The Officer's ACP

Back in the late 1980's I carried a Colt .45ACP Officers Model for a year or so. I shot it a lot and practiced a lot with it. One of the things I practiced was how to get it into action when the chamber wasn't loaded. (Condition 3) I know that Condition 3 is frowned upon by most, but I figured I could get the gun in action just about as fast as Condition 1. And I practiced it. A lot!

I carried it either in my back right-hand pocket or tucked into my pants waist, just in back of my right hip. When I drew the gun I wiped it forward on my pants leg .. the gun angled so the top of the slide was facing my right leg. The rear sight caught my pants leg and slammed the slide back .. as I continued to push forward the slide returned chambering a cartridge. My trigger finger was outside the trigger guard, slightly above it. As I pushed the gun on forward my finger went into the guard and fired the gun.

I could do this before you could think about it.

One Shootists Holiday when we were meeting up in Buena Vista, Colorado, we had a group of young County Police attending. On the range I took the Officers ACP and unloaded it, dropped the slide and the hammer and inserted the magazine. Then I stuck the gun in my back pocket. I asked the cops, "If you walked up on a guy who you knew had the gun in this condition, do you think you could beat him if he went for his gun?" Most felt they could.

We were 5 or 6 feet from the firing line and I handed Jerry Danuser a rock a bit larger than a baseball. I told him, "Toss it at the backstop." I did not have my hand on the gun but just in a normal position, elbow slightly bent like I always stood. Jerry tossed the rock and I drew the ACP, wiped it across my pants leg and shattered the rock before it hit the backstop.

There were some of The Shootists standing around watching including Deacon Deason. The next day on the range Deacon approached me and said, “Can I see that little .45 you used yesterday?” I had it in my back pocket and handed it to him. He looked at it a bit and then handed it back and asked, “How did you do that trick yesterday? Can you show me?” I said “Sure. Like this.” and pulled the gun, wiped it on my pants leg as I poked it toward the backstop. AND THE LOADED CARTRIDGE FLEW OUT OF THE GUN AND LANDED ON GROUND A COUPLE FEET IN FRONT OF ME! I was completely and totally confused. I had done this a thousand times and never had the loaded cartridge fly out of the gun. How could that happen? And all around me The Shootists are laughing so hard some of them are crying!

I could not understand what was going on! I picked up the cartridge and it was a 10mm!!!! Deacon was laughing so hard I thought he was gonna fall down. It turned out that when he was looking at my gun, he dropped the magazine and stuck a 10mm magazine in it. They really got me that day!