Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Loaded Chamber on a 1911 Pistol?

Loaded Chamber? COCKED-AND-LOCKED ONLY!

If a 1911 pistol is to be carried with a loaded chamber, LET'S BE VERY CLEAR ABOUT THIS:

Condition One (loaded chamber, hammer cocked, thumb safety engaged = "Cocked-and-Locked") is the ONLY way authorized by the US Army Training Manual to carry a 1911 pistol with a LOADED CHAMBER, to be ready for immediate combat. You'll also see this carry method recommended in owners manuals provided by 1911 pistol manufacturers.

Condition Three (loaded magazine, empty chamber, hammer fully forward) is certainly the safest carry method, and is the standard way authorized by the US Army Training Manual to carry a 1911 pistol, when immediate combat is not anticipated. But, it takes more to ready the pistol for firing

HOWEVER, Condition Two (loaded chamber, hammer fully forward) is actually DANGEROUS. Should the hammer get snagged on something, drawn back to just short of the half-cock notch, then released, testing has shown that it can fire the cartridge at least three times out of five. Both the thumb safety and grip safety have been rendered useless when the pistol is in Condition Two.

An UNSAFE variation of Condition Two involves using the hammer's half-cock notch (sometimes misleadingly called a "safety notch") instead of lowering the hammer fully forward. Again, the thumb safety and grip safety are rendered useless. The DANGER comes from what is known as a FALSE HALF-COCK, which is created when both the hammer and trigger are clumsily manipulated simultaneously while attempting to lower the hammer into the half-cock notch, such that the tip of the half-cock notch gets precariously balanced on the tip of the sear. Then, a slight jarring of the pistol can cause the hammer to fall the rest of the way and fire the cartridge. This is not theoretical; it has happened.

Please feel free to repost this message wherever you can. It must be repeated again and again, until it reaches every 1911 pistol user.

What if I don't want to do things that way?

The secret society of 1911Illuminati will excommunicate you and hunt you until the end of times........

Need to watch movies, rack the slide and later rack it again. A pump gun is pumped 10 times before shot. Then it never runs dry and 50 BG's are shot. A 1911 holds 200 shots too.
Cocked and locked or an empty chamber on a 1911 both work.

I'm convinced any lingering Condition Two preference is the fault of those damned action movie directors who like actors in tense scenes to be cocking their 1911s, conveying that they really, really do mean business this time, when pointing the pistol threateningly.

No. Too stooopid. 1911 users are all in nursing homes.
Besides you are way off on the danger of Condition two: the danger is simply thumb slip while manipulating the hammer.

Wow,
You
R
A
Prophet!



This is earth shattering, ground breaking news!

Nobody, I mean nobody had ever considered this.

How did you access these classified need-to-know documents of
special forces training.

You better go on the run, lose the cell, credit cards, take your cash and run!
Ditch your car, steal one, and change direction in the next city!

Black project operators are hunting you right now!



Sarcasm over.
I see you have only been here two years, and haven't participated much.
Unless you just really want to start a thread, this is kind of old info to anyone who
slightly cares.

Charlie Miller says this is nonsense.

1911 pistol manufacturers deal with claims of defective "hammer safety" from a surprising number of ignorant, self-perforated individuals who hadn't got this message yet, most often sporting leg wounds on their holster side. Some folks just won't read the manual, so someone needs to spread the word to those who need to hear it. Why not us?

Training and experience make a HUGE difference. But, what can be done right now about those 1911 users who don't, and won't, get that?

Not to mention that engaging a threat from cocked-and-locked is quicker and less cumbersome than from half-cock.

So we have the Gospel according to you and the "ONLY way authorized by the US Army Training Manual to carry a 1911 pistol"...



What about all the people who don't really care about what the conventional military does?

I'm curious why the Army is still training on 1911s when they haven't issued them in ages.

That doesn't look very comfortable to shoot but then I've never tried it.

Yeah, I'd go with a section of bicycle tire before that.

Maybe we're not as ignorant as the gun banned subjects in CA that you're used to dealing with. Us civilians in democratic (small d) states carry guns every day and know how to do it.

Ahh the conventional U.S. Military...


As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. Well here are a few examples of how "high speed" their weapons training is, and bear in mind that these pictures were taken in Iraq.


First we have a senior enlisted service member, an E-7 with her pistol literally duct-taped into a shoulder holster. It was wrapped so tightly in there that there was virtually NO WAY she she could ever get it into action if the need arose.

Not a prayer:







Fortunately there was also a group of young, switched on Marines in the same DFAC with their weapons close at hand.

They actually looked like they knew what they were doing, and would have fun doing it...

Mackey,
My ex brother in law was a pencil punching Army Reserve Lt. Colonel, commanding a processing base in the mid-east,
no Iraq or Afghanistan.
He bragged about making a big group of Marines eat outside the mess hall, sitting in the sand.
They refused to leave their rifles outside, and he refused to let them eat inside.

I later told my wife, he thinks he won.
He didn't.
Those guys still kept their weapons, and they ate. And he just reinforced the differences between men returning from the fight,
and management types who are just scared of a gun.

I'm not advocating Ranger Miller's adventurous mode of carry. If he used a holster, I don't know what that was.

But I have known some serious, battle proven gunmen; from WWII and Korea vets right on through the Sand Wars, plus a whole lot of mayhem in the streets. I can think of four who killed multiple antagonists with an issued or personally owned 1911. A couple of them carried that pistol condition two. Given their results, I'd be disinclined to tell them they were doing it wrong.

Sadly, they're all gone now; but it was old age that got them, not 'leg wounds' from poor pistol handling.

Then there is this gem.

This was a rather bossy U.S. Army Major who we were tasked with protecting. Long story short she thought she was pretty hot stuff and fully equal of any of the people who were on her protection detail. We ended up in a remote province at a place where the locals were only being friendly to our faces and there was no doubt they were insurgents once they were out of our sight.

This hot shot Major, who insisted that she was just as capable somehow managed to get roughly 80-100 miles from the main U.S. base without a magazine in her sidearm (her only weapon) and no spare mags. Basically she was totally incompetent.

Funny thing is, none of us had any spare mags for her, as we don't carry Berettas.




Another Big Army Classic!

First I was discreetly trying to get these soldiers attention. We had been loaned out to provide protection/overwatch (I won't go into detail why the conventional Army and others need to be protected...)

Anyways, I was trying to tell the blonde SGT shown in the center of the pic that they cannot just leave their weapons unattended in their vehicles, since were were in a small town in a province in a Iraq and they were just asking for the iraqi police to steal their weapons or have them used against them. It was not a matter of IF, it was only a matter of WHEN some Iraqi grabbed one.

I was trying to be discreet, so as not to embarrass her. She thought I was motioning for her, because I wanted to hit on her..

The other thing I wanted to tell her was that as an NCO she was not exactly setting a great example since her 82nd Airborne patch was on UPSIDE DOWN....



I think I will pass on getting my weapons training from the conventional Military...