I guess the idea would be to save wear on the hammer or something?
It makes the slide easier to rack. The hammer spring is now out of play. If you have marginal hand strength it can be a big difference. When my dad could still carry a semi-auto I showed him to do it that way. Since I have no hand strength issues I have no need for the extra step.
I have an older Colt Commander that it sure helps to do it on...
It makes the slide easier to rack. The hammer spring is now out of play. If you have marginal hand strength it can be a big difference. When my dad could still carry a semi-auto I showed him to do it that way. Since I have no hand strength issues I have no need for the extra step.
Back in the day on the line to make ready it was common for shooters to thumb back the hammer and hold it while they charged their gun. Holding the hammer while dropping the slide was always an indication of an uncertain sear/hammer that could follow. Many 1911 owners tweaked their actions past the safe point. If your hammer follows on anything upon charging easy or radical you have an unsafe gun.
I can remember old bullseye guys telling me they held the _trigger_ back while charging the gun. The reasoning was that you are gripping the gun firmly while dropping the slide and all safeties are disengaged, so if the hammer followed and the trigger is forward, the disconnector is _not_ engaged, so it's not just going to fire one round - it's going to cook off all 5 of them. So in the event of a hammer-follow, having the trigger held back engaged the disconnector and at least limited the hypothetical damage to the shooting bench and your ego to just the chambered round. (I guess your idea of just holding the hammer back dispenses with all this unpleasantness...but it never occurred to me to point that out, while in the midst of such imparted wisdom). My first thought was, "Gee, I never thought of that," and my second thought was that they must be shooting one of those unsafe old "tweaker" guns you speak of, with the trigger job done by so-and-so in one of the prisoner shacks between days at Camp Perry.
A legal 3.5 pound minimum trigger should never do that, however, these kinds of tips seemed to come from the guys wearing band-aids on their thumbs for pulling alibi re-shoots, back in the days before the rules were changed...so that tells you the type of person you're probably dealing with.