Mad,
Evidently caught you on a bad day.
My opinion gives finality to nothing, I was largely reacting to Harley's repetitions, pointing out that these ongoing "debates" over whether to carry with a loaded chamber or not will never end, and that it's pointless to continue them.
Not sure who you have me confused with, but I've worked with Ayoob, Farnam, Tueller, Taylor, and others, and I've spent my own money on them. I'm an Air Force Security Police vet, retired career cop, former police firearms instructor, and professional borrower of various types of recreational & defensive firearms.
You do not see me make any claims toward being "an authority", as you put it. I have my experiences, everybody else has theirs, and I won't discount mine because they don't agree with whatever your philosophy is.
Mine tell me quite simply that the defensive tool I carry travels with me to save my life or that of someone close to me should deadly violence ever again be presented to me. As such, and based on making my living with firearms (and not just on the range) for 35 years, I make the following conclusions:
1. Violence is not something you can plan ahead.
2. Violence is not something you can count on avoiding.
3. Violence will not always present rapidly, but it will do so more often than not.
4. Violence will present unexpectedly.
5. Violence may present from any direction.
6. Violence may present so suddenly that you may be injured before you realize what's going on.
7. If I am going to carry a defensive tool to use in protecting myself against violence, that tool must be ready to go out of the holster.
8. I cannot count on having two hands to operate my defensive tool.
9. I understand how my chosen tool works, and while I do respect it, I am not afraid to carry it fully loaded and ready for instant use if needed.
10. I know (and I mean KNOW!) that I will almost certainly have too many other things going on all at once to depend on my ability to remember to chamber a round in the stress and dynamics of a violent encounter.
11. I will not handicap myself by carrying this lifesaving device in any other condition but that of instant readiness.
12. I have personally engaged in a number of situations where I did not have two hands to fiddle with a handgun.
13. Violence may present in an escalating manner, beginning with a hands-on tussle and developing to a point that can only be resolved by the use of the sidearm.
14. During such circumstances, I KNOW that there will be a hell of a lot going on, and I will not risk my life on remembering to get a round chambered.
15. These conclusions are based entirely on my real life experiences.
Eloquent? OK, I've been taking it fairly soft, but I'll lay it out.
Your life is your life. If you choose to carry a deflated life raft & a pump around thinking you're good to go because you have the equipment to rescue yourself along & surely you'll have the time to pump it up, that's your business.
If you are afraid to carry a round chambered, then you do so out of fear. That has nothing whatever to do with respect for anybody or anything. If you are "uncomfortable" carrying a live gun, it's out of fear at some level, whether you admit it or not. This is not saying that anybody who doesn't like a loaded chamber is a sissy. Everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY, has at least a low-grade fear of something or other. It's not a blanket condemnation, and I accused no one here of wearing pink underwear.
Military garrison or gate duty regulations have no bearing on this whatever. I carried .38s, M-16s, and M-60 machineguns here & there a long time ago, and I'm very familiar with the military mindset that works to the lowest common denominator. I do not speak for the other branches, but at least our .38s were always fully loaded & ready to go when on duty with a holstered sidearm. There were other considerations with the older 1911s carried by the Army, Marines, and so on, that were addressed administratively in other ways.
Don't take this, incidentally, to imply criticism of any other branch of the armed services, or its members who had to play the cards they were dealt.
I've seen this "empty chamber" overanalysis extended to revolvers with the thought that the carrier would only load his cylinder with three rounds. Nothing under the hammer, just in case the gun were dropped. Nothing in the next two chambers, just in case the gun was wrestled away and the bad guy turned it on its owner. Rationale being that said bad guy would pull the trigger a couple times, hear the two clicks, figure the gun was empty, toss it away, and either run off into the night or just beat the owner to pieces.
Both are...less than realistic, at best.
I do not mean to sound unsympathetic to those who are new to carrying a defensive handgun. It can be scary, and it certainly is a grave responsibility. But, my years in doing so have left me with the conclusions listed above, and my opinion (which is just that, Mad) is that simple is best. If you can learn to understand your chosen weapon, master your fear of it, and carry it ready to go, you've achieved a simple state of readiness that will serve you best over the largest span of potentially life threatening violent encounters that you may find yourself in the middle of. Much as you may wish to discount the idea, many new gun owners ARE afraid of their new firearm, and that's perfectly natural. It takes knowledge, understanding, familiarity, and use to get past that.
If you're nervous about the lack of external safeties on a Glock with a loaded chamber, try another type of pistol that does have an external safety. If you're nervous about a single-action Colt, try any of the quality double-action pistols, with or without an external safety. If a pistol of any type makes you uncomfortable because the second round (if not the first) will leave it cocked, check out a decent double-action revolver that has no safety, but starts out with a long & deliberate trigger pull on every shot, and ends up with the hammer down on every shot.
There are many ways to deal with a fear (however subliminal) of a loaded chamber, not the least of which is also a good quality holster whose construction adds another level of prevention to an accidental discharge.
Yes, you can practice all sorts of contortions & maneuvers to get a round chambered, but all will involve either the use of two hands, which you may not have, or the employment of additional manipulations in coming out of the holster that could require time you may not have. Infinitely simpler to draw a fully loaded pistol that can be accessed one-handed and fired one-handed with no additional complicating operations to get it up & running in a hurry.
You also have me confused with somebody else on the consensus thing. I didn't say that.
In saying all the above, I've laid out what my opinion is, and why it is. I do recognize that not everybody here agrees, and don't expect them to. Nor have I directly attacked anybody (except loosely, with Harley
) who disagrees. I have not & will not say that if you're afraid of a loaded chamber, you should not own a gun.
Mad,
One last thing, and I hope I'm being eloquent enough for you. I'm not trying to convince anybody here. While I did not mention consensus, it does appear that the majority here seems to favor the loaded chamber. And, I can tell you that in addition to my own experiences, associating with a number of extremely professional instructors who would spit (politely, of course) in your eye if you called them "weekend warriers" to their faces has done nothing to change my opinion of the MOST EFFECTIVE METHOD OF CARRYING THE DEFENSIVE PISTOL on a regular basis. It is not THE ONLY way to carry the pistol, and everybody has to make their own decisions.
Again, you handle your threat management your way, I'll handle mine my way.
Denis
