Lanyard loop on handguns?

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To hook a lanyard to the gun.
The other end of the lanyard is attached to your person.

So if you drop the gun out of a helicopter or tank, or off a boat, or in a 12' snowdrift, or whatever?

You just reel it back in with the lanyard instead of losing it forever.

rc
 
When useing an outdoor privy, if your firearm comes unholstered, it keeps it from droping down into the you know what.:D Or if worst comes to worst, you can recover it with out digging.
 
OK, so you would hook it to your holster or belt?
How long are they? Do you unclip em for use?
Sorry for all the questions. Never really seen it before.
 
Older (pre WW2) pistols were often just attached around your neck, while recently it's far more common to see a 'telephone cord' style cable that attaches to a belt. The old style around your neck method is great for riding a horse, but gets caught up on stuff like barabed wire and inside vehicles.

I've only used my lanyard while riding horseback, and only on a revolver never an auto.

The newest versions have a break strength built in.. so say your helicopter has crashed and is sinking.. your lanyard gets caught. it WILL break rather than drag you down to teh bottom (or that's the idea.) It's not som much about weapons retention like a safety holster, more like if you drop it you can still find it.
 
Apparently the original purpose was to keep a cavalryman from losing his gun while reloading. (The middle of a cavalry charge really is not a good time to drop your gun and try to go back for it!)

But in a previous discussion on the M1911, I checked U.S. Army manuals and photos of U.S. cavalry troopers and could find no reference to using the lanyard loop on either the pistol or the magazines. I also could not find any loops on U.S. service pistols prior to about 1901.

The only soldiers who actually seem to have used the lanyard and loop were military police who used them for pistol retention in close quarters brawls in the same way many civilian police agencies did.

Jim
 
Most of us (brits, armoured inf) used gemtech coiled lanyards attached to the belt just behind the butt of the pistol (sig 226 or bhp), allowed draw and full extension of the arms without intefering, also meant that anyone trying to swipe it from said holster wouldnt get far ( theft was the worry, not being used against us)
As Dr Rob said, they have a break strength built in, I snapped one when I caught it on the Bar armour as I jumped down.
 
I like `em and will probably have them installed in all my future customs. Might even try a couple myself.

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I've made a lot of canoe/fishing trips into the Boundry Waters and a lanyard on a handgun makes a lot of sense when you're paddling over water while in a loaded canoe. It also makes good sense to have a handgun tethered to your personage or to some stable item (like the leg of a cot) if you're sleeping in a tent in bear country. I wouldn't be without one in those environs.
 
It is good to remember that not all mounted troops were cavalry.

One way of having a fast-moving infantry force was to issue them horses. In the same way that Mechanized Infantry now rides APCs to where they are needed, the Mounted Infantry rode horses. In parallel, too, Mounted Infantry have to be able fight while both mounted and dismounted.

To add to this parallelism, Mounted Infantry had a "tare" in that one in four was needed to curb and corral the horses while the others dismounted. MechI has a similar issue with drivers and TC in APCs. The collected transportation resource is a tempting target, so it needs defending.

Enough that the fellow manning the curb chains might only have one had free at a time. So, looping him up in lanyards to his pistol magazines was not seen as a detriment. The drill, if I remember my GF's TSG "Guide for Regulating Mounted Infantry" (dated ca 1931, and sadly, long gone loaned out--foolishly--long ago) was that the trooper muffed the grab on the magazine during reload, you could grab the lanyard and haul in, rather than loose the horses being held.

Mounted Infantry were the ones who were to be saddled (NPI) with that awful clamp and lanyard rig for the M1903. If they were engaged while riding, the hasty defense would rely upon pistols until one could wrestle the rifles loose.

Cavalry was expected to fight from horseback, not dismounted. Almost all tools to that end--barring lances--were lashed, lanyard-ed, or otherwise tied off, or they'd be lost.
 
Motorcycle- or horse-mounted police officers should also find a lanyard to be useful. Since the loop itself adds no bulk to the pistol, it is one of those things that is better to have and not need, than need and not have (in which case it would be too late).
 
Dragoons (mounted infantry) were also much cheaper, quicker and easier to train and maintain than real cavalry.
 
You dont have to get to crazy or technical or tactical (unless you want to :) ).

A piece of para cord works very well, costs basically nothing, and from the looks of some of them, may even be more secure than some of the "fancy" ones.
 
Every time I think about pistol lanyards I'm reminded how one almost cost my friend his life. He was the last to make it out of the CH46 alive (6 Marines and 1 Navy Corps weren't so lucky.) He latter told me that the lanyard securing his M9 Beretta snagged on something and he was drug down as the chopper sank. When he finally broke free he was barley able to make the surface.
Video of Actual Crash
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoHd5LePyVc&feature=related
 
Regardless what kind you use, you should always have a knife, and preferably more than one, available to either hand. But that goes without saying really anyway.

I mostly use one when kayaking and canoeing, and have a fixed blade knife readily available on my vest, as wall as another fixed and a folder on my person, so in the odd case it should get hung up, I can work at getting rid of it pretty easily.

I prefer the para cord type, with a fixed loop on one end and attached to the gun at the other. The loop goes over my head, diagonally across my chest, and under my arm on the gun side. Its kept tight and neat, with the excess tucked into my pants, just behind the gun, so there is very little to actually "snag" on anything. Some of the "phone cord" type seem to leave a lot to be desired in that respect, and look like they would constantly be hanging up on something if you dont get it tucked in somewhere.
 
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