In the book Combat Handgunnery by Massad Ayoob I learned something I had never heard before in that when you unload a pistol, not a revolver, you should not dump the chambered cartridge into your palm. In newer pistols with the newer longer extractor style they extractor can sometimes line up with the primer of the cartridge and accidently strike it, discharging the cartridge into your palm, with possible nerve damaging results. In some older military pistols they taught to drop it into the palm, but in newer designs, and even old designs with more modern extractors like customized and newly made 1911s that is a bad thing to do.
Let that cartridge fall onto something else soft and pick it up.
