quote:

Originally posted by Abn556:
I think that in the current political environment, Israeli Carry might be a good piece of legal advice. I base this on the ability for your lawyer to claim you had the time to rack the slide so therefore you had time to consider what you were doing. Maybe? Maybe it makes no difference.

+

As a lawyer, this doesn't add up.

I have a good friend who is Israeli. Did more than his mandatory hitch, spent some time getting shot at, picked up some cool scars, and then immigrated to the US where he worked for several years as a cop.

He never carried chamber empty.

His take is it was an administrative thing from having to issue handguns of multiple makes and sometimes questionable quality to people of varying levels of proficiency. For people actively going into harms way where a handgun might be primary, it was ignored.

We do the same thing with shotguns in squad cars. Car ready is a loaded magazine, empty chamber, safety on, hammer down with action unlocked. It’s safer to handle and transport and if we have time to get the gun, we have time to rack the gun.

Pistol is for emergencies RIGHT NOW. I’ve been on both sides of unfriendly fire getting traded about. Trust me on this, if lead is coming at you, no matter how high speed low drag you are, you aren’t going to have the time or motor control to rack that pistol, and that’s assuming you have two free and functional hands to do it with.

It’s a free country. Carry empty chamber if you want, but it’s not a great idea.

This is an older thread.

I finally tried the qualification exercise referred to in the original post.
Not all details of the qualification requirements are available, so:

NRA MR-52 target, the black bull is 11 3/4" diameter,
posted at 7 yards, short of the prescribed 8 meters.
Browning HI Power, Federal 9BP
Bladetech OWB at 3 O-Clock, empty chamber, hammer down, hands in surrender position, no gloves.

Ambient T>92F, high humidity, hot and sweaty, bright sunlight.
Twenty four shots fired, some two-handed, some one-handed.
Only the last nine shots were still in CED7000 memory.
Many of the first 15 shots were in the 2+ seconds range.

1.83 seconds
1.68
1.68
2.09
1.68
1.74
1.55
1.71
1.43



Well, I failed to qualify.

Notes:

The slide often slipped from my wet/sweaty left hand; second slide-rack action under time duress resulted in some of the wilder shots.
The HI Power's slide serrations are shallow by modern fighting pistol standards.
Firing one handed or two handed at this close range did not make much difference in accuracy.

I might do this again at 8 meters with a more aggressively serrated slide handgun

quote:

Originally posted by RichardC:
This is an older thread.
…
Many of the first 15 shots were in the 2+ seconds …

I might do this again at 8 meters with a more aggressively serrated slide handgun

Why try it with a different handguns?

Grab your mags, 1 round each, and time it.

Stage 2-
1 fully loaded magazine, and time 1 shot from the holster (without chambering).

See what’s faster.

Kind of reminds me when we were in Honduras, the Army protocol for us was we got six rounds for the 1911, and ten rounds for our M16's, non chambered. The man in charge of the Armory was a Vietnam era E8, he told us to forget that. When we left we had five mags of .45, seven loaded mags for the M16's, if you signed out a M60 you got two cans, and any extra ammo you wanted. He said he learned from Tet you cant have too much, and when we went out the front gate we were to be locked and loaded.