Loaded or empty chamber? For carry? For home defense?

Today, we’re going to cover 2 common questions that people have about what condition to leave their gun in.

First…what condition should your home defense gun be in?

Second…is it ever OK to carry a gun with an empty chamber?

We’ll go over both…and it’s important that you read this, because getting either of these wrong could expose you to increased liability or risk.

For your home defense gun, one of the big drivers, amazingly enough, is protecting firemen.

You see, if there’s a round in the chamber of a firearm and it happens to cook-off in a house fire, it’s going to leave the muzzle with enough velocity to go through stuff and hurt/kill people.

This isn’t the case with loose ammo, boxed ammo, or ammo in a magazine.

Here’s what that looks like…make sure to watch a few seconds and they pan out to show how close a fireman was standing to the bonfire as the rounds were cooking off…

If the round in the chamber happens to cook-off before the rounds in the magazine, then you have the possibility of multiple rounds firing.

There’s an easy solution…

Store all of the guns you’re not carrying with a full mag and an empty chamber.

For revolvers, the equivalent would be to have the hammer down on an empty cylinder.

Many law enforcement agencies carry their long guns this way and they call it “cruiser ready.”

There are a couple of reasons for doing this beyond basic gun safety.

If every firearm is stored in the same condition, you KNOW that you have to chamber a round when you pull one out of your safe before you use it.

I’ve got 2 exceptions in our house…

First is my carry gun, which is always close by at night and has a round chambered.

Second is a pistol under my bed in a heat-treated/hardened gun safe with a round in the chamber.  The hardened steel will stop a pistol round and the gun safe is too small to allow the slide to reciprocate enough to chamber a 2nd round.

Otherwise, semi-autos, bolt rifles, lever actions, and pumps are all locked and stored with an empty chamber and the safety off.

***Quick simple tip for magazine fed guns***

Always load your rifle magazines so that you know whether the right cartridge or left cartridge is on top.

On my AR mags, the first round always goes to the left and 2nd to the right.

So, at night, I can pull my gun from the safe in the dark, charge it, drop the mag and feel the top round (in the dark) to see if it’s feeding from the right or left.  If it’s off to the right, then I don’t have a round chambered.  If the round is off to the left, then I do.

Is it OK to carry a gun with an empty chamber?

A:  Normally, no, but it depends.

Here’s what I mean…you should aspire to carry a gun in a way that you’re comfortable carrying with one in the chamber.

Tactically, there are a dozen reasons why it’s smarter to carry with one in the pipe…starting with the fact that you may not have the time, dexterity, or skill to rack the slide (or rack it one-handed) in a self defense situation where your attacker is on top of you.

For a hunter & guide in Wyoming in 2019 an empty chamber and the inability to chamber a round most likely caused the bear-mauling death of a guide.

For civilians in self-defense situations, the fact that they had an empty chamber seldom makes the news.  What we read is, “the gun malfunctioned,” “the gun misfired,” or something similar because the gun owner either tried to press the trigger without a charged firearm and blamed it on the gun.

“Israeli Carry” or empty-chamber-carry was put into play when Israel needed a quick solution to stop terrorist attacks.  They decided the best solution was to arm as many civilians as possible…but there was minimal time for training.

So, they had people carry with an empty chamber.

The thought that SOMEONE in a crowd could chamber a round and take out the terrorist…even if one or more people were shot while attempting to make their pistol ready to fire.

That strategy doesn’t work when the attacker is focused on you.

There are probably millions of gun owners who carry with an empty chamber, thinking that the empty chamber is one more safety that could keep them from shooting someone in a case of mistaken identity.

That is not a good course of action and could be better handled with proper training.

The exact same general lack of training or incorrect training that increases the chances of a mistake-of-fact shooting with a chambered round is very likely to also result in a malfunction when trying to chamber a round under stress.

Here’s a couple of instances where I think it’s absolutely fine to carry with an empty chamber…for a time…

> Shooters who have decades of 4H or NRA hunting experience where you never chamber a round until you’re ready to shoot.

> Shooters who are scared to death of carrying with a loaded chamber, but want to get comfortable enough that they can carry with a loaded chamber.

In a couple of extreme examples, I’ve had people “practice” carrying an airsoft gun…just to get confidence that everyone’s not going to see that they’re carrying and that it’s not going to randomly fall out.

Then, carried with an empty chamber until they got comfortable that their gun wasn’t going to randomly “go off” on it’s own.

Finally…within a few days to a couple of weeks…they had earned confidence to know that carrying a firearm is amazingly and thankfully boring and they were able to start safely and confidently carrying with one in the chamber.

Of course, there are a couple of caveats…

First, safe carry depends in large part on a safe holster that covers the trigger and holds the firearm securely during ordinary movement.  Don’t go cheap or cute on holsters.

Second, if you’re going to carry in appendix position, I’d strongly encourage you to have either a factory double action first trigger press, a factory double-action-only trigger, or a safety until you have developed disciplined, safe habits that have been reviewed and evaluated by a competent instructor who knows the safe and unsafe factors to look for with appendix carry.

Both of these questions came up quite a bit from people who registered for the Dynamic Gunfighting presentation earlier this week.  I want to strongly encourage you to not only sign up for the free replay of the training >HERE< but also make sure to sign up for the full step-by-step follow-along course that I’ll be offering at the end.

Questions?  Comments?  Fire away by asking below…

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