Conceal Carry

Thanks to this man giving me a shout out to his friends, I have had a crazy amount of people visit my blog over the past few days.

Both Say Uncle and Gun Nuts linked to my 7 Days Of Conceal Carry post.  Due to the enormous amount of people that have clicked over to ready those post, I thought I should explain what happened to day 6 & 7.

If you are one of the people who came to see the 7 days of conceal carry then you realize there isn't a day 6 or 7 and that is because I realized my wardrobe doesn't change all that much.  In the summer I wear shorts, a light t-shirt, the occasional skirt and in the fall/winter, I wear jeans a t-shirt and usually a jacket of some kind.

Days 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 pretty much covered that, but in the past 8 months I have learned a few things about carrying concealed, so in lieu of me showing you yet another outfit with me hiding a gun, I thought I would share a little of what I have learned.

First, contrary to all the heck I went through trying to find clothes that would cover my gun, in the end, I wear the same exact clothes I wore before I ever bought a gun.  The same shirts, the same pants and rarely do I wear a cover garment, unless I am wearing a skin tight spaghetti strap shirt, my regular t-shirt or dress shirt covers fine, even my Glock 27.

The disclaimer to that is, my Glock is not a full size handgun.  It is a subcompact, but on my small frame it is still a big piece to conceal.

What I did learn was that my holster was crucial to concealment.  I know obvious, but it wasn't to me.  I have a drawer full of holsters that are worthless.  They may be great holsters, but for me they just didn't work, at all.

I wear a Crossbreed holster everyday.  Regardless of the gun I am wearing, I have a Crossbreed holster for it, unless I am wearing a dress or skirt, then I am wearing my holster from Chick Holsters.

The Crossbreed holster I bought, I bought because some guy at Dick's Sporting Goods told me too.

There is a long wait period between order and delivery, so in the meantime I bought pretty much ever other kind of holster within a 60 mile radius of me.

When I was ordering my Crossbreed, I went to the web site not understanding a single thing of what I was doing.  I read all the options and had no clue what any of it meant, so I bought the basic model, as is.  If you have one or go to their site you will there are a variety of options to chose from.  This was lost on me.

When my holster finally arrived, I did nothing to it.  I put it on and tried to work around whatever issues it presented me, like riding up to high.  I did not understand cant and I didn't understand how to adjust the holster to meet my needs.

I took this brand new holster to my 2 day Conceal Carry class and quickly learned tht I should have taken the time to figure out more about my holster and I should have ordered the combat cut.

This is my husband's holster.  The top part of the hostler was a nightmare for me because as I practiced drawing the gun from the holster, my thumb rubbed against it and after 2 days, I had no skin left on it.  A little blood is fine, but it was annoying.

The good news is that after a while your skin toughens up and the pain really isn't an issue, but time is.

No matter how much I practiced drawing from my holster, I felt like I was losing time and was just not as efficient as I could be, so eventually, I did this...

I cut the top portion off with an exact-o knife.  This was a huge improvement for me if for no other reason than I felt like I was more effective in my draw and as we all know, the mind is the first thing that must work.

The next thing I did was play around with the ride of the holster.  I moved the clips in every possible place, tried it on and kept doing that until I felt a good fit.

Again, this may seem obvious to most people who have been around guns for a while, but for me everything was so foreign and I was afraid to do anything, even move the bolts on my holster. 

As is a constant theme of my blog, fear is the enemy.  Caution and preperation are very wise, but fear simple holds you back.

With something as simple and harmless as a holster, my fear cost me a lot of time, stress, energy and money.

The other thing I learned was that the more comfortable I became with carrying a gun and the less conscious I was, the less I felt a need to cover it up.

Of course, with conceal carry the entire point is to cover it up, but when I first started carrying, I didn't want any print at all.  Even if it just showed a bump and one could not tell it was a gun, I knew, everyone knew it was a gun.  They didn't.

As I became more comfortable, the less I needed to do.  It just became a part of me and my everyday outfits.

Now when people ask me about conceal carry, my advice to them is do not worry so much about the right clothes, but the right gun

The focus should be on a gun. Finding one that you will carry and shoot.

Some great advice on that can be found here.

Of course, part of buying a gun is going to take inconsideration your lifestyle, body type etc, but I think that  one can work around most of those issues with relatively minor adjustments to their wardrobe.

Now, if you are 5 feet, 98 lbs and you want to carry a full size 1911, you may have more of a challenge then simply finding a good holster.

For me the gun is first and foremost, then I would spend time really investigating and investing in a good quality holster and then play(with the holster not the gun).

Grab an outfit that represents your style, empty you gun, clear it, check it and recheck it to be sure it is empty, remove all ammo from the room(advice I got from a newsletter by The Cornered Cat  )  and then try your holster on in every single way it will allow you.

Adjust all the position in every combination and try it on with your clothes in your closet. See how it works with the wardrobe you currently have.

You may find like me, that what you have will already works perfect and you just might save yourself hundreds of dollars in useless cover garments that only serve to make you look like you are constantly heading out on a Safari.