Concealed Carry Fashion Part 2

Last weekend I talked about the various methods of carrying concealed with their advantages and disadvantages.  I start with the framework of wanting to be able to defend myself effectively and efficiently with a firearm, which means I have to carry a gun in a way I can get to it easily and present (draw and point) it for engagement efficiently.  This mentality is thinking from the gunfight backwards to the way you carry, rather than starting with a method of concealed carry, a concealable gun and then thinking your way forward to a gunfight, as the concealed carry accessory industry would prefer.  The conclusions I reach are that, while there are a lot of ways to carry concealed, only a few are useful for a gunfight.  Best to worst: Three O’clock Carry, Four O’clock Carry, Appendix Carry, Shoulder Holster Carry (vertical) and Small of the Back Carry.  It is inefficient to carry in a pocket holster or an ankle holster.  Lastly, it is flat out dangerous to carry in a cross-draw holster, a horizontal shoulder holster or in a purse/satchel off the body.

The second aspect is carrying an effective tool.  This is very tricky, because a .22 caliber Derringer is more effective than nothing, and a Desert Eagle .50 caliber is highly effective but not very easy to carry concealed.  So, it is always a compromise between firepower and concealment, and if you add in the other variable of capacity, you have a three dimensional scale.  So, to simplify, there is a general rule: carry the most powerful, highest capacity weapon you can effectively conceal.  That is a basic principle of a gunfight, which is contradictory to what the firearms accessory business is trying to sell you.  They are trying to sell you products that compete on concealment rather than firepower.  That is amateur thinking; that is a victim with a gun, not a gunfighter.  A gunfighter wants to get to the gun as quickly and efficiently as possible; the “concealed carry fashion industry” sells things that completely ignore those goals.  The products they sell either have no retention, and you have a gun rattling around in the lining of your jacket/bag/fishing vest, or they have multiple straps that you need two hands to undo in order to get access to the firearm.  Both of these reduce the efficiency of drawing and engaging with the weapon.

Worse, they look like exactly what they are.  Here is a general rule of thumb in life, if you are walking around town wearing an NRA hat and a khaki fishing vest, you are not carrying concealed!  You have a spotlight on you with a little cartoon bubble saying, “Look at me, I have a gun and a Concealed Carry Permit!”  Trust me, I know ten guys that dress that way and I just shake my head.  It is extra ridiculous because these are the guys that practice the least with their firearms.  These are the guys that take the gun to the range once every other year.  These are victims, in other words.  If I was a bad guy with a knife and I wanted a gun, then that is where I would be getting one.

Therefore, the two biggest mistakes you can make when carrying a concealed carry handgun are: to cover up a pistol with a bunch of “I have a gun” clothing, or cover it up with clothing designed to conceal a gun so effectively that you can’t get it out if you need it.  So, like with the firepower vs. concealment spectrum, you have to find a compromise in how you dress between concealing the gun and using the gun.  Sometimes, as I’ve said, I am required to wear things that make concealment very difficult.  In that case, I consciously choose to violate my own rule and stick my little .380 ACP in a pocket holster in my pants pocket, because gunfights are percentages games, and having the little pocket pistol is better than not having anything.  But, at those times, I am uncomfortably aware that six rounds of .380 ACP in a pocket holster is far less firepower than nine rounds of 10mm or eight rounds of .45 ACP, but sometimes the requirement for concealment overrides the benefit of a higher caliber pistol, and you have to compromise.

I want to make the point here, though, that such occasions are the exception not the rule.  It is knowingly taking a greater risk than carrying a .45 at the three o’clock under my jacket.  There might be good reason to take that increased risk, but I do not get into the habit of doing so.  I recognize that I am temporarily putting myself at a disadvantage by doing it, for the sake of going to a wedding in a tuxedo or going to a luau on a beach in shorts and a t-shirt.  I do not compromise firepower and capacity on a daily basis, even though there is a greater risk of exposing the firearm.

Which brings me to my second tangential paragraph: exposing a firearm is not the end of the world.  The gun fashion industry would have you believe it is the worst faux pas imaginable.  It is not.  But, even if it was, who cares?  Carrying a gun concealed is considered by most liberal idiots to be a massive faux pas already; exposing it inadvertently is not going to offend anybody who isn’t already offended.  If some liberal idiot who knows nothing about guns for some reason sees a gun and has a panic attack, you cannot control that.  If you take self-protection and protection of your loved ones seriously—which is true of everybody who carries a gun—then that priority overrides considerations of breaching etiquette.  These gun magazines that say exposing a gun is the absolutely worst thing you can do, ever, are staffed with people who have obviously never been…you know, shot at!  I have inadvertently exposed a firearm on numerous occasions; nobody has peed themselves and had a nervous breakdown.  I have deliberately walked around open-carrying on thousands of occasions and, except a few sideways glances, no negative consequences have ever occurred.  Worrying about not offending some anti-gun idiot should not cause you to reduce your ability to win a gunfight; remember, the life you save may be that anti-gun idiot’s.

Okay, back to concealing clothing.  If you start from the concept I described first, which is dressing for a gunfight rather than trying to gunfight in how you choose to dress, then there is yet another basic compromise you have to make and still be fairly fashionable: length versus fit.  You can always conceal a gun if you wear long and loose clothing like fatigue pants and a fishing vest, but you look either like Henry Blake from MASH or you look like some wannabe Blackwater mercenary.  Either way, it is hardly fashionable, and in the case of the latter it is hardly concealed carry if your whole outfit is broadcasting “I have a gun on me.”  Wearing “concealed carry clothing” like the vests with the sewn-in holsters, is also not very fashionable, nor is such clothing efficient for getting into a gunfight.  But, you can still conceal a pistol with decent firepower if you compromise either on shortness of clothing or tightness of clothing.  As a general rule, you cannot wear short and tight clothing and also conceal a—powerful, high capacity—handgun in a manner that is gunfight-efficient.  Basically, ladies and "gentle" men, while you can wear skinny jeans and carry a gun concealed, you can’t do it while also wearing a halter top!  In other words you will have to make a compromise on your fashion for your personal defense.  Basically, you can sacrifice one of the two: you can wear tight clothes, but they have to be long (think Trinity in The Matrix), or you can wear short clothes, but they have to be loose (think baggy cargo shorts).

So, after much compromising between carry methods and concealment, between firepower and concealment, and between fashion and concealment, I realized the best solution to all of these compromises for what I like to carry (.40, .45 or 10mm) and how I like to carry (3 o'clock or vertical shoulder holster) dictates how I dress.  I have to wear a hip-length coat.  That can be a car coat, a pea coat, a suit coat or a blazer.  They can be fitted, but they have to be long.  They don't have to be overly formal, either.  While I have suits, wool blazers and sport coats, I also have a couple of western leather blazers, a couple light-weight cotton summer blazers, and I have several car-coat length jackets.  That fits how I carry, which is determined not by style or concealment, but by effectiveness in a gunfight.  I don't recommend going out and buying clothing that is specifically designed with holsters built into the panels like some super-spy jacket.  Or, dressing like Henry Blake from MASH.

Nope.  Just wear a blazer.  You can wear a blazer with jeans and a t-shirt.  You can wear a blazer with slacks and a dress shirt and tie.  You can wear a blazer with a turtleneck and a shoulder holster à la Steve McQueen in Bullitt.  Or, like me, you can wear a blazer with jeans, cowboy boots and a button-up.  You can wear them to almost any occasion without looking over-dressed.  I’ve even worn light-weight linen blazers to beach parties in Hawaii and still looked appropriate.

In the alternative, if you are a person who does not want to wear long clothes, then you have to wear loose clothes.  You have to wear loose clothing if you want to carry an effective weapon.  I can conceal my little .380 ACP in a short, tight suit vest, that is true, and I used to do that.  Then I got to thinking that if I am really worried about self-protection, and I own a bunch of higher caliber pistols, why am I trusting my life to a little pocket pea shooter?  Instead, if I want to carry the guns I want to carry, I had to start dressing in less fitted clothing.  That is the short but loose theory.  I know a lot of guys in Colorado that walk around all summer (and some even in the winter) wearing nothing but cargo shorts and T-shirts.  That can work, if you dress loosely enough to conceal a gun.  But, you can't dress in clothing that is both short and tighter fitting.  I have worn cargo shorts, a loose t-shirt and an open button-up over top of it in the summer, and that works fairly well for concealing three and four o'clock carry.  A summer-weight button-up doesn't work with a shoulder holster, Crocket, so don't even try.

So, my shopping trip to find a vest that was long or loose enough for me to carry concealed, was a failure.  It was not a failure because there were no vests that could conceal a gun, it was a failure because they would not conceal any gun I would want in a gunfight.  I realized that that is the difference between the mentalities.  One is self-defense thinking (i.e. dressing for a gunfight), and the other is fashion, or prioritizing concealment over everything else (i.e. dressing like a victim with a gun).  I also realized that if I ever have to get into a gunfight again, then I want a tool that has the capacity and firepower to give me the greatest opportunity to win that gunfight, which honestly is a rifle.  But, since I won't be concealed carrying a rifle, then I want a pistol that is powerful enough, carried efficiently enough (i.e. I can rapidly get it into the fight with one hand from concealment), and that has a high enough capacity to give me the best chance of winning that gunfight.  Therefore, as often as I am allowed by circumstance, I am going to carry a full-sized automatic on my hip or—if it’s longer than four inches—in a vertical shoulder holster.  This results in three methods of dressing, two of which don't make you look like a wannabe mercenary or Henry Blake: fitted clothing that is long enough to conceal a gun, or short clothing that is loose enough to conceal the gun.

Ladies, this includes you too.  How did Agent Scully carry her sidearm in The X-Files?  She carried in a belt-holster, under a blazer, on her body.  I know women’s clothing tends to be more tailored and form-fitting, but female detectives and female FBI agents manage to carry concealed on their person every bit as easily as their male counterparts.  Don’t buy the little blazers that end at your belly-button, though.  Remember, clothes can be tight or short, but they can’t be both.

Last thing: speaking of tailoring, find a tailor who is not an anti-gun idiot and will tailor the garment with you wearing a firearm.  A friend of mine used to manage a men’s store and two of his customers were in the executive protection business; they trusted my friend to tailor their clothes around their guns, radios and telescoping batons.  My friend was not an anti-gun idiot and did not have a nervous breakdown when these two came to get measured for suits wearing their "Batman Belts."  By the same token, if you are buying off the rack, wear your gun into the fitting room and make sure that the jacket you’re buying fits not only you, but also the concealed carrying you.

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Soule

Easy 6

Concealed Carry Fashion Part 1

I was looking for a Carhartt or similar vest today that was long enough to cover my pistol.  Now, I approach concealed carry differently than other people do.  To me, concealment is secondary to defensive shooting.  Which means, I want the most powerful handgun I can conceal, and I want to be able to present that firearm as fast as I can.  While there are many other ways to carry a firearm that are more concealed than how I carry, none of those allows rapid presentation of a powerful firearm in a gunfight.  So, I start from the gunfight and work my way to what I am going to wear rather than starting with what I am going to wear and figure out how to conceal a gun most covertly.  I see this as a defensive thinking mindset over a style mindset (which somewhat bothers me, actually), so I've described below a few ways to carry.

I always tell my students to keep the firearm on your person.  Never, never, never carry a gun in a purse or a laptop case or a satchel; if I steal any of those from you, I just got a gun.  Which means I am limiting myself significantly in how I carry a concealed firearm.  I can carry Dirty Harry's .44 Magnum in a laptop case.  Since you have to carry on your person--and this is really a non-debatable issue for me in my classes--you are reduced to a few ways of carrying a pistol and their advantages and disadvantages.  For why this is so important, please watch this great Youtube video!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDwQCOJVXq4

The three o'clock (note: I'm writing as a right handed shooter, obviously left handed people this would be nine o'clock) is the fastest, most efficient way to present the gun from concealment; as opposed to a leg holster which is faster but open-carried.  Three o'clock position is where cops carry their sidearms for a reason.  It is where your arm is attached in line with the firearms.  However, it is also very difficult to conceal.  Width of the firearm is what determines how easily it conceals, and putting a hard metal object against your hip bone makes it stick out.  You can't effectively conceal a pistol with a t-shirt like this, regardless of what the commercials tell you.  Having said that, the reason I almost always carry this way is for the very important reason that I can draw the gun with one hand from behind a concealing garment very quickly and start to engage immediately.

Four o'clock is almost as good.  The gun's a little farther away, so a little slower, but still able to get it with one hand.  It is also easier to conceal carrying on the back of the hip and the curvature of your spine than on you hip bone.  It is conceivable to wear thin clothing and conceal on the four o'clock, but there is an extreme risk of exposing the gun when you tie your shoe, or reach for the top shelf, if you dress that way.

I am not a fan of appendix carry, personally, because I am not a twenty-two year old fashion model with a six pack, but if you are, it's almost as good as four o'clock carry.  Once you get to the gun, it is faster than four o'clock; concealment is a little easier, it is less likely to be exposed.  Having said that, the biggest problem I have with appendix concealed carry is that you MUST use two hands to get the gun out quickly.  If time is a factor, you have to grab the concealing garment upward with your weak hand to draw the pistol with your strong hand.  That's no problem as long as you are a far enough distance away from your attacker to make those two moves before he can close the distance.  However, violent crimes often don't happen at that distance.

Shoulder holsters: never, ever, ever, ever buy a horizontal shoulder holster!  First, the same thing is true of a cross-draw holster, you are presenting the grip of your gun to your opponent.  Mostly, however, it is a really bad day when the gun falls out of whatever doomed-to-fail retention strap it has fighting gravity, and hits the floor in public.  Plus, you are pointing a gun at somebody all the time behind you.  Guns don't "just go off," however it breaks a fundamental of firearms safety to never point a weapon at something you don't want to destroy.  Vertical shoulder holsters are another matter.  Vertical shoulder holsters are what I use to conceal full-size handguns.  Concealment is great (so long as you don't take off your jacket), and you can get to the gun with one hand.  Disadvantages are that presenting the gun is slow; you have to reach across your body and backhand the pistol forward.  My philosophy of shoulder holsters is that they are really good for full-sized handguns and weather allows concealment with a jacket.

The "12 o'clock" carry.  I can't even discuss this without cracking jokes.  In all seriousness, there's no need for this, as it has no greater advantage than appendix carry, with all of its strengths and weaknesses, but the risk of sticking a gun down the front of your pants is way more than I want to take.

The slightly-less funny ankle holster.  First of all, ankle holsters were designed for back-up guns, not your primary firearm.  If you carry a back-up, fine, put it on your ankle.  But otherwise, physics is against you.  You not only have to use both hands, you have to use one leg, to draw the gun.  Very slow.  Very complex series events to draw the gun, from a disadvantageous position when you get it out and start engaging.  And it does not really offer any advantages in concealment.

Instead, I recommend pocket carry.  I have a small .380 ACP caliber gun that I can carry in a pants pocket holster.  This is the total compromise of my philosophy of starting from the gunfight and working your way to what you're going to wear.  However, sometimes what you wear is dictated to you, like a formal occasion.  Then, rather than going unarmed, I carry the pea-shooter in a pocket holster.  The holster is the important word there.  Don't throw a gun loosely into pants pockets; they make special holsters and gun-mounted clips for pocket carrying of small pistols.  A gun rattling around in your pocket unsecured could lead to a bad day.  I wear this when concealment is absolutely essential, recognizing I have sacrificed firepower and speed of draw, but a small slow gun is better than no gun in a gunfight.

That brings us to the weak side cross-draw, the "ten o'clock."  The advantage is that you can get to the gun with one hand.  The disadvantages out-weight the advantages, however.  First, it is slower; you have to reach across your body to draw, and you have to present the weapon in a backhanded motion.  Second, it's very easy to expose a gun in this position.  As a result, third and most important, like the horizontal shoulder holster, you are pointing the grip of your gun at your opponent.  In a grappling situation, that is really bad.

Lastly, small of the back.  Tactically, it is every bit as good as 4'oclock.  It is massively uncomfortable if you have to sit for any length of time.  You can get to the gun with one hand.  You can draw relatively fast.  It is relatively good at concealment, except when reaching high.  I don't like that you can't see to re-holster, and re-holstering usually takes two hands, which is not nearly as big of a problem as drawing, but it's something to think about.  You cannot carry a very large thick (meaning, in general terms, powerful) handgun this way very comfortably.

In conclusion, I firmly believe that the three o'clock position is the fastest, most efficient way to present a gun.  I recognize that you have to dress a certain way to pull that off, and many people do not want to dress that way (including me sometimes).  And sometimes you can't dress that way for weather or occasion reasons.

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Soule
Easy 6

Philosophy

The problem with philosophy in self-defense is that it’s the wrong philosophy.  I do not mean that the opinions are wrong, I mean that the subject matter is not really self-defense philosophy.  In armed self-defense—which few people actually teach, but I am considering weapons instructors broadly—the primary focus of the training is on safety.  In my state, most of the people carrying guns around for “self-defense” have gone through an 8 hour class on firearms safety.  The main purpose of this class is to teach people how to safely operate a firearm on a shooting range.  It really instills a healthy respect for the capability of a firearm to do damage.  This on many occasions scares people into not carrying the gun.  This is not self-defense philosophy, it is sports mentality.  Shooting is a sport, and you take your equipment to the field in a bag, you load your ammo, and then you consciously engage your brain to switch to the task of shooting.  As I have written many times, the biggest threat in an ambush is the confusion.  Training to shoot when your brain is actively engaged only in shooting, not distracted by anything from the target, is not really training for self-defense.  It is good training for marksmanship, but marksmanship is only the very basic first step in self-defense shooting.  Sports and self-defense have nothing to do with each other; many people understand this in unarmed self-defense, but don’t recognize the same thing is happening in armed self-defense.

This is because they start over-focusing on the tool (the firearm) and forget the fundamental lesson of weapons training: I am the weapon!  The gun, the knife, the sword, the car, the aircraft carrier are not the weapon, the people operating these things have to be the weapon.  When people go from the martial arts mat to the shooting range, they lose a certain aggressiveness.  People believe the tool will make it easier to protect themselves.  That is only half true.  A gun makes killing an enemy physically easier than doing it with your bare hands, but it is still mentally as difficult.  Training in what the Army calls an “Admin” attitude—as opposed to a “Tactical” attitude—gets people complacent.  They are not complacent to range safety; my point is that range safety makes people complacent to the very unsafe experience of a gun fight.  It is a very confusing, chaotic and frightening experience.  Training to calmly stand on a range, take a deep breath, let it out, and slowly squeeze the trigger of a pistol to where it surprises you will allow you to hit bulls eye targets, but has nothing to do with training you how to defend yourself with a firearm.  In fact, it may actually make you less capable of defending yourself than somebody who does not go practice just marksmanship.

Weapons-based martial art systems usually teach the wrong philosophy as well.  A great example is teaching stick fighting to fight the opponent’s sticks instead of attacking the opponent.  Now, there are exceptional teachers out there who teach to use batons to break through the opponent’s guard and bash his scull in with a baton, but much of stick fighting is putting sticks in a ring to fight each other.  That’s not self-defense.  Or, training people to use a knife as a defensive—as opposed to offensive—weapon; cutting hands and arms to keep distance, trying to fence with it in essence.  Knives are good for stabbing people or slitting the throats of sentries; they are not a dueling weapon.  But, we start (I used to do this too), teaching hand to hand combat concepts with a blade instead of just stabbing the enemy until he’s dead.  Again, dueling is a sport mentality.  It was one hell of a sport back in its day, but it was still a sport.  That is not the right philosophy either.

Of course, traditional martial arts, by definition, totally teach the wrong philosophies for people who want to learn self-defense.  One, they teach a sport philosophy for fitness rather than self-defense.  Two, they teach to always walk away (“never throw the first punch”), the mindset of The Karate Kid’s Mr. Miagi.  Three, they teach eastern religions as a part of their martial arts.  None of these things is necessarily bad, and as I have said in the past, the study of traditional martial arts makes a more complete person.  But, these are passed off as “self-defense” and they are the exact opposite.  They are monastic tenets that come from the religious institutions involved in the founding of traditional martial arts.  These are not the concepts you need to master if you want to survive a deadly-force encounter or a real—not sport—self-defense situation.  These are pacifist philosophies, or at least mild-mannered-monk philosophies, that do not fully appreciate how to survive an ambush.  Ultimately, they are designed for self-mastery and not personal protection in the physical realm.  They teach some excellent conditioning skills, regarding how to use the different parts of the body as tools, but they don’t really train people to be the weapon.

Ironically—proving my point—I have said these things to people who are very good martial artists and they challenge me to a match in the ring.  I have always accepted on one condition: I would accept the challenge if they let me enter the ring with the things I carry every day for self-defense.  No really great martial artist has yet accepted my counter proposal.  That is exactly what I mean when I say that, in combat, winning is cheating.

If you are unprepared to kill somebody to protect yourself or somebody you care about, you are nothing but a victim waiting to happen, and you should stop reading this blog now.  If you are still reading, I will attempt to explain what the philosophy of self-defense really is.  It is combat.  Essentially it is doing whatever is necessary to get home to your family.  Combat is not a sport.  There is no such thing as a fair self-defense engagement.  Self-defense is violence.  You have to be the most violent in order to seize the Initiative, and remember that whoever has the Initiative at the end of a fight is the winner.

A real self-defense situation is one where the outcomes are life or death.  So, the real philosophy of self-defense is the same philosophy we teach soldiers facing life or death situations in combat.  You are either the winner or you are dead.  Beating the shit out of somebody is not self-defense.  Getting the shit beat out of you is also not self-defense.  Self-defense is when you stab the guy beating the shit out of you, kicking you in ribs on the pavement, ten times in the femoral artery until the blood stops spurting.  That is self-defense.  The philosophy behind it is the deeply held belief, in one’s core, that I am going home no matter what.  When you start from that belief system, then—and only then—all of the skills and all of the tools you learn how to employ in the physical realm of violence are useful.  The tools are added to a solid foundation in the actual philosophy of self-defense.  Self-defense is combat.  It may be interpersonal combat, but it is still combat, and the only way you survive in combat is getting the Initiative and keeping it. 

Now, does that mean that the only option you have is killing?  No, that is not what I am saying; what I am saying is that the person who is willing to kill to save his life has a better chance of surviving combat, regardless of how much violence he had to apply, than the person who is willing to get into some martial arts tournament.  You can use whatever amount of violence it takes to seize and maintain the Initiative.  But, if you are not willing to use lethal violence, then you are giving a violent criminal—who is perfectly willing to be lethal—an advantage over you; you have a weakness that can be exploited.  Now, we all have physical weaknesses; some people are stronger than others, some people have physical disabilities and limitations, that’s not what I’m talking about.  I personally have had way too many orthopedic surgeries in my life to want to get into a jiu-jitsu match on pavement.  What I am is a combat veteran who is perfectly willing to cheat my ass off to get home.  I am perfectly willing to kill a violent criminal who tries to hurt me or somebody I care about.  My physical condition might mean I lose, but I will not lose because of mental weakness.  If I die, I will die trying to kill the bastard and take him with me.  If you don’t have that mental fortitude, the willingness to be the most violent, then you will lose to those who are willing to be the most violent.

What frustrates me a great deal about modern America is that even people learning how to fight, are not learning about combat.  I firmly believe that the rise in terrorism in America since the 1980s is directly attributable to the pacification of our society.  In the 1950s, American men understood far less about fighting than MMA teaches today, but they understood far more about combat than the average martial artist is taught today.  Or what the average CCW holder is taught in an 8 hour safety lecture; the purpose of a gun fight is to be really dangerous, not safe.  So, we as instructors need to start training people in the philosophy of self-defense, the mentality of kill or be killed, instead of training them to be really athletic victims in life or death encounters.