by Chris Randall
(00:09):
What's up guys? This is Chris here and today hopefully we can answer a question should you carry around in the chamber. This is going to be a divisive video and there's going to be a lot of people in the comment section that are going to give their opinion as absolute. And I got to tell you, even on something that you think you might know the answer to, there are reasons and techniques and equipment that you might not want to do it the way you always do it. So today we're going to go over whether you should or shouldn't, what types of guns maybe you should or shouldn't, and what type of equipment you might want to do one or the other. So today we're going to go over again a pretty hot topic and I'm just going to try to be as non-biased as possible and give you both sides of the argument.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Hey y'all, before Chris gets into a super detailed conversation with you about whether or not you should carry with a round in the chamber, we want to thank the sponsor of this video ammo squared. No matter your budget, you can make sure that you never run out of ammo with ammo squared, they stockpile ammo for you in their temperature controlled warehouse until you're ready for it. All you do is sign up, pick a caliber, a price range, and a shipping trigger. Once your pile hits that trigger, they ship your ammo to you. Easy peasy. With ammo squared, you can always make sure that you're prepared for the range or the streets. Thank you again to ammo squared for sponsoring this video.
(01:28):
So if you're unfamiliar with what I'm talking about carrying with around in the chamber, we have an empty magazine here we have a dummy round. We're going to load two dummy rounds. This is my CZ P zero seven. You can see it's been carried before and it is safe. So there's two options when you carry a gun. One, you can put the magazine in the gun and keep it like that. Now it is incredibly safe to you this way, but it's also incredibly safe to the people that might be assaulting you because it takes a lot longer to get to. So if we put it in the holster now we obviously have a very safe gun to carry, but when you pull the gun out, you have to then rack the slide before the gun is able to operate. Now therein lies the problem. Do you have the time?
(02:09):
Do you have the hand? Are you going to be able to do that without causing malfunction? All things that are very interesting to talk about. If you carry without a round in the chamber, you are going to have to rack the gun in order for it to work. So you are going to have to have both hands in order, successfully rack the gun. And you are also going to have to have the technique capable of racking a gun every single time. And the reason why I say that is because many people that are not familiar with firearms have a very difficult time racking a slide. So first maybe we should go over how to rack a slide. Now this is how you see it in the movies.
(02:44):
Do not do that. Okay? Guns are meant to be used. They're meant to be used hard. This is not a toy. This is a real firearm. When we load a real firearm, we put the magazine in and we put it in relatively hard to make sure the magazine seats. That's the most important thing. If you break your mag by putting your mag in too hard, you have a shitty gun. Now the second thing you want to do is grab the slide from the rear, most likely on most firearms. We grab it on the serrations just like that, and then we push the gun forward as we pull to try to kind of smack our chest. That's how Travis Haley taught me and mag pull videos years ago. I kind of still do it that way. So we take it like this, r it all the way to the rear and slingshot it forward.
(03:18):
And the reason why we do that is we give the gun complete spring pressure in order to chamber the round. We definitely don't want to chamber round halfway because now the gun is in a state of not usefulness and then you have to dump the magazine, rack the round out, put a new mag in that you didn't carry with you. See where I'm going with this? You don't want to have that problem. And if you don't believe me, if you watch any active self-protection video, half the time when they have a round not in the chamber, they cause a malfunction when they try to rack it and it's because you're focused on the guy with the kitchen knife not doing the administrative task on your gun and you haven't done it a million times. So it's not second nature to you. So you either have to do one or the other. I recommend heavily if you feel uncomfortable with carrying around in the chamber, I would recommend racking your slide nonstop and make sure you're very good at it.
(04:08):
Now the second issue with this is sometimes slides are bigger or smaller and sometimes they have stuff on 'em. If you carry without a round on the chamber, it is very difficult to get ahold of this slide because it has a very light slide mass which helps you with recoil, but it hurts you when trying to grab the slide. If you go with something like a micro nine, especially something that has a red dot on it, you might have a very hard time getting onto the slide accurately. So you might want to work on a pinch method, which also can be a problem. Two problems with the pinch method. One, you might not have enough surface area or hand strength to do it. Two, you might miss a little bit. Slide your hand into the chamber, pinch a shit out of your hand and cause a malfunction.
(04:45):
Again, all problems that would not be good if someone had a kitchen knife trying to cut your nuts off. And we would like to thank the other sponsor of this video, the Sonoran Desert Institute, the SDI has been a long time sponsor of the channel. We really appreciate them. If you want to get an education in anything's firearms related, please go down and check out the Sonoran Desert Institute. They are a university that specializes in firearms education. If you want to get a degree in gunsmithing drone technology or anything else associated with firearms, it's never been a better time to be your own boss. So you can go out and start your own business or you can work for one of the quality companies that you've always wanted to and check out the Snore Desert Institute. Now, the second issue with not having a round in the chamber is that you might not have a secondhand to rack it in the first place and you might ask why.
(05:31):
Well, first off, you might've gotten shot or stabbed in it. You might have it being held by somebody else. You might be grappling with somebody and they might have your wrist. Very, very common for somebody to grab your wrist if you're grappling, if you're fighting with somebody, grabbing someone's wrist is one of the first things that you're taught to do generally in a lot of grappling, martial arts, judo, wrestling, juujitsu, if they have any grappling background whatsoever, they're going to be going for your wrists, your elbows, all that stuff, and they're going to tie up your arms so you can't use them to shoot them with. So it is a very good idea in order to not only learn how to draw with one hand, but learn how to, if you're going to carry with one out of the chamber, make sure you know how to rack it with one hand.
(06:08):
And that's going to require specific equipment like for example, a rear site like this that comes on the palmetto dagger. Now this is going to allow you to rack it off of other services, whether that be a table at a restaurant, whether that be your belt or any other technique that you've been shown to use. You can grab this and then rack it off that and it's not going to be easy to do and you are going to definitely have to practice it, but it is definitely doable. Now, if you've decided to carry with a round in the chamber, you have avoided a lot of those issues. However, you do introduce new issues. And what I mean by that is something like this Glock 43 x, which I think is the most popular carry gun on the market today. This is a striker fired polymer frame pistol.
(06:48):
So there is no safety and there is just a trigger safety. Now the issue with that comes with equipment again, Stryker fired pistols are very popular these days because of Kit Dex Holsters in my opinion. And a kit Dex holster allows you to carry safely when you otherwise would not have. And therein lies the history of carrying with an empty chamber. In the old days when you had something like this or even predate this, go back to the cowboy days, they actually carried with a round empty in the cylinder that the hammer lies on. So if I wanted to carry this gun back in the old days, let's say this is a cult single action, just because I didn't bring mine out, I would put an empty chamber right under the hammer. And the reason for that is if I was riding on my horse or is getting off my horse or getting off my wife or whatever I might be doing with my holster on and my gun falls out of my leather holster and it lands on the ground, it doesn't create a new hole in my ass because those guns are not drop safe.
(07:43):
Now, it's really interesting because I would consider the round in the chamber to not be a thing we just do now because we know better. But a thing that we do now because we have better equipment, first off carrying with a round in the chamber is much safer in a CX holster because it retains its shape completely. This is one of my most used holsters. It's so loose that I actually have a screw coming out of it right now, but it's still completely retains its shape around the trigger guard. And that is the real issue with those old gal co holsters and things like that. They look great. The Miami Vice holsters, they look awesome. The problem is when the gun goes in and out of the holster over and over again, eventually it will start to bend the sides of the holster inward toward the trigger guard and eventually you're so used to it, you just throw it in there.
(08:25):
If you've seen a lot of guys shooting on the range that shoot a lot, a lot of times they've got the drawdown so much that they reh holster so fast. And if you had a piece of your holster stuck in there, it would definitely go off and make your dick slightly smaller. And that is a real issue. So make sure if you're going to carry the round in the chamber, I would absolutely recommend a cadex holster and I would recommend a high quality one as well. There are many of them. My wife uses this one from we the people. I use this from LAS concealment and then I also use one from phalanx concealment. All of those are great holsters. They're not going to be $4, but they are going to protect you from shooting yourself when you reh holster. Now the second thing they've done is an evolution in firearms.
(09:05):
So unlike the old days of the revolver where you had to carry one outside the chamber, these new revolvers like this LCR are drop safe. So you could load this entire cylinder here and have no issue, which is really great. Now, going even further semi-automatic pistols these days like the Glock are also drop safe, whereas a lot of pistols back in the day were not. So you have to remember that not only the holsters hold the gun better and they make sure you don't have negligent discharges inside the trigger guard. But now not only the holster keeps the gun in the holster better, a lot of these holsters, you can literally put it in the holster, hold it upside down and it won't come out. So even if a bully comes up to you, flips you over, all your change falls out on the ground, your gun will still not fall out and you can still draw like John Wick and make him wish he didn't.
(09:51):
No, I'm kidding, but like Billy Madison or something. The second thing that they've done is make sure that the guns are dropped safe. So if something did fail for whatever reason, your gun did drop on the ground. If you don't carry one of these, you don't need to carry one outside the chamber. So I just want to go through a final overview. If you want to carry without a round in the chamber, make sure that you have a dedicated rear site that you know can use as a racking tool. Make sure that you have practiced tons and tons of times racking your firearm one way or the other or with that rear site if you have to. And then make sure that you've used a lot of range time to vet those issues because you should train racking around in the chamber. You should train drawing the gun all one handed.
(10:39):
I don't remember the actual paper that I read, but there was one law enforcement agency that kept track of all of their law enforcement shootings and 50% of them happened with one hand. So even if you do carry with a round in the chamber, you should still practice this in case you have a malfunction or in case the other guy's hand was on your gun and you fired around and it malfunctioned. And you have to clear that malfunction with one hand. You should definitely have those skills either way, but if you carry with a round outside the chamber, you should have a lot more of those skills and I would recommend that if you don't feel safe carrying with a round in the chamber. There's other ways. First off, there's double single action guns, which are much safer to carry with a round in the chamber in my personal opinion.
(11:16):
So if you're worried about it, you can go that route or you can even go the single action route, which also has a manual safety like this staccato here. So this staccato has dual safeties. If you're concerned about a round in the chamber, you can rack this guy in there, put the manual safety up, and then you also have to depress the grip safety. So this gun is theoretically never going to have an issue unless you really, really work at it. So these two are great options if you don't want to do a round in the chamber. And then of course, always a revolver as well. A revolver is also extremely safe to keep with a round in the chamber because of the very long double action pull. And as I mentioned before, all of the guns are also drop safe, so it works really well.
(11:56):
Now if you want to carry with a round in the chamber, I would absolutely recommend a quality holster and a quality firearm. And if you do those two things in conjunction with following the firearm safety rules and making sure that you practice and train safely, you shouldn't have an issue with carrying around in the chamber. And then you will never have a time where somebody's beating the crap out of you and you draw a gun that doesn't work. So I personally recommend carrying with a round in the chamber, and I do do that, but if you feel uncomfortable with it, it's probably better to have a gun without a round in the chamber, I guess, and still have the gun. But that's really up to you. Now, if you're interested in any of the other types of guns, we have tons of videos, not only full reviews on all the pistols that you see on the table, but if you're interested in double action guns or single action only guns, instead of let's say the standard issue striker fired, we have tons of videos on the pros and cons of those as well, as well as appendix carry, carry mistakes and all kinds of other stuff.
(12:53):
You can see a few videos that we put at the end of this video if you're interested or I'd really appreciate it if you just click it, subscribe, and we have almost a thousand videos on YouTube. If this video helped you, let me know in the comments section. We've been doing a lot of how to and pros and cons videos lately. So if you have a bunch of topics you want me to cover, just put 'em in the comment section below. I love good video ideas after all, and maybe your video will be the one that I choose. If you like this video, please like and subscribe. Please supply your Oklahoma shelters and remember to recycle. I'll check you later.
YouTube Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN2EdtAaTic
Credit: Chris, Honest Outlaw