Rob Pincus

Empty Chamber Carry

Rob Pincus
Duration:   3  mins

Description

Rob Pincus discusses the concept of Empty Chamber Carry and why it is important to carry your firearm responsibly, with the trigger area covered by a quality holster and a round chambered, prepared for defensive use.

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Here comes another important tip from the personal defense network. Imagine a worst case scenario, defensive shooting. Imagine that I've got a crowd of people. I've got family members around me. Someone comes into this public environment and start shooting.

He's turning the shotgun or the rifle or the pistol towards me. He's shooting. There's people screaming. There's people moving all around the environment. I've pushed a family member out of the way.

I'm clearing my concealment garment. A bystander comes by. There's the bad guy. I'm getting ready to push them out of the way and protect myself from getting knocked over. I'm going back under my concealment garment getting my hand on the gun.

And now I'm finally in a position to stop the bad guy, but I don't have a round in the chamber. Some people choose to carry a firearm for personal defense for the defense of others for the defense of their family in a public environment, but they don't put around in the chamber. Honestly, I've never really understood that. Let me give you a couple of principles here. First, if you're going to carry a firearm and be prepared to use it to defend yourself, you really should be comfortable with having that gun loaded and ready to go.

Second, if you're going to carry a firearm and be ready to use it in a public environment you should be carrying it in a way that protects the trigger guard and ensures that the gun isn't going to go off accidentally if someone bumps up against it, or if you rub up against a pocket or reach for it quickly, you shouldn't be able to hit the trigger. If you're trying to pull it out of a pocket pull it out of a waistband. So we should never be in a situation where, this gun obviously is unloaded, just for demonstration purposes, we just take a gun and stick it in our waistband, with the trigger exposed. There's even holsters that are designed now, so-called holsters that are designed that leave the trigger exposed. Now some of those holsters recommend that you not have a round in the chamber.

And yet if you go to their websites they even show you how the gun can be shot while it's still attached to that holster if you were to use it with a round in the chamber. Carrying a gun with a round in the chamber and the trigger exposed is reckless. It's stupid. Don't do it. At the same time, carrying a gun with a loaded magazine, no round in the chamber inside of a holster that protects the trigger guard also seems like a bad idea to me.

If you're not comfortable with a loaded gun, if you're not prepared to use that loaded gun, quickly and efficiently, maybe it's not time for you to be carrying a gun. On the other hand, if you are going to carry the gun, go ahead and load it, make it ready and know that regardless of what this hand is doing, regardless of what the circumstances that are surrounding you are. If you can get your hand on the gun, you can get it up into a shooting position, you're going to be able to fire a round with as little time effort or energy as possible. And that means carrying a round chambered. Be sure to check out the personal defense network for more important tips, just like that one.

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