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Gravity Chambering

Gbro

Gbro

Member
Joined
Jan 25, 2005
Messages
147
Location
MN
A few years ago I was helping my daughter pack up her belongings and the 1st pistol I picked up in her den, a very small area with poor lighting, I removed the magazine and drew the slide back with the Muzzle pointing down and had a good view of the empty chamber as I drew the slide rearward, I caught sight of what I can only describe as a flicker of brass as I released the slide.
I then drew the slide rearward in curiosity to find a .22 cal. L R cartridge extracted from the chamber!
I have taught the Canadian rule of checking the Chamber and then the Loading Path for 20 + years, but this close quartets setting I had not done that and who knows if that would have revealed the cartridge that dropped from the Bolt face right down into the chamber?
I then thought of a very good friend who claimed he cleared his pistol at the range and at home he stated he again checked the Sccy 9mm prior to cleaning it and to break this pistol down like others the striker/hammer needs to be released and when he pulled the trigger the pistol discharged and the bullet ricochet back and hit him mid-calf and exited his ankle.
He was/is so shook up over this incident that he hasn't been able to rationalize what went wrong, but we did a bit of testing and by slowly drawing the slide back with muzzle down a cartridge will drop right down Into the chamber.
I had never read any warnings about this, however MCARBO includes in their safety protocol to check chamber and "Bolt Face", so maybe they are aware of this?
Gregor, CGVS
 
I discourage the finger check, my youngest son had a Walther 22 that would drop the slide as soon as your finger was in range. After the 3rd finger got caught in that thing, it went down the road.
 
Sometimes your eyes will "see" what you're expecting to see.

Never check to see that a gun is "unloaded".

When checking the chamber or cylinder, consciously ask yourself, "Is this gun loaded, yes or no?"

That slight change in mindset slows you down and makes the act of checking the chamber a more solemn, mindful, and deliberate act instead of a casual act.
 
I discourage the finger check, my youngest son had a Walther 22 that would drop the slide as soon as your finger was in range. After the 3rd finger got caught in that thing, it went down the road.
Click to expand...
It's a good idea to hold upward pressure on the slide release while doing the finger check.
 
I was going over an old .22 rifle. I had taken the tube magazine apart and put it back together Pulled out the springs, follow, just apart, cleaned, put back together. I had those orange snap caps, cause I was just testing it, testing the action, mag tube, ejection, all of it. Just going over the thing. I'm cycling the snap caps through it, probably for the 3rd or 4th time and I'm just practicing cyling it, listening to the snap caps kind of tick as they hit the floor, and one made a thud. I look down on the ground and there is a live .22 round. I stll can't even begin to explain where that round came from, but it cycled through the action and came out of the chamber and ejected normally, but // I had the whole mazazine tube apart, and was using bright orange snap caps. It had to be hiding in there somewhere, but I gave up trying to figure it out. Rifle seems to work perfectly.

In the OPs exampe. Again, I don't get it - missing something. If you drop the magazine, then there's no rounds in the firearm, so - where does the round that drops into the chamber come from? My exampel and the OPs example make me feel like I'm being punked.

Anyway, my experience makes me take the safety rules just that much more serious. They aren't hard, but they sure are serious.
 
Viewing the opening of a partially withdrawn slide would reveal any case, empty or loaded, in the chamber or held by the extractor.
Commonly known as a "Press Check".
Continuing on to slide lock would eject any case held by the extractor.
jmo,
.
 
MEHavey said:
OOC . . . what is that ? :thumbdown:
Click to expand...
May I ask you just what is your question???
From what I can only guess, and from this:

Film496 said,
film495 said:
the OPs exampe. Again, I don't get it - missing something. If you drop the magazine, then there's no rounds in the firearm, so - where does the round that drops into the chamber come from? My exampel and the OPs example make me feel like I'm being punked.
Click to expand...

It's been 21 years since I took a Canadian FAS course just for background, I never had any intention of hunting in Canada.
Clearing a magazine fed firearm,
1. Remove magazine
2.draw slide/bolt to rear
3. Check chamber
4. Check loading path
Rational: There may be a distraction at some point where the magazine is not removed and a firearm that was just "thought clear" by a corrupted check could have just been loaded.
Have you ever heard about someone shot with what was suppose to be an unloaded gun?
And in your story about the rough .22 cartridge being ejected from your rifle, if you feel Punked as you stated, look .......
This thread I started is about an extremely rare event that I had never heard about and caught by just a glimpse of color after I had already seen an empty chamber,,,, because the cartridge that WAS in the chamber was held to the Bolt face by the extracter and because I didn't draw the slide back hard, or like another stated that he "Always works the slide 3 times" sure, that could be called "My Mistake", but this is in the odd time when things are not routine the possibility of a gun being loaded when thought to be clear, and Yes we are to always treat every gun as loaded!
And MCARBO including checking the Bolt Face is a direct parallel to what I am stating in this thread.
Gregor, CGVS
 
I don't know if this would be called "Confirmation Bias" or not. However, we tend to see only what we want to see. I have been there any number of times, where if I did not conduct "useless" safety checks, I would never have discovered the something that was amiss.

As much as I hate empty chamber indicators, too many AR15 competitors were leaving the line with a round in the chamber. Some of the earliest empty chamber indicators only held the AR15 bolt back. And I liked those as they were devices that went into the magazine well and positively blocked the bolt. But what do you know, self reports on the web indicated AR15 competitors leaving the slow fire prone stage, arriving home, only to find a round in the chamber even though the bolt open device functioned perfectly. Some time later the NRA required empty chamber indicators that went into the chamber. I hate these in AR's as these devices don't positively hold the bolt back, and it is easy to trip the bolt on an AR15. That will break the empty chamber indicator.

Garands and M1a's did not have the same problem as AR's as the shooter sees the back of the chamber in these rifles when the bolt is back. However AR15's, you can't see unless you have X Ray vision.

Before we go downrange in any NRA competition, all weapons have to have the bolt back and an empty chamber indicator installed.
 
Slamfire said:
I don't know if this would be called "Confirmation Bias" or not.
Click to expand...
I think it would be.
It's more or less what Shawn Dodson wrote in his post, if one's thinking is "checking to see if the firearm is unloaded", that's a bias one will seek to confirm.
If the thought process is to determine the current state with regard to the presence of ammo, then there's no bias to confirm.
 
JohnMc said:
If there was one in the chamber and you drop the magazine, then there's still a round in the firearm, 100% of the time.
Click to expand...
in context, you're dropping the mag and doing a press check or racking the slide
 
I listed it in post No. 11.
[It's been 21 years since I took a Canadian FAS course just for background, I never had any intention of hunting in Canada.
Clearing a magazine fed firearm,
1. Remove magazine
2.draw slide/bolt to rear
3. Check chamber
4. Check loading path]
And like I posted, MCARBO (Military Carbine brotherhood) words it; Check Bolt Face.

Gregor, CGVS
 
I know how to check a semiauto to unload and to ensure it's totally unloaded, but I admit, I got lost with all the acronyms in the thread (MCARBO, CGVS, OOC).
References to Canada didn't help either and was a distraction.
For me, I probably learn best from seeing and doing, with a little bit of reading about how-to-do something.

Overall, good job for the OP who found a loaded round while checking a gun and caught/corrected the situation.
 
JohnKSa said:
Some advocate poking a finger into the chamber as well. That would probably detect/dislodge a round stuck on the breechface.
Click to expand...
We call it "Lock, Look, and feel". Lock the slide to the rear, look into the empty magwell and chamber, then insert a pinky into the breech JUST to be sure...I am pretty sure any round that somehow was hung up on the extractor would be noticed.
 
L-2 said:
I got lost with all the acronyms in the thread (MCARBO, CGVS, OOC).
Click to expand...
You're not the only one.

I've never heard of any of these either
References to Canada didn't help either and was a distraction.
Click to expand...
That sort of threw me also.

But I did re-read it and the description immediately follows the use of the term. What throws a casual reader off is the lack of punctuation after "rule"...also the uncommon usage of "Loading Path"
 
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