There are now over 1,000,000 Texans licensed to carry a handgun in public.\u00a0 As to how many of them actually do, no one knows.\u00a0 Some carry every day, every place that is legal; some carry only on rare occasion; and some carry only in a vehicle, and use the license to prove to police that they have demonstrated the required firearm proficiency.<\/p>\n
Whether or not one carries regularly, there is never-ending debate on the subject of carry condition<\/strong><\/span>: round in the chamber or not; cocked or not; safety on or not.\u00a0 Those experienced in carrying a gun debate these points mostly for fun, but for those new to carrying a gun, this raises some serious questions.<\/p>\n First, let us set some context.\u00a0 Some guns are hammer-fired (all 1911s, most revolvers, and some other guns), and some are striker-fired (probably most easily-concealable guns).\u00a0 While it is true that some guns use an internal (shrouded) hammer that is not the same as a striker, that is a distinction without a difference in this discussion; the real question is whether or not a gun can be cocked with your thumb.\u00a0 Any gun when cocked is in single-action mode (fireable with minimal effort).\u00a0 If it has an external hammer, it can be decocked (uncocked), either through a decocker lever, or manually (safety hazard).\u00a0 If the gun is a double-action model (DA\/SA), it can still be fired immediately while decocked (with more effort), but if it is a single-action model (SA), it cannot<\/span>.\u00a0 Never decock an SA gun, as it is then useless.\u00a0 Many of these models are difficult and dangerous to cock manually.\u00a0 Except for the hammerless models designed for concealed carry, all revolvers are DA\/SA, and without a safety, so these should never be carried (or left anywhere) cocked.<\/p>\n To complicate this discussion more, there is the empty chamber issue (this applies only to semi-autos).\u00a0 While it is true that in many cases, one would have time to rack the slide (hearing reports of an active shooter nearby, for example), in some cases one would not (walking into a robbery in progress, or being car-jacked).\u00a0 In my view, it is a mistake to carry without a round in the chamber.<\/p>\n Since putting a round in the chamber necessarily means the action is cocked, one must then consider whether the gun has a safety at all, and if so, whether to use it.\u00a0 Besides internal safeties over which you have no control, and grip safeties which are automatic (1911s), you basically have two types of safeties extant on some pistols: trigger safeties and thumb safeties.\u00a0 Trigger safeties are really marketing gadgets, and are unlikely to prevent most accidental discharges.\u00a0 All hammer-fired guns will have a thumb safety, and it is mandatory that you use it.\u00a0 Striker-fired guns may have a thumb safety, but usually don’t.\u00a0 If it does not, then carry it as it is; the triggers are usually not so light in pull that this is overly dangerous.\u00a0 If it has a thumb safety, then use it only if you can take it off easily during presentation, otherwise leave it off.<\/p>\n The bottom line is that you need to be prepared to draw your gun from the holster and get to the High Ready position, with a sight picture, and the gun in immediately dischargeable condition, in about 3 seconds.\u00a0 If that requires taking off the safety during presentation, then practice that way, and always carry the gun in the same condition.\u00a0 Pulling the trigger, finding out the action is locked, taking off the safety, and pulling again, could take the rest of your life.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There are now over 1,000,000 Texans licensed to carry a handgun in public.\u00a0 As to how many of them actually do, no one knows.\u00a0 Some carry every day, every place that is legal; some carry only on rare occasion; and some carry only in a vehicle, and use the license to prove to police that … Continue reading “Carrying a handgun: cocked & locked, decocked, unlocked?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyfirearmstraining.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyfirearmstraining.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyfirearmstraining.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyfirearmstraining.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyfirearmstraining.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyfirearmstraining.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":161,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyfirearmstraining.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160\/revisions\/161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyfirearmstraining.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyfirearmstraining.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyfirearmstraining.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}