[badgerjohnson]

Been carrying my P3AT loaded and chambered for over 5 years. I have two and they probably have traveled 75k miles loaded. Not a problem except for a little surface rust in the Houston Heat.

Flash

IMO, carrying 'hot' is ok if you cycle that round on a semi-weekly basis. Don't leave the same round in the chamber forever.

Also, if your chance of using the gun is 1 in a million and chance of snagging trigger or ND is 1 in 100,000, (just making up a number for the sake of argument) then it makes sense to carry un-racked chamber empty. HOWEVER, if you do, you should do the drill of drawing, racking and firing with one bullet in the mag many, many times at the range, so it's instinctive if you're going to carry that way.

Now, bear in mind that many failures to rack can happen if you fail to do it right. So that brings the argument swinging back to carrying hot being safer.

It's a trade off. So what I do is get familiar with the gun and BABY STEP it. Carried unloaded, clip empty for the first week. Then put the clip in but unracked for the next few weeks. Now, I'm planning to start carrying racked and hot. At least that's my current evolution.

Just some thoughts...

 

[badgerjohnson]

One possible strategy for CC is to, at times (condition orange?) be able to move the CC to a sweatsuit right front pocket. In addition to the many other reasons to carry with a round chambered, there is no 'stealth' if you have to rack one on the spot, when danger strikes.