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Well, I carried with one in the pipe today for the first time! It was a really crazy feeling at first, but that made me realize that I had become too lax about carrying a gun. Not lax with the 4 Rules, but in my overall respect for the gun. ELB's quote below says it well:

ELB wrote:You think the gun is "safer" because it doesn't have round in the chamber. You mentally differentiate, perhaps almost subconsciously, between a "safe" gun and a "dangerous" gun. The problem is when you get the situation where there is a round in the chamber and you don't know it -- then you think it is "safe" when it is not. People rarely get shot accidently with loaded guns -- they get shot accidently with "unloaded" guns.

I felt like I hadn't been taking safe thinking and safe practices far enough, because in the back of my mind I had been saying to myself: "Don't worry...it's not loaded." I realized that this was a very dangerous mindset, so - paradoxically - I had to make my gun more dangerous to make myself safer.

Hi, I've been lurking this thread for a while, and I've been really educated by what ya'll have shared. I, too, am new to CHL, and still haven't "graduated" to keeping one in the pipe yet, though I'm getting closer to that, thanks to you guys. For me, it's not the fear that my gun will accidentally go off, since it's a modern 9mm with all kinds of internal safeties, a thumb safety, and it sits in a form-fitted kydex holster. I've heard some say that as long as I follow the 4 Rules, everything will be fine. But therein lies my mental barrier: my concern is for a lightning quick scenario in which I might forget the rule to keep your finger off the trigger. In a moment of adrenaline, what if I draw my gun and pull the trigger, all in the same motion? So, my concern is for the "mistake" that could be made when adrenaline causes my normal careful approach to go out the window. Any advice?