Concealed Carry Success

Concealed Carry Success Step 9: Select Proper Carry Clothing

In some areas, you may carry the same way all year long, while in other locations, you may wear shorts and T-shirts in the summer and heavy coats and gloves in the winter. The climate, your job, lifestyle, daily activities and where you live have a significant affect on your Concealed Carry Clothing. These differences can be frustrating and challenging, but you must adapt. A plain white dress shirt, for example, is usually plenty of concealment if you’ve got an IWB holster. A loose, untucked casual shirt, like a guayabera, Hawaiian or camp shirt can easily hide the grip of a handgun from the casual observer. A sweatshirt or hoodie adds bulk around the waist that probably can hide most large handguns. It just depends on your gun, its size and dimensions, and your body build.

I find as a horizontally-challenged geezer in warm Florida weather that wearing loose and baggy clothing and oversized, untucked casual shirts make CC easier, but not so stylish. I live with it.

On occasion, I switch from OWB carry to IWB carry and it seems to conceal some of my smaller guns better. Another option is to consider carrying one of the smaller firearms, be it one of the new .380s or 9mms. There are many lightweight, ergonomically-rounded, reduced-snag polymer-framed pistols and revolvers made especially for carry. Whether you change your method of carry for one day or the entire season, remember the importance of being familiar with your carry method. Some CC methods require you to access and get past clothing used as cover, which makes drawing more difficult and time consuming.

Practice is key for you to be able to deal with your clothing as cover, draw properly, etc.

Concealed Carry Success Step 10: Focus on Situational Awareness

Situational awareness (SA) is of critical importance for everyone at all times. We should be cautious, practice observation, scan and assess our particular environment, and know the variables at play in each situation we encounter, even though it is difficult to do so sometimes.

SA is simply knowing what’s going on around you and knowing your surroundings. It sounds easy in principle, but in reality requires much practice and keen observation skills and focus. This is challenging in a stressful encounter or even in a non-threatening environment. We tend to “behave in a way that makes sense to ourselves” and unwittingly neglect certain things. Our reality is based on our limited set of experiences and relative knowledge. It makes “sense” to us because of particular unique experiences, controllable and uncontrollable factors — some of which we may not be aware. Maybe it is because we “don’t know what we don’t know.”

Research shows that when we get nervous or stressed, our attention and focus narrows, causing us to concentrate on just a few things at a time. A narrow focus can therefore cause us to miss important threats and details in our environment. SA is an important skill to learn which takes focus and concentration with a big-picture perspective.

In a dangerous situation, being aware of a threat even seconds before everyone else can keep you and your loved ones safe.

Concealed Carry Success Step 11: Know Your Handgun and Maintain It Properly

You should develop skills with your particular carry gun so you can respond without thinking about where your external safety, magazine release, slide-lock lever and controls are located on your gun. Some say it takes about 3,000 to 5,000 repetitions of the same action or behavior to develop and instill an automatic muscle-memory response, as a subconscious reaction to an external stimuli. So you have to practice clearing that malfunction, for example, over and over again with the gun you carry.

If a specific shooting skill or technique is performed incorrectly and continually repeated, then unfortunately the muscle memories created for how you complete the task will also be flawed. So, you will not perform it correctly when you must perform it (automatically) in a deadly-force encounter.

When beginning to learn a new shooting skill or technique, it is best to go slow and pay close attention to what and how you are performing it. This ensures the actions being repeated later are correct as opposed to incorrect.

Know how to operate and use your handgun without taking time to think about it. Develop the muscle memory. Sadly, some law enforcement officers have been killed in the line of duty because of their lack of familiarity with their handguns and incorrect training procedures or lack of practice. Take time to regularly practice with your CC gun and use your self-defense ammo to practice with occasionally.

It is necessary to regularly maintain and clean your CC gun. Every time I shoot my gun, even if only 50 rounds, I clean it. Some say that is not necessary, but I want to have the peace of mind and security knowing that my gun’s reliability probability will be increased because of the ten minutes I took to clean it. I do not want to take even a 1% chance of death because I didn’t devote just a few minutes to clean and maintain my gun.

I believe you should inspect, function check, clean and maintain your concealed carry gun at least monthly.

Concealed Carry Success Step 12: Practice, Practice, Practice

Without a doubt, training in the fundamentals of shooting your carry gun and the key safety rules are mandatory for effectiveness. Start your CC training by analyzing your present skills and where you need improvement. Maybe you need to focus on trigger control and speed. Or maybe shooting one-handed or while moving. It is imperative to build positive and useful training and practice habits early.

Shooters should review their training process and topics on an annual basis and constantly, then design your practice plan with specific drills to help improve certain identified skills or areas needing improvement.

There is always something to learn or improve upon. Shooting fundamentals and skills are perishable, and they deteriorate if not practiced. You must practice on a regular basis. Every year I try to complete at least one course for improvement. Recognize that while practice is critical, so is how you practice. Do not just shoot holes in paper, but have a planned course of fire and specific drills to focus on key fundamentals and areas where you need improvement. Snap caps and dry firing can be helpful. Snap Caps ( http://goo.gl/PM040U ) have a spring-damped false primer or one of plastic that cushions and protects the firing pin for many repeated strikes and protects your gun’s components. Dry firing is practicing at home with snap caps and an unloaded gun. Understand that while dry-fire practice drills with snap caps are useful, there is no substitute for live fire practice. Try to plan a monthly range shooting practice session, but go at least every 7 to 8 weeks as a minimum.

You can practice dry firing as a supplement in your home once a week. Be prepared and practice. It just might save your life.

Continued Success and Be Safe!

Reprinted with permission from AmmoLand.com.

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