This is the single best thing about striker fired handguns. Like rifles, nobody can tell at a glance if they're cocked or not. If an exposed hammer is to the rear, it doesn't matter to the spring, but everybody from Sergeant Major Smith to Cletus the Hillbilly Hunter just HAS to lower that hammer because...apparently they think it's doing something bad to the spring?True story: When 26-year-old me was first working in a gun store, we had probably a hundred long guns...shotguns, hunting rifles, Evil Black Rifles, et cetera...racked vertically along the wall behind the counter. At night, before locking up the shop, I would go down the row "making sure they weren't cocked" by pulling triggers on the racked rifles. Wouldn't want those springs staying cocked overnight!
People don't blink at soldiers running around with loaded, cocked rifles on safe, but let someone see the hammer back on a holstered 1911 in an institutional environment and everyone gets the vapors.
My carry 1911s were never un-cocked for most of a decade. Get ready to go to bed at night, pull cocked pistol out of holster and place in safe. Get dressed in the morning, remove pistol, still cocked, from safe and holster up. Lather, rinse, repeat from 2003 to 2011. The only time they were not cocked is if they were apart for cleaning or actually in the act of busting a cap.
They were unloaded, right?
26-year-old me was a fool.
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