Living The Cocked-And-Locked Lifestyle
Advantages And Caveats …
Cocked-and-Locked takes many forms. From top, Morris
Custom Colt Gov’t .45; Springfield XDLE .45; S&W CSX 9mm.
Reading the work of Col. Jeff Cooper as a boy in the latter 1950s convinced me a messiah had risen in the west and the 1911 .45 caliber semiautomatic pistol was clearly something I needed. My dad gave me one for Christmas in 1960 when I was 12. Col. Cooper had explained why what he called Condition One, cocked and locked with a live round in the chamber, was the only way to carry it. It made enormous sense to me and it has been my mode of carry with single-action auto pistols ever since. It has included competition from bullseye to PPC to Bianchi Cup to IPSC/USPSA to IDPA to bowling pin shooting. It has included on-duty carry under various administrations in three police departments over 43 years and personal concealed carry to this day. This collective experience has taught me a few things.
Ready grasp: Above photo demonstrates Mas’ preferred
thumb-on-safety; below is the thumb holding safety lever up
from the underside. Pistol is a Middlebrooks Custom Colt .45.
The good news is single-action auto pistols generally have a short, easy trigger pull and are easy to shoot. The bad news is they generally have short, easy trigger pulls and are easy to shoot. If it’s easy to shoot intentionally, it’s commensurately easy to shoot unintentionally.
Manual safety notwithstanding, a cocked pistol therefore warrants extra care in handling and holstering.
With the gun in hand, we must always remember the trigger finger will only be inside the trigger guard when we are in the very act of intentionally firing the weapon! This means the trigger finger is otherwise registered on the frame. On the 1911, the most common of single-action autos, this means a right-handed shooter keeps a stiff index finger pressing on the stud of the slide stop that protrudes from the right side of the frame — what might be called “the takedown button.”
On a worn or poorly constructed specimen, this pressure can push the slide stop far enough to the left and when the first shot is fired, the pistol tries to begin disassembling itself. The pistol won’t fly apart when this happens but it will lock up tight. You won’t be able to fire a second shot until you take the 1911 in the “armorer’s grasp,” retract the slide just enough to align the slide stop tab with the smaller notch on the slide and use your left hand to push the stop all the way back in. To prevent this from happening, my own right-handed self simply indexes the tip of the trigger-finger fingernail behind the stud with the finger flexed. For a southpaw shooter, of course, it won’t be a problem.
Holstering cocked and locked, if we maintain a firing grasp we’re still holding the grip safety in the “fire” position. If we’ve forgotten to push the thumb safety lever back up into the “safe” position, there is nothing to keep the pistol from discharging if something interdicts the trigger as the gun is going into the scabbard. That can be a twig if you’ve been rolling on the ground or a fold of clothing getting into the guard or, most commonly, a careless shooter’s own finger.
There are a couple of ways to keep this from happening. My own preference is to place the gun hand thumb rigidly on the face of the cocked hammer as the gun enters the holster. Notice I say “rigidly,” not pressing back, which would put the hammer spur back far enough to depress the grip safety into the “fire” position. Now, the grip safety is engaged “on safe” in addition to the thumb safety being “on safe” and if everything else fails and the trigger is pulled and the sear releases, the thumb can catch the hammer to protect the shot.
Another method preferred by some — and easier for those with arthritic thumbs — is something I learned 40-some years ago from Major Winston Dill of the Athens, Ga. Police Department: Apply upward pressure on the thumb safety to keep it “on safe” as the pistol is holstered.
Mas holsters a cocked-and-locked 9mm Nighthawk Consul —
safety on, thumb rigid on hammer face, trigger finger extended.
About A Cocked Hammer
On any of my cocked-and-locked single actions, besides my two Springfield XD45s from the short production run with frame-mounted thumb safeties, the hammer back leaves the firing pin exposed to lint and the elements. I’ve seen long-carried 1911s and Browning Hi-Powers with dust bunnies in this area and when carried in the open, rain and snow can get into the firing pin channel too. So can sticky spilled coffee, which you definitely don’t want in the firing pin channel.
And of course, when the gun is visible, there is the ever-popular “OMG! Your gun is cocked!” I was a young patrolman wearing a cocked-and-locked Colt .45 auto in a Safariland Roberts Rangemaster duty holster when a sergeant uttered those exact words. I took a few minutes to patiently give the history of John M. Browning’s masterpiece and its manual of arms, after which he said, “Well, it still scares me.”
In one of my least brilliant moments I replied, “That’s okay, Sarge, it’s normal to be scared of things you don’t understand.”
This turned out to be a memorable lesson in what a subordinate should or should not say to a supervisor …
Back then, most police leather was revolver oriented. Don Hume made a batwing-shaped piece of leather that slipped onto a safety strap to cover the sharply checkered hammer of an S&W service revolver to keep it from chewing up jacket linings. I put one on my 1911 holster and it protected the vulnerable open channel from the elements. It also shielded the cocked hammer from the eyes of those who might be alarmed by it. Any thumb-break safety strap, while not hiding the hammer back status, will at least provide a measure of protection to the exposed firing pin.
