page_title: Safety (firearms)
section_title: Loaded chamber indicator
hierarchical_section_title: Safety (firearms) / Typical safeties / Loaded chamber indicator
caption_attribution_description: English: The loaded chamber indicator of a Ruger SR9 compact, the SR9c. Dummy ammunition used to simulate a loaded firearm.
context_page_description: In firearms, a safety or safety catch is a mechanism used to help prevent the accidental discharge of a firearm, helping to ensure safer handling.
  Safeties can generally be divided into subtypes such as internal safeties and external safeties. Sometimes these are called "passive" and "active" safeties, respectively.
  Firearms with the ability to allow the user to select various fire modes may have separate switches for safety and for mode selection or may have the safety integrated with the mode selector as a fire selector with positions from safe to semi-automatic to full-automatic fire.
  Some firearms manufactured after the late 1990s include mandatory integral locking mechanisms that must be deactivated by a unique key before the gun can be fired. These integral locking mechanisms are intended as child-safety devices during unattended storage of the firearm—not as safety mechanisms while carrying. Other devices in this category are trigger locks, bore locks, and gun safes.
context_section_description: The loaded chamber indicator is a device present on many semi-automatic slide handguns intended to alert an operator that there is a round in the chamber. It is a small button (though sometimes a rod, such as on the Ruger series of .22 LR handguns, which are not slide pistols), generally located just behind the ejection port on the slide of the handgun that pops up to indicate the presence of a round in the chamber. Such devices have been in existence for decades; strictly speaking, loaded chamber indicators are not safeties, nor are they efficacious with an untrained user.
  An indicator that is behind the ejector port does not rise enough to disrupt a shooter's sight picture, but enough to be easily seen or felt to alert a user that there is a round in the chamber to avoid negligent discharge of the gun.
caption: Loaded chamber indicators offer a tactile and visual warning to the shooter.  The words "Loaded When Up" are present and the color red stands out against the gun's finish on this Ruger SR9.
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