What is this......

rwsmith

rwsmith

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I was visiting a detention facility and at the entrance gate they had lockers with a sign "Keep you firearms here". Now that makes sense. You visit, you leave you gun and pick it up when you leave. But NEXT to the lockers is a half barrel of sand tilted over 45 degrees with the sign "Discharge your firearms here'. I mean, if you wanted to unload it don't you just take the bullets out and put them in the locker with the gun??? Why would somebody want to walk up to a jail gate and shoot into a barrel of sand??? Anybody? If I go there again I'm going to ask somebody.
 
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It's a double check. You empty the gun and then rather than easing the hammer down, you squeeze the trigger, while pointing the gun into the sand. military has done this for years
 
Its a " safety barrel ". After semi auto replacing revolver for most LEO dept. since most are carried with a round in the chamber, to prevent AD, said semi auto such as Glocks are pointed into the barrel when load mag are inserted and slide let go forward.

Don't laugh, my guess is the guns has to unloaded before put into the lockers, and when the visitors leaves, he/she has to point the gun into the safety barrel when insert the mag.
 
It's commonly known in the military as a "clearing barrel."
Point the muzzle at the sand while you unload/load your weapon. If it discharges unintentionally, the round will impact the sand and not the guy standing next to you.
 
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Clearing barrels are clownshoes. They exist only for use in environments in which the upper echelons don't know what they don't know and think that unloaded firearms are a good idea. Load and stay loaded. That administrative handling stuff is FAR more dangerous than proper handling. I've put pistols in lockers at the jail when bringing in prisoners far more times than i can count or remember, and NO ONE would ever consider unloading. Show me a boss who thinks that's a good idea and I'll show you a blithering idiot who needs to be removed as fast as possible.
 
I can't argue with what Doug said. Load the gun and leave it loaded until it needs to be unloaded, ballistically.

The clearing barrel is an interesting tool. While some may disagree with it, it has saved lives. The most common problem with unloading a gun is getting the sequence backward. The right way is to remove the ammunition source first. However, a lot of us have see guys rack the slide to remove the chambered round and then take the mag out. They don't realize that this leaves them with a chambered round.

Thus the clearing barrel was invented. Ask anyone who's been in any military unit where guys carry loaded guns. They've all heard a discharge into the clearing barrel at least once.
 
Guess I'm old school., Better to be safe than sorry.

I have guns go off that I just knew were unloaded and guns to go off that I just knew were safe and on safe.

Like I said, better to be safe than sorry.
 
^Training issue, isn't it?^

I am not all blessed with natural talent and grace, so in that sense I am more of a risk of doing something dumb and klutzy. One of the issues here is that LE training and socialization with firearms is so different from that of the military. Tell us to disarm/unload for any but the most unusual reasons, and the odds of a being reduced to tears and arrested are pretty high.

Lt. Col. Bolgiano's presentation at the USAWC on this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRA__wiSleEis outstanding. Hearing him say that only Disney Corp is more afraid of guns than the US military is consistent with my experiences doing joint operations, and makes me want to impose slap therapy on a collection of GOs. Dereliction per se.
 
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