IS IT SAFE TO CARRY WITH A ROUND CHAMBERED?

Posted by Ike Stephens on Feb 02, 2015

Ike Stephens | Big Tex Outdoors

A big discussion in the world of concealed carry, especially among beginners, is the question of whether or not it is safe to carry with a round chambered.

Now as most of you know the answer is quite obvious. YES! But the majority of folks asking this question are new to concealed carry and maybe even firearms in general. So today I’m going to go back to square one and briefly touch on why we carry with one chambered and also how it is safe to do so..

Often times when this question is asked it is met with responses along the lines of “you’re better off carrying a stapler.” or “why even carry a gun?”

I’ll be the first to admit that I have been guilty of such responses myself and while they do have a point, in reality they do not do anyone a bit of good. Responses like those certainly won’t help alleviate the fears one may have to carrying with a round chambered and making someone feel stupid most often does more harm than good.

-WHY WE CARRY WITH A ROUND CHAMBERED

When forced to use your firearm to defend yourself or a loved one from a life-threatening situation, your body will be under tremendous amounts of stress. Your heart rate greatly increases, the adrenaline is pumping and your body will react in a much different way than it normally does. Simple tasks such as racking the slide become increasingly difficult in these conditions as opposed to a static environment like the range. While you may be able to draw and rack your slide very efficiently while practicing in your living room or at the range, when forced to do these same basic tasks in a critical situation you’d be surprised how incredibly difficult it becomes.

Not to mention a variety of other circumstances where it nay not even be possible to have both hands available to rack the slide. For instance let’s say an attacker is coming at you and you are trying to fend him off with one hand as you draw your firearm with your other. You no longer have the luxury of both hands and are now forced to rack the slide one handed using your holster, belt buckle, pocket or some other object. Can it be done? Absolutely and I hope that you do practice one handed weapons manipulations no matter how you carry, but all you’re doing is adding valuable time that it takes to get your gun in the fight. In these types of situations the difference between life and death can be fractions of a second. Do you really want to waste unnecessary time?

There are many different scenarios that could render you without the use of both hands. The simple truth is that having your gun ready to go (with a round chambered) is by far the best way to be prepared for any self defense scenario.

SO IS IT SAFE?

With any modern handgun there are tons of safety features hat are engineered into the design to make absolutely sure that the only way for the gun to fire is when the trigger is pressed. Even the Glock, the infamous gun with no safeties, actually has 3 internal safeties. Simply put, on any modern handgun the trigger has to be pressed in order for the gun to go off.