons we don't get to pick....there's probably a better way for us.

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Bruh stop bringing facts into this.

BenderRodriguez said:

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But since we're not a bunch of inexperienced draftees using weapons we don't get to pick....there's probably a better way for us.

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You and others that train like you aren't but the average person starting off in conceal carry has little to no gun experience. No one has taught them muzzle discipline, finger discipline, etc. All you have to do is go to any gun store or range and watch people. Zero muzzle discipline. They're oblivious and they dont even know what they dont know. How many times have people come on here wanting to buy their first gun and they get 17 people telling them to buy a glock 19 and to keep it chambered at all times. Then they'll likely get zero safety training to go with that advice. Recipe for disaster in my opinion.

CS78 said:

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BenderRodriguez said:

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But since we're not a bunch of inexperienced draftees using weapons we don't get to pick....there's probably a better way for us.

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You and others that train like you aren't but the average person starting off in conceal carry has little to no gun experience. No one has taught them muzzle discipline, finger discipline, etc. All you have to do is go to any gun store or range and watch people. Zero muzzle discipline. They're oblivious and they dont even know what they dont know. How many times have people come on here wanting to buy their first gun and they get 17 people telling them to buy a glock 19 and to keep it chambered at all times. Then they'll likely get zero safety training to go with that advice. Recipe for disaster in my opinion.

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What's my advice every time someone asks about buying their first gun?

Every single thread. Every single time.

I'll give you two guesses.

Follow up question: What is better advice....telling people bad ways to carry or telling people to seek training to learn how to safely and effectively concealed carry?

I'll go another step further: Teaching someone to handle/carry an unloaded gun is JUST AS dangerous as an inexperienced person with a loaded gun. You can pull out anecdotes for folks who had an AD or ND with a loaded gun all day, and I can give you 10 times that many AD/ND stories from people who "thought the gun was unloaded". People treat "unloaded" guns carelessly. Telling inexperienced people that they can safely carry an unchambered gun is setting them up for a careless negligent discharge when they do stupid things with a gun they "know" is unloaded, when what they really need is urging to train and learn, not advice on how to "safely" remain ignorant.

BenderRodriguez said:

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Aggiebrewer said:

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but on tv, the cops always rack a round when things get hairy!

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My favorite is *hammer cocking sound* as someone points a Glock at someone.

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Even better.... what movie did they digitally add in a hammer to a Glock?

Found it... ANT MAN!

https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2015/12/31/movie-magic-glock/

Okay, that's really funny.

Especially since you know the prop houses have crap tons of 92s they could have used for this instead of having to edit in a hammer in CGI.

I train at a Martial Arts gym that teaches a variety of disciplines for self-defense/fighting etc etc and a couple of weekends a month they train the IPTT (Israeli Police Training Tactics) which means that they train to carry on an empty chamber. I should say up front that this is a pretty legit fighting gym. There is no AC, no mirrors on the walls etc and if you are afraid of getting hit, you are in the wrong place. So my respect for the instructors is pretty high. However, the instructor likes to talk about how the Israeli "special forces" carry this way(on an empty chamber) and that its "actually better" to carry this way because its "safer". With all due respect to him, he is badly misinformed.

I have also watched some of the training go on and I just keep my mouth shut and go on about my business, but there is some really bad training happening. (They do dry fire and rubber gun drills at the gym, live fire at a range) For starters there is a lot of assuming that the "bad guy" is 20 feet away. That is not reality. The bad guy doesn't stand there with a baseball bat and announce himself. Violence happens up close and it happens extremely quickly.

Further, they train that once the bad guy is down you run up to them and shoot them in the head with a follow up shot. This would probably be ok in Israel because their bad guys are legit terrorists, not criminals as we know them. They simply do not have our level of street crime etc., which is one of the reasons (but not by far the only reason, that they carry on an empty chamber) In the US however, if you get caught shooting a downed person in the head you're going to have a lot of explaining to do. Especially if you're a cop. Adding to this problem is that they are teaching this to civilians, most of whom have very little prior training.

What the instructor and people that carry on an empty chamber do not take into account is the history and reason that Israeli guys carry on an empty chamber. It's not because its "better" it's because of their history of having to take whatever firearms they could get in 1947 and not having one uniform way for everyone to carry. Plus, prior to that military officers in armies all over the world were trained to carry on an empty chamber. Keep in mind, however, this was during the era of trench warfare and shooting the enemy at a long distance, not with cops or civilians dealing with violent crime. I'll let you do your own research on the rest of it.

And yes, I know how to chamber a weapon with one hand off of my belt/boot etc etc, but that's incase I'm injured, not because it's a good idea. Guys who carry on an empty chamber simply lack training and, again, shooting paper targets is not training. "It's always been fine for me", is because you've never had to actually get into a fight. Drop your ego and get some actual training from a competent instructor.

BenderRodriguez said:

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What's my advice every time someone asks about buying their first gun?

Every single thread. Every single time.

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You do a very good job of that but you are a trainer. The average person recommending a chambered glock never mentions training. They just repeat what they've heard as internet gospel.

My apologies, I kind of got off thread by arguing the type of gun carried chambered. Like I said, Im a fan of either a manual safety or a long stiff trigger pull. Jerry makes mention in his video about the importance of the heavy trigger. I rarely carry but when I do it's usually a J-frame. The double action pull is the perfect blend of safety/readiness.

CS78 said:

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The average person recommending a chambered glock never mentions training. They just repeat what they've heard as internet gospel.

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I may be misreading your posts here, so let me ask a question.

You seem to be advocating empty chamber carry on striker fired guns for inexperienced people as a safer method if they're not going to carry something with a manual safety or a long trigger and not seek training. Is that correct?

Seems to me to be a personal risk choice, and depends a lot on what type and model of gun you carry and how you carry it. Not all self defense instances involve sudden point blank range shootouts or zero warning. It is going to depend on your personal calculation on how ready you need to be for any possible situation vs your personal opinion of how safe you personally are carrying your choice in carry gun, and how well you personally can use it and how much you are willing to train with it.

No one solution is going to be ideal for almost everyone.