How Do You Carry you Firearm Chambered or Not? What about Your Home Protection Firearm? This is My PLAN
By Gregory Kielma
How much difference does it make in real-life situations to have a round chambered when carrying a concealed weapon or your home defensive weapon?
How much difference does it make in real-life situations to have a round chambered when carrying a concealed weapon or your home defensive weapon?
Gregg Kielma
I've noticed a trend lately. Let's take a look at having a firearm chambered whether your carry or use for your home protection. Several factor will help you make a decision that's best for you or your family. Remember to consider pets, location, and most importantly children.
What I have seen is a push to use .22lr as a suitable self-defense round. I’ll talk about that later in a follow up point of view.
I've also seen a sudden surge in pushing for carrying with an empty chamber.
When I consider this, I'd think that perhaps the firearms prohibitionists are gearing up to push these as mandates, since their hopes of gun bans or carry bans have been dashed. When they have no hope of banning guns, they seek to make them less useful…
Having an empty chamber in your everyday carry will cost you a second or two in deployment. Frequently that can be the difference between living or dying. In 15’ to 21’ the perp has 1.5 seconds to be on you. My everyday carry is always chambered, with no safety, and a hard sided holster to protect the trigger. If and when it needs to come out as a reasonable person, it's ready to fire. This is my plan and has been for 30 plus years. Is it right for you? I don’t know, however, this is how I always carry.
Having an empty chamber is as close to a foolproof safety as it's possible to get. Chambering a round is a deliberate action that won't happen by accident.
My home defense weapon has a full magazine and a loaded chamber. It’s stored securely to my bed post so it can’t get knocked over by one of my seven dogs. I have designed it so it breaks free in less than .1 seconds and if needed I can start to defend my family right away. Again, this is my plan. Is it right for you? Only you can answer that question.
This is what I advocate. Notice that I advocate. I do not mandate, nor compel or even advise anyone to follow my “plan”.
Here’s what I do know, any mandate would be intolerable. The surest way to get legal firearm owners to chamber a round in any home defense weapon is to mandate that they leave the chamber empty…Sad but true.