Bubba Round

Question
Dear Mr. Gore:

In recent article about the 1911 handgun, the author was commenting on the extractor.  He stated, "You should avoid dropping the slide on a chambered round for other reasons, not because it is 'so hard' on the extractor."  My carry gun is a SigSauer P6.  Apparently I was taught an incorrect method to load the extra round.  What are the "...other reasons..." and what is the correct way to load the bubba round?

Many thanks

Answer
Well not sure what a bubba round is? I googled it and it appears that it is another round for the chambered round or the round you have loaded in the chamber.

So I will direct my answer to this round. Anytime you load a gun other than how it is designed to be loaded it will stress parts or operation and may cause a malfunction. A pump shot gun is not designed to drop a round in the chamber and then close the bolt, it is designed to load the tube or mag and the cycle or charge the slide and then the round if FED upwards into the chamber. This action slide the shell or bullet up into the contact with the bolt and the edge or rim of the bullet or shell is slid between the extractor.

I know I am using  terms that not everyone may know but the extractor is commonly a hook or L shape piece that rips or pulls the round out after it is fired.

This link shows all the parts MUTE THE MUSIC to watch, the extractor is at 2:20 in the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6SmlOEzNBs

So the extractor is NOT designed to slam down on a bullet already in the chamber. However, as a cop this is  taught has an emergency load in case of magazine malfunction or a broken mag so in an emergency if you only have a round/bullet and no magazine, you can drop a round in the chamber and then close the slide and it will work to be able to get a round off, however, if that is done a lot or all the time the extractor can, Not always, may become stressed and fractured which may weaken it and may cause to break.  I happen to think with today's metals and technology that it would take lots and lots of times to do this, but some think it is really bad. From the 100s of guns and thousands or rounds I have fired over the  years and me being pretty hard on the guns, I have had maybe one or two extractors fail, so I would not say it is common or something that happens all the time.

With that said, my belief is you should ALWAYS CARRY A GUN WITH A ROUND IN THE CHAMBER, in a crisis or emergency having to chamber a round could cost you your life. The PROPER way to load a round in the chamber is load the magazine, insert, chamber the round into the chamber with normal operation, then remove the Magazine and add on more round to magazine so it is full and a round is already chambered. So if you have 10 round mag, the gun would be loaded with 11 rounds, commonly call 10+1.

If you don't want to keep your magazines fully loaded since some that can stress the mags if they are loaded for years and never unloaded or fired, so some people like to keep their mags loaded -1. So they would load a 10 round mag, chamber a round, which would leave 9 round in the mag (-1), one in the chamber and the gun would be loaded with 10 rounds,commonly called 9 and 1.