Condition 1 carry vs the “Israeli Method”

[Tgace]

http://tgace.com/2011/11/08/condition-1-carry-vs-the-israeli-method/

Carry Conditions
Auto-pistols can be carried in various conditions of readiness. First defined by the legendary Lt Col John Dean "Jeff" Cooper these conditions are commonly accepted to be:

• Condition 0 - A round is in the chamber, hammer cocked, and the safety is off.
• Condition 1 - known as "cocked and locked”, means a round is in the chamber, the hammer cocked, and the manual thumb safety on the side of the frame is applied.
• Condition 2 - A round is in the chamber and the hammer is down.
• Condition 3 - The chamber is empty and hammer down with a charged magazine in the gun.
• Condition 4 - The chamber is empty, hammer down and no magazine is in the gun.

These conditions are/were designed with a 1911 style pistol in mind. The Glock with no external safety (but with its "safe action" safety measures) technically cant have the thumb safety applied so it's condition when loaded and chambered is a matter of debate amongst handgun afficinados but it's commonly accepted that a Glock is in "Condition 1" when loaded and a round in the chamber.

With these definitions in mind, a common debate amongst pistoleros is the debate over which is safer for defensive carry, condition 1 or condition 3?


The "Israeli Method"
C3 carry is commonly referred to as the Israeli Method. Some people believe that it is safer and no less effective to carry the pistol with a magazine inserted, safety off, and no round in the chamber. When needed, the shooter draws, racks the slide on the draw stroke and fires.

Carrying in Condition 3 is not restricted to the Israelis, nor did they really invent it. I remember having to carry in Condition 3 quite often as a USArmy Military Police Officer (both when I was issued a 1911 and the M9). It's gotten that label because the Israelis popularized it as a method of carry and developed an entire method of presentation around empty-chamber carry. The philosophy is that C3 provides a method of carry that allows safe carry for a largely untrained population with a diverse variety of firearms.


Drawbacks
Detractors of C3 carry state that carrying with an empty chamber is a symptom of insufficient training and confidence. Adding an extra step to make the weapon functionable is slower and needlessly adding complexity to a high stress situation. Secondly it requires two hands, or a riskier one-handed "rack" that again adds needless complexity that C1 carry does not.

Speed
An argument against C3 carry based on pure speed is relative. The above video is pretty damn fast and I'd say plenty fast enough for combat application.

I tried comparing my own speed with the two:

Not really being practiced at the "Israeli Method", even my draw is not excessively slower, but I did short stroke the slide a few times or fumble it in some other manner. I'm just not practiced...but should I be? I can't see the wisdom of investing practice time into C3 deployment when I'm trained to carry C1.

In regards to the two hand necessity though I have to side with the doubters.

One hand deployment
Look at what this Police Officer faced (cant embed video click link) ?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3848295523081681233

Officer Cress shot and killed alleged DUI suspect Errol Baker on Sunday. For over one minute, Cress battled with Baker after pulling a gun on the officer. The trooper punched Baker several times, once causing him to drop the 45-caliber handgun. Baker retrieved the gun and fired, narrowly missing Cress. The trooper then grabbed his own gun, firing a fatal shot into Baker's head.


​

Right around 1:40 after wrestling with the BG for what probably seemed like eternity, the suspect pulls a gun and fires over his shoulder at the cop. The officer draws one handed and shoots the BG in the head. Sure if he was carrying C3 he could have raked the slide against his belt or something, but that's a murphy laden disaster waiting to happen.

There are simply too many instances I can think of where having to rack a slide in a CQB scenario will simply be too slow or physically impossible. Watch what Gabe Suarez has his students doing in this video:

Start around the 3:00 mark. Do you really want to face a situation like those in C3?

I see the "what will you do if he's attacking you with a bat" question as being very legitimate. Since most gun fights start out at bad breath range you may very well be faced with those types of examples far more often than you would like. Adding having to chamber a round to make your weapon usable is just adding more problems to the situation vs solving any.
Some say "If he's attacking you with a bat or knife you should deal with that using empty hand skills then gain distance and deploy your gun". Sure, you MAY be forced to resolve the H2H issue without your firearm, but when carrying condition 3 you have just put yourself into a situation where thats going to be the fact. Like it or not. You have effectively taken the gun out of the equation for all intents and purposes.

And comparing one handed stoppage clearing in a SHTF situation to forcing yourself into a situation where you will have no choice but to chamber one handed is apples and oranges. You train one handed manipulations as a "God forbid I ever have to do this in real life" type of thing, not as normal operating procedure.

In the end, I just don't see the risk of misfires in a modern auto-pistol being significant enough to warrant carrying unchambered. It's more a matter of the carrier not feeling comfortable or well enough trained than it is anything else IMO. I also think that there is a dose of "It's Israeli so it must be high-speed" going on.

 

[Grenadier]

I'm not one to favor the use of "Israeli-style" carry (magazine in the gun, chamber empty). While it's certainly true that with practice, anyone with reasonable coordination can do it, and do it smoothly, the fact (that you pointed out quite well) remains, that it still requires two hands.

There are many scenarios where you might not have that hand / arm free to rack the slide (significant other grabs your arm in the scenario, injuries, etc), and when it comes to defensive purposes, the 1 second that it takes for you to free the other arm could make all of the difference in the world.

Any firearm of reasonably good quality is going to have a good firing pin block, where as long as you don't put an object in the trigger guard (such as a trigger finger), it's virtually impossible to get a negligent discharge. A reasonably good holster that covers the trigger guard is enough to prevent such discharge.

 

[Tames D]

I own two glocks. Model 19 and 27. I prefer the 27. I'm not a LEO. However, I'm not comfortable with a round in the chamber. Other guns I own, no problem, they have an external safety. Any advice on how to get past this "insecurity" of carrying with a round in the chamber?

 

[jks9199]

Make sure your finger is off the trigger. Glock guns won't fire unless something presses the trigger so if you have good discipline with your trigger finger, you will be fine.

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[elder999]

Make sure your finger is off the trigger. Glock guns won't fire unless something presses the trigger so if you have good discipline with your trigger finger, you will be fine.

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Oh-this!.

I'm totally in favor of C1-especially for Glocks.

 

[Tgace]

I own two glocks. Model 19 and 27. I prefer the 27. I'm not a LEO. However, I'm not comfortable with a round in the chamber. Other guns I own, no problem, they have an external safety. Any advice on how to get past this "insecurity" of carrying with a round in the chamber?

Start carrying in condition 1 till you are comfortable...assuming you have training and adhere to all the safety rules you should be fine. If you are unsure of your experience level get more training and practice.

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[Skpotamus]

I own two glocks. Model 19 and 27. I prefer the 27. I'm not a LEO. However, I'm not comfortable with a round in the chamber. Other guns I own, no problem, they have an external safety. Any advice on how to get past this "insecurity" of carrying with a round in the chamber?

What I advise my students to do when they are converned about the glocks "lack of safeties", is to carry with an empty chamber like you normally do for a week. Just make sure the trigger is set forward and ready to be pulled to fire or dry fire. At the end of every day when you take your gun off, take careful note of the trigger position and write down how many times the trigger has been to the rear during that week. AKA, how many times did it fire itself during that week? You'll see that the gun NEVER fires itself. It always requires something on the trigger. Good trigger finger discipline, aka, keeping your trigger finger off the trigger until ready to shoot and making sure the trigger guard is clear during reholstering makes the gun perfectly safe.

Personally, I don't like external safeties for a couple reasons. In Force on Force training, I've seen people miss the safeties entirely, and I'v'e seen them get rengaged while wrestling with someone. I've seen them get reengaged during shooting competitons as well. Things that can mean the difference between you living and dieing.

Also, from a safety point of view, an external safety doesn't make a gun any safer than no external safety. The 4 rules of safe gun handling make guns safe. How many times have you heard or read the phrase "I thought the safety was on" or "I thought it was unloaded" when someone discusses accidentally shooting themselves or someone else?

To sum it up as I do for boyscouts when I'm teaching kids, "keep your booger hooks off the bang switch until you're ready to shoot."

YMMV.




Edit: I was told that the israelis decided on their method because they didn't have a dedicated handgun design. They had a big hodgepodge of different models with different modes of operation. Some with safeties, some with none. They developed the empty chamber carry as a way to avoid having to teach every different type of gun to every person. Kind of a "one size fits all" method to teach the masses that you'll note, doesn't use an external safety.

 

[jks9199]

Yep. Where most unintentional discharges seem to happen with Glocks is either on the draw, by developing the bad habit of allowing the finger onto the trigger before the gun is on target (one of the major issues I have with the Serpa-style holsters is that they invite the finger to go into firing position while drawing due to the release button), or on holstering, by leaving the finger on the trigger.

 

[Skpotamus]

Yep. Where most unintentional discharges seem to happen with Glocks is either on the draw, by developing the bad habit of allowing the finger onto the trigger before the gun is on target (one of the major issues I have with the Serpa-style holsters is that they invite the finger to go into firing position while drawing due to the release button), or on holstering, by leaving the finger on the trigger.

I agree about the discharges. Most people accidentally shoot themselves while drawing or holstering the gun.

Drawing wise the serpa can cause a lot of problems if people aren't using good trigger finger discipline BEFORE the gun is out of the holster (to be fair, I've seen people do this with holsters that don't run like the serpa at all). I run my serpa like I don't have the gun in a holster, my finger is straight, with the pad of the finger hitting the button, not the tip, and my finger is high on the button so that when the gun is out, the finger stays in that position indexed on the upper part of the frame. Works well for me, even in Force on Force training. Although, to be fair, I don't carry in the serpa much anymore since I got my archangel holsters. But for a couple years I carried in the serpa during winters pretty much exclusively.

Holstering is the other time people shoot themselves. They forget to get their finger out of the trigger guard or something gets in the trigger guard, like part of their jacket or shirt, etc. The modern technique school of shooting is mostly to blame for this one. The indoctrination of not looking at your holster while you reholster makes people ignore the gun during a rather important time. For a LEO putting up their gun to cuff someone, it makes sense to not take their eyes off a subject they had to draw their gun to subdue (it makes even more sense to wait for another officer to cuff the person). For non LEO's, not looking at the holster makes no sense at all because if the person is still there, I'm not putting my gun away until the LEO's show up. I personally teach my non LEO students to look at their holsters while they reholster. YMMV.

 

[Kong Soo Do]

I'm not one to favor the use of "Israeli-style" carry (magazine in the gun, chamber empty). While it's certainly true that with practice, anyone with reasonable coordination can do it, and do it smoothly, the fact (that you pointed out quite well) remains, that it still requires two hands.

With respect, this is incorrect. I've been an Israeli Instinctive Shooting Instructor for about 12 years. It is without a doubt the most hard-core combat shooting program I've ever taken bar none. Chambering a round 'Israeli-style' can be accomplished either two-handed or one-handed. One of our drills entailed starting at the 3 yard line, picking up our partner (simulating unconscious/unresponsive) in a firemans carry, running backward in a zig-zag, drawing from concealment, racking off of the belt and engaging three targets live fire.

And there is an important point to be considered here; the vast majority of semi-auto users do NOT know how to rack a round one-handed, load a magazine one-handed or clear a malfunction one-handed. Of the ones that are familar with these concepts, often the training involves the use of something like a holster i.e. placing firearm backward in holster, loading fresh magazine, charging and returning to action. This training however is flawed as it depends on having a holster. There have been situations where the holster, if worn, is damaged and unusable. Or the holster is in a position where it cannot be utilized i.e. your in a prone position or a side-prone position where the holster cannot be accessed. The 'Israeli' method does not depend on a piece of equipment such as a holster. The slide can be racked off the belt, heel, pocket, pants (i.e. friction against jeans), corner of a wall/desk/door etc regardless of body positioning. These are critical stress skills. Even if the 'Israeli' method is not used, one-handed operation is necessary if a limb has been injured or is occupied fending off attack, clearing an obstacle or in VIP drills where you are holding/directing the protectee.

Speed of draw is not a viable consideration agaisnt the 'Israeli' method as drawing/chambering/firing (or assessing) with proper dedicated training can be accomplished in less than one-second. My best time, using an electronic timer and drawing from under a sweatshirt sans holster, chambering two-handed and firing on the threat was eight-tenths of one second. It does require consistent, dedicated training. My niece is current IDF and carries this way. Additonally, drawing/chambering in this method puts the body in a different position than traditional weaver/modified weaver stances that has been shown to be effective in combat. The body is lower to the ground and movement is easier.

Regardless of preferred carry method, training as mentioned above i.e. one-handed operation under stress is mandatory for anyone serious about self-defense with a firearm.

 

[Tgace]

Sorry...I still think all of that adds needless complexity. When its time to shoot its time to shoot, Carry loaded.

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[Skpotamus]

With respect, this is incorrect. I've been an Israeli Instinctive Shooting Instructor for about 12 years. It is without a doubt the most hard-core combat shooting program I've ever taken bar none. Chambering a round 'Israeli-style' can be accomplished either two-handed or one-handed. One of our drills entailed starting at the 3 yard line, picking up our partner (simulating unconscious/unresponsive) in a firemans carry, running backward in a zig-zag, drawing from concealment, racking off of the belt and engaging three targets live fire.

And there is an important point to be considered here; the vast majority of semi-auto users do NOT know how to rack a round one-handed, load a magazine one-handed or clear a malfunction one-handed. Of the ones that are familar with these concepts, often the training involves the use of something like a holster i.e. placing firearm backward in holster, loading fresh magazine, charging and returning to action. This training however is flawed as it depends on having a holster. There have been situations where the holster, if worn, is damaged and unusable. Or the holster is in a position where it cannot be utilized i.e. your in a prone position or a side-prone position where the holster cannot be accessed. The 'Israeli' method does not depend on a piece of equipment such as a holster. The slide can be racked off the belt, heel, pocket, pants (i.e. friction against jeans), corner of a wall/desk/door etc regardless of body positioning. These are critical stress skills. Even if the 'Israeli' method is not used, one-handed operation is necessary if a limb has been injured or is occupied fending off attack, clearing an obstacle or in VIP drills where you are holding/directing the protectee.

Speed of draw is not a viable consideration agaisnt the 'Israeli' method as drawing/chambering/firing (or assessing) with proper dedicated training can be accomplished in less than one-second. My best time, using an electronic timer and drawing from under a sweatshirt sans holster, chambering two-handed and firing on the threat was eight-tenths of one second. It does require consistent, dedicated training. My niece is current IDF and carries this way. Additonally, drawing/chambering in this method puts the body in a different position than traditional weaver/modified weaver stances that has been shown to be effective in combat. The body is lower to the ground and movement is easier.

Regardless of preferred carry method, training as mentioned above i.e. one-handed operation under stress is mandatory for anyone serious about self-defense with a firearm.

Hey KSD. Hope all is well
8/10ths of a second is a fast draw. I mean FAST. That's world class shooter speed and then some. Here's Dave Sevigny shooting from a concealed holster, his draw and fire time was 1.36 seconds to first shot (on two seperate tries he had the same draw and fire time)

. He's the best IDPA shooter in the world. (I think a 9 time champion in production?). While I don't doubt your friend can do that, what is the average student of the israeli methods draw time? Have you timed any of the classes you teach? Looking at the best doesn't always give a clear picture of what can be expected on average.

Have you ever done any Force on Force while trying the Israeli method? The only times I've seen it attempted under those conditions, it failed. Usually leaving the person with an unchambered gun, or caught in their shirt.

Personally, I tried it, including racking the slide one handed against clothing, and found that with my normal mode of dress, the slide jammed quite often while under pressure. Since I'm not wearing fatigues or a uniform, (not military or LEO), my normal baggy shirt or sweatshirt tended to catch. Did you have any problems with the gun snagging when charging it one handed? What kind of clothes were you wearing?

 

[Tgace]

I've run a shield on the SWAT team so Im aware of one hand manipulation skills..I repeat what I said in the OP.

One hand deployment
Look at what this Police Officer faced (cant embed video click link) ?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...95523081681233

Officer Cress shot and killed alleged DUI suspect Errol Baker on Sunday. For over one minute, Cress battled with Baker after pulling a gun on the officer. The trooper punched Baker several times, once causing him to drop the 45-caliber handgun. Baker retrieved the gun and fired, narrowly missing Cress. The trooper then grabbed his own gun, firing a fatal shot into Baker's head.


Right around 1:40 after wrestling with the BG for what probably seemed like eternity, the suspect pulls a gun and fires over his shoulder at the cop. The officer draws one handed and shoots the BG in the head. Sure if he was carrying C3 he could have raked the slide against his belt or something, but that's a murphy laden disaster waiting to happen.

Besides the need to carry a gun even if you have inadequate equipment/weapons/training I can see no advantage to condition 3 carry.

 

[Kong Soo Do]

Skptomus,

Hey buddy, how have you been doing lately? Hope all is going well in your neck of the woods. In regards to timing, that is the first and only course I can remember being timed in. At the beginning of the week we were all well into the 2-3 second range (and more!). I couldn't tell you how many draws/rounds we did that week. I was a hurting puppy though! Hell, it was worse than the Krav Maga instructors course they put on later that year. I can only go by the times they told us upon completing a drill. I will say that after that course I was as fast drawing as I normally was in condition 3 which is our normal duty carry condition. It is something that needs to be consistently trained though in order to have any sort of proficency. More so than condition 3. I'll tell you what though, in all seriousness, with all the shooting I've done over the decades, those Israeli instructors were flat out impressive. It just doesn't do any justice to say they were fast, you'd have to see them personally. Were they special though? No, I don't think so. I think most anyone willing to put in the practice could be that fast/fluid (just as with committing to anything I suppose).

Have you ever done any Force on Force while trying the Israeli method?

I can only go by the training we did of course. We had drills were one of the commandos would come up behind you while you were shooting and start choking you out. You'd have to fight them off (short of shooting them) while still engaging the threat. Or they'd sweep your legs out from under you and you still had to engage the threat while preventing injury to yourself and fighting them. We also did VIP drills where you were fighting off an attacker while covering your protectee. They also had a gauntlet drill consisting of adrenaline response shoot/no shoot, movement, cover and H2H. It was ugly but worked. Is it perfect...well, what is really?

The only times I've seen it attempted under those conditions, it failed. Usually leaving the person with an unchambered gun, or caught in their shirt.

It should be noted that this is a 'normal' carry mode. If a threat was immediate or known ahead of time, a round was chambered and normally the firearm in a ready position.

Personally, I tried it, including racking the slide one handed against clothing, and found that with my normal mode of dress, the slide jammed quite often while under pressure. Since I'm not wearing fatigues or a uniform, (not military or LEO), my normal baggy shirt or sweatshirt tended to catch. Did you have any problems with the gun snagging when charging it one handed? What kind of clothes were you wearing?

My normal dress mode for training was jeans or BDU's. One-handed chambering was pretty simple in this clothing. It would suck wearing sweat pants though! My old polyester uniform pants (what I used to wear before getting these TDU's) would have sucked as well.

Again, is it perfect? Nope. But it can/does/has worked for a long time under pretty stressful conditions in Israel. But training is the key. And even if condition 3 is used, I really suggest people get training in the one-handed stuff for 'just in case'.

 

[Tames D]

Make sure your finger is off the trigger.
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Absolutley. I'm not worrried about my finger discharging the weapon. My concerns are more along the lines of the weapon being bumped, dropped etc.

 

[Tgace]

Absolutley. I'm not worrried about my finger discharging the weapon. My concerns are more along the lines of the weapon being bumped, dropped etc.

Irrelevant. Glocks only fire when the trigger is pulled.

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[Kong Soo Do]

Absolutley. I'm not worrried about my finger discharging the weapon. My concerns are more along the lines of the weapon being bumped, dropped etc.

Irrelevant. Glocks only fire when the trigger is pulled.

Tgrace is 100% correct. Glocks have been torture tested more than any firearm I'm aware of by a wide margin. This involved such things as running over it with a tank, parking an SUV on top of it, freezing it in a block of ice, submerged for 50 hours in sea water, burying it in mud and most importantly to the above concern, dropping it out of a helicopter onto the tarmac at I believe 300 feet. None of them produced an unintentional discharge.

Glocks have internal safeties and external on the trigger. Unless the trigger safety is pressed, the Glock is not going to fire. The only way for it to discharge is for a foreign object to get into the trigger housing and depressing the trigger.

 

[jks9199]

Yep. Where most unintentional discharges seem to happen with Glocks is either on the draw, by developing the bad habit of allowing the finger onto the trigger before the gun is on target (one of the major issues I have with the Serpa-style holsters is that they invite the finger to go into firing position while drawing due to the release button), or on holstering, by leaving the finger on the trigger.

Actually, I missed 1 other reason. With a glock, you have to pull the trigger to disassemble the gun. That's a huge opportunity for an accidental discharge. Of course, it's easily prevented with some basic care.

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[jks9199]

Irrelevant. Glocks only fire when the trigger is pulled.

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This.

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