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.
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.