I wanna hear stories of people using their backup gun. Military, police, civilian, you or your family or friends. When did the primary fail and how and how did a backup save the day? What was the backup and situation? Let's hear it.

I was booking a drunk at the station and left my 66 service revolver in the lockup when I had to quickly dump him in a holding cell and rush to a man with a gun shots fired call. When I got out and started to run down an alley in the direction of the kerfuffle, I realized my mistake. Had to get my 60 out of my boot holster. Didn't have to fire it, but had to point it in a fella's direction to get him to understand the error of his ways . . .

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Wisdom comes thru fear . . .

Used my backup frequently to allow me to leave my primary in the holster, so no one knew I had a gun drawn.

Generally in a jacket pocket, often pressed, or nearly so, against the head of someone suspected of being armed.

They, or anyone else, were never the wiser, because I never had to shoot a hole in my own pocket.

Always expected that the armchair quarterbacks around told subsequent stories about the cop with poor tactics, because he had his hand in his pocket.

Had a partner who preferred to shield his back up with his cap, to the same effect.

Stop looking for things to critique. This is rural America flyover country in the early 80's. This ain't Detroit metro. We didn't have a jail, or a secure area at the time. The station was in a 1930's era abandoned Post Office. Anybody that walked in the public access door to see the dispatcher, who functioned as the receptionist after hours, could walk all the way thru the station and out the other door without opening another door. The holding cell and booking "corner" were next to dispatch because we didn't have a jailer, and the dispatcher was charged with making checks. You'd put your sidearm up when you fingerprinted, to avoid temptation because you were gonna do the ink finger dance. Some guys just laid it on the dispatch desk, and this wasn't frowned upon. In retrospect, it would have been a better idea for me. As I recall, I was complimented for actually having a backup, which very few carried . . .

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Wisdom comes thru fear . . .

Personally, what convinced me to carry a backup gun wasn't stories of success with BUGs, but rather failure with primary guns.

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Shooting Comfort is bilateral.

My only use of my back up gun was to arm other officers who had left theirs at the station when a hot call came out. Happened several times.

Two LEO's I knew used the hand in the jacket pocket trick. People never knew that they had a gun on them the entire conversation. Made perfect sense to me.

Not to call the tactics of policemen into question, but personally I would be worried that should the gun need to be fired, that the pocket liner could cause a malfunction which may not be easily remedied in the event that the action were to close on the tattered remnants after the first shot.

Also, I'm not sure of the plausibility of this presumption, but couldn't discharging a firearm while it is within a pocket potentially cause the article of clothing to catch fire depending on the material and or chemical detergents that it may have been treated/washed with?
I know that it's more likely to just blow the sides of the pocket out, but what if the jacket were made of a particularly flammable material that had been treated/washed or otherwise exposed to a chemical agent which could serve as an accelerant?

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Shooting Comfort is bilateral.

That's where concealed hammer revolvers come in. They can be cycled repeatedly without getting tied up.

If you wash or treat your clothes with flammable agents, you have more serious problems to worry about. Use low-flash ammo, and I wouldn't worry about it.

Plenty of videos on YouTube showing people shooting through pockets. Here's one:

I never carried a backup. I was afraid it would start beeping at an inopportune moment.

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Alden
Guns N' Rosés

This.

Also based on the experience of a coworker who walked into an all-night diner while reading the newspaper and right into a robbery. He was disarmed by the bandit and could not pursue. At least that was all they did to him. Yes, in this case situational awareness would have done him more good than a BUG, but I didn't view it as an either-or choice.

On the topic of shooting through a coat pocket, the Michigan State Police, an agency long noted for rigorous training and testing, issued either Bodyguard or Centennial style S&Ws as BUGS (and still did about 5 years ago, maybe still does). Jacket pocket carry was SOP in winter and pants pocket in summer. I'm sure that is why the shrouded/internal hammer models were chosen and that more than one uniform jacket was sacrificed at the academy before the policy was adopted. Pants, probably not.

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I need ammo, not a ride.

Once I took a fall and knocked the scope on my Bolt action hunting rifle. So I used my backup, a Mod.94 Winchester in 30-30 to take a nice forkedhorn buck later that day.

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The best I can with what I got