Cocked & Locked??

If your pistol did not have that beavertail safety, I would say it was safer to carry the thing with one in the chamber and hammer down.

This was how the pistol was designed to be carried. The early pistols had wide hammer spurs and the grip safety was out of the way. Lowering the hammer was natural to the Army Officers who had just turned in their Colt SAA’s just a few years previous. The pre WW1 SOP was to carry the thing in your flap holster, hammer down. However, the manuals were changed by the time you get to WWII and the SOP was to carry the things cocked and locked in the flap holster. There must have been a bunch of accidental discharges when someone lost control of the hammer when lowering.

I do not like carrying a M1911 cocked and locked having had the safety swipe off. And as seen in the lower picture, the safety is a sear blocking safety, not a hammer locking mechanism. However with modern designs with the beavertail, such as pictured below, it is very difficult to get the thumb around that hammer to cock it, and it is even more difficult to lower the hammer without loosing control.

So for a M1911 with a beavertail, cocked and locked may be less likely to give you an accidental discharge.

The original pistols had no safety whatsoever and were designed to be carried cocked.
Kinda like a Glock perhaps.

plodder

Whether I'm carrying my CZ 83, Ruger SR9, Bersa Thunder, or my beloved EMP .40, they are all carried Cocked and Locked with a round in the chamber. I feel perfectly safe knowing that if they do accidentally hit the deck, they will not discharge. Even knowing the CZ and Bersa only have the thumb safety it is designed to remove the possibility of just such an incident. And with all the safeties on the 1911 and SR9, there is almost an impossibility of a discharge without me making it do so.

As a new Concealed Carry participant I am trying to understand the safest and moste effective method of carrying my Kimber 1911.

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The safest method is to get some good training w/ it so you realize that the best way to carry a 1911 is in Condition-1.

See below:
http://www.sightm1911.com/Care/1911_conditions.htm

I would recommend "cocked and locked" as it gives the best combination of safety and speed into action. Chamber empty carry is unrealistic - in my view the same as an empty gun - and the shape of your grip safety and hammer makes thumb cocking on the draw with one hand difficult.

dprice3844444 said:

ifound the best way,i bought a glock.no worries about the thumb safety accidently becoming disingaged and accidently blowing my butt off causing brain damage.

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I don't understand how accidentally disengaging the safety would fire the gun. So you say you bought a Glock. Isn't that the same as having a de-safetied non-Glock? Either way you can only fire the gun by pulling the trigger.

Kleanbore, does 'hammer drop mechanism' include a decocker?

Another Condition One guy here. I see Condition One 1911 as being one step safer than a Glock, which is NOT to mean a Glock is dangerous. Both are safe enough if carried in holsters which cover the trigger guard.

Lowering the 1911 hammer over a chambered round IS an assumed-risk activity! Doing so requires extreme care to be safe. I used to lower the hammer of a 1911, while leaving a round chambered, for such circumstances as a house gun not being carried, but then I decided to just use either Condition One, Condition Three, or totally empty, for all circumstances.

We had a thread a while back about accidental and negligent discharges and a high number of them occurred when a person was lowering the hammer with an oily thumb after loading the gun following a cleaning. No tragedies because they were either lucky, or had the muzzle pointed in a safe direction. I got my sig with the decocking lever before joining this forum, but the thread reaffirmed for me that it is the right gun for me.

If a 1911 in Condition One makes you nervous, carry one with an empty chamber for a month...cocked...with the safety off. Unless you hold it in a firing grip and pull the trigger, the pistol will be cocked at the end of the experiment.

In Condition One, there are three safety mechanisms in play. The grip safety blocks the trigger. The thumb safety blocks the sear. The half-cock notch serves as a fail-safe if both hammer hooks shear completely off...which is highly unlikely. A full 1/8th inch can be removed from the sear crown, and the half-cock notch will still grab it and stop the hammer.

Is it perfectly safe in Condition One? No. No loaded gun can ever be completely safe. Is it fraught with peril? No.

Like the man said: "Is gun. Gun not safe."

We had a thread a while back about accidental and negligent discharges and a high number of them occurred when a person was lowering the hammer with an oily thumb after loading the gun following a cleaning.

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That can happen when someone attempts to lower a hammer without knowing how...or by getting in a hurry...or both. Nothing under the sun is fool-proof. Fools will always find a way.

Every few weeks I wander over and catch up on John Farnam's quips and quotes. Among the current crop is this gem on safety and readiness - give it a look...

http://www.defense-training.com/quips/03Feb12.html
Little Mistakes

Once again, thanks for the link The more I read the less mystery there is to firearms, and the more comfortable I am with the idea of carrying. I like having a place to ask stupid questions. So much so that I am accomplishing NOTHING on this day at home :banghead:

Serenity,

There are several years worth of Farnam's quips and quotes at http://www.defense-training.com/quips/quips.html . Good stuff IMHO, all boiled down and concentrated.

I spent a full career as a reference librarian, and let me assure you that the only dumb question is the one you don't ask. No one was born knowing this stuff, anyone who knows anything had to learn it. And what one person can learn, so can others.

I carry my Colt Defender in Condition One at all times. Had a guy tell me once that it looked dangerous. I replied "It is only dangerous to the perp I have to pull it on if need be"

i don't carry a model 1911. But my Sig 210 and Colt MK IV Series 80 .380 are carried cocked and locked.

While 1911Tuner and many others can give you the "why" and "wherefore" of the mechanics in a 1911 pistol, I am a merely a dediated user of the pistol. I have carried cocked and locked for decades and never had an incident. Once or twice I've unholstered at the end of the day and the safety has been disengaged, but with no tom-foolery about messing with the trigger and playing around, it resulted in nothing more than "Huh, when did that happen?" followed by clearing the pistol for the evening. It must be 1) in your hand (grip safety) 2) thumb safety off (other wise the sear won't trip) and 3) trigger pressed (obvious) for the pistol to fire. remove any one of these three and there is no loud noise accompanied by recoil.

I see absolutely no reason to have a loaded chamber with the hammer down on a 1911, so I mine is never in that condition. Sort of a really large loaded chamber indicator, if you will. The manual on my Kimber says to dry fire the gun rather than lower the hammer manually, so I go that route...remove the magazine, empty the chamber, pull the trigger. I store the gun in Condition 3 as I have occasional visits from grandchildren.

Of course safe 'locked and cocked' includes a holster which covers the trigger just in case the safety gets knocked off.

i used to carry c&l till i got home one day and it was just cocked. now i carry hammer down on a live one in a defender, i can cock just as fast as take off a safety and it has a firing pin safety so it won't fire from enertia even if dropped. i would still carry cond 1 in a proper holster,(hammer block strap), but none of my holsters has them. whatever anyone says you really are more likely to shoot yourself than for someone else to do it, can't be too safe.

I for one over the years have had 2 unexpected confrontations in the dark and both at close quarters......I can tell you from experience, if you don't carry a gun with one in the chamber, don't bother carrying at all.

I hope it's not too far off topic, I apologize if it is. Im curious what condition you guys keep a 1911 in, when you're not carrying it.

When you guys remove your carry gun for the day do you unload it, unchamber it, or leave it in C1 in the safe?

I'm thinking less handling/ unloading the better? But a C1 1911 in my gun safe is a little odd too.

No kids in the house here, so I remove the pistol (still in the holster) and it sits on the nightstand (still in holster) until I put it back on my belt the next morning. All condition 1.