I’m going to warn you now, this post is long as <removed>. I did my best to avoid abbreviations which may be a headache for some of you, but thinking of the new shooter I didn’t want to over load them with forum abbreviations. This write up is pretty much purely about picking a gun, finding a comfortable, working set up, and carrying it.
So, you’ve decided to carry a gun. …What took so long?! Whatever the reason it was you bought a gun, deciding to carry it is the second step. After that, there’s a lot of time spent getting comfortable in your own skin. Comments from family, girlfriends, friends can be a deterrent. What kind of gun you carry, what caliber, what holster, all things to figure out. It can all become over whelming pretty quickly, and honestly there’s not any real good way to figure out what is going to work for you other than just carrying and getting the experience. I’ve been carrying for four years now, and I’d say I’m just now getting my setups exactly where I need for me. Now that’s the most important thing. My setup is perfect for ME. Not for you. The only way to figure out how and where and what you are going to carry is to find what works for you.
Now, if you have decided to start carrying a gun, it is most likely because you see the need for one. You can see the threats that are out there, you can see the reality of possibly having to defend yourself or your family one day. It’s a scary thought if you really take it in and ponder on it. Unfortunately lots of families in America have experienced these types of occurrences. Robberies, rapes, beatings, murders. It’s not a comfortable feeling, but imagine someone pulling you into the alley you were walking past, beating you, stabbing you, taking your money, leaving you for dead. What if you had a girlfriend? A wife? Could you protect them? These thoughts are sobering. Now I want you to think about just last week when you had to run to the gas station around 7-9pm for some random reason and really didn’t feel like holstering up. You were wearing sweats, didn’t want to change, didn’t want to have to put on your IWB holster and all of that, it’s honestly just a pain. That night, is when these things happened. You had prepared so much, you had gone to the range once a month, you practiced drawing, shooting, you were ready for anything. …But you didn’t have your gun.
If you were wise enough to realize that there are real threats out there to you and your family, and that you may at some point need to defend yourself, please also be wise enough that you will NEVER be prepared for it. If you can know when or where a crime against you was going to happen there would be an extremely simple solution, don’t go there. Unfortunately we can’t see into the future, so that means CARRY ALL OF THE TIME. You’ve already made the decision to have a gun on you, so do it. Do it always. Not sometimes, all of the time. It is a logical fallacy to realize you need a gun, and then to only carry it sometimes, or only when it’s comfortable for you to do so. Would you buy car insurance that only covers accidents every other day? Hell no! and that’s just your car! …This is your life. Guns won’t always be comfortable to carry. We can get some of them pretty damn close to perfect, but it won’t always be convenient. Suck it up. Don’t be an idiot. Take the five extra seconds to arm yourself, it may just save your life… This is where making your set up work for you is most important. Make it as comfortable and convenient as it can be, and carry it all of the time.
This is a …well …uhh …poem? That I have found in my internet travels. I don’t know who wrote it, but I think it pretty well speaks to exactly what I’m saying.
Better than nothing:
“When I got my permit to carry concealed, I worried about how little practice I had, and wondered if I should even be carrying a gun.
I don’t have much confidence in my ability to draw quickly, but if I wait until I’m flawless, I’ll never have my gun with me.
I may still be practicing on how sights work, but if I wait until I can consistently drill two rounds through the same hole, I’ll never have my gun with me.
I may not ever be tacti-cool enough to keep moving while reloading and firing but if I wait to carry until I am, I’ll never have my gun with me.
I may not be as aware of my surroundings as I should be, but if I wait until I’m free of other distractions, I’ll never have my gun with me.
I may never have the time to train to reach any of the above goals, much less all of them, but if I wait until I do, I’ll never have my gun with me.
Some say having a gun makes you a target. Some say having a gun serves as a deterrent. If I waited until that debate was settled (including my internal one), I’d never have my gun with me.
And don’t even get me started on the caliber wars.
Some of us come late to the realization that the only ones we can count on to keep us safe are ourselves. So we open our eyes, and we travel that road – all with different starting places, and going at difference paces. But as long as I’m making progress, however slow, I’ll keep plodding along. Because no matter how much I have to learn, or how much I need to Improve, I’ll keep carrying my gun. Because something is better than nothing.”
Rule #1 Always carry your gun
Rule #2 Outright refuse to be a victim.
On that note, I think you should all watch this video. It’s from the 90’s about a man named Lance Thomas. It will give you a little insight to being prepared, to doing what you need to do, and refusing to leave your life up to someone else’s mercy.
http://youtu.be/pkWgp2abM2w
Ok, now that I’ve yelled at all of you for long enough, we’ll get into some of my experience in carrying guns, and hopefully I can shed some helpful insight through my own experiences, and I’ll do my best to leave the rest of this a little more organized with BOLD talking points and Bold Italicized for sub points.
Types of Carry:
There are really only two types of carry. Concealed Carry, and Open Carry. We won’t get into these very deep.
- Open Carry: Carrying a holstered gun that is readably visible by the public. i.e., how a cop carries. If you intend to Open Carry you need to KNOW THE LAWS. It is not legal everywhere. For the most part it is regulated by the city, not the state. So even staying within one state, the laws and legalities can and will be different from city to city. If you want to know more about OC in MISSOURI ONLY you can PM me. Otherwise please visit the forums at www.opencarry.org. There is a sub-forum there for each state, and very helpful people who will help you learn the laws.
Concealed Carry: Carrying a firearm that is hidden from view. Almost every state in the US will allow you to carry concealed, you just have to have a permit to do so. There are one or two states that don’t let you carry no matter what, and a few that let you carry without a permit. Check your local laws. The majority of this post will be about concealed carry.
Here in Missouri we can pretty much carry wherever we want. But hey, we’re smart people here, and my daddy is stronger than your daddy. Virtually every “no carry” place like churches, bars, parks, carrying when drunk, places with no gun signs, are technically suggested no carry zones. Missouri law says right after all of these things says “None of these shall be a criminal offense” I’m not saying all of these situations are an intelligent place to carry. …But I can tell you I carry everywhere & at all times. Now I’m not saying you might not need a lawyer for the pickle you’re in, but I can tell ya, the cost of a lawyer thumping the judge on the head and telling him “there is no law against it” is worth preventing the cost of my life. DON’T TAKE THIS AS PERSONAL ADVICE. ESPECIALLY IF YOU DON’T LIVE IN MISSOURI. You need to personally research the carry laws of your state. Also obviously federal laws still apply like no federal buildings or court houses.
What gun to buy?:
Well. That’s a loaded question. Ha! *rimshot* I made a pun. And I didn’t even mean to.
There is no one answer to this question. Because it is ALL based in your preference. Use these rough categories to figure out what you want, and then see how those type of guns fit your hand.
Size:
This completely depends on your intended use for this firearm. Obviously I’m not going to pocket carry a desert eagle.
Guns range from long slide, full size, compact, sub compact, mouse guns, it’s literally endless. I guarantee you, there is a gun size out there for every intended purpose you could need. Obviously my tiny 9mm Kel-Tec PF-9 is not intended to be a target shooter or a range hog. Every gun has it’s purpose, so don’t have animosity against one just because it didn’t fit you’re intended purpose.
Now personally, this is why I have several. You will hear lots of people saying “you should only have one carry gun and one alone, so that you know the mechanics of it.” Realistically, that’s never going to happen. There are so many different carry situations people encounter in every day life. You don’t have one outfit do you? You have running shoes don’t you? And dress shoes? Flip flops? Mowing shoes? …you get the point. The reason you need multiple guns, is because one particular gun will not always be the most comfortable in every situation. This goes back to always carrying. If your gun isn’t comfortable, you probably won’t wear it.
I do agree with the “knowing the mechanics of your carry gun by keeping it the same” concept in one way. None of my guns have safeties. Now that’s not me saying safeties are bad, that’s me saying I’ve never trained with one, and I don’t want to start now. I don’t want to pull a 1911 one day, and think it’s my Glock, wondering why the trigger isn’t making it go bang. If the moment comes for a defensive use of a handgun I’m not going to be able to tell you which one I’m carrying, I’m just going to pull it, point it and the bad guy, and press the trigger till he stops being so bad. If you’ve trained with a safety, great, you’ll automatically flip it off without even thinking about it. I haven’t, so I don’t want them on my guns.
Going back to size, I have three main guns that rotate in my carry:
FN FNP-45: for night stand duty and Open Carry. Sometimes in the winter I’ll Conceal Carry it under a coat.
Glock 36: This is my main carry gun. Used mostly always for IWB Concealed Carry, Open Carry now and then.
Kel-Tec PF-9: This is for Pocket Carry or Deep Concealment. I use it with a pocket holster for the times I’m running to the gas station and don’ want to holster up. Throw it into your pants pocket, or a jacket pocket and you’re good to go. This would also be the gun I use when needing to be absolutely sure no one knows I have a gun. It’s the smallest, so it’s the easiest to conceal.
Type of Action: Holy hell…are we really still on gun choice? …this is going to be long.
SA: Single Action. In a revolver, this means you would have to pull the hammer back every time you wanted to shoot. You would have to pull it back to cock it, and then when you pull the trigger the trigger performs one action, releasing the hammer. In a Semi-Auto this will mean that as soon as a round is chambered the gun will always be cocked. Almost always this will also mean that the gun has a manual safety. This is where the term “cocked & locked” comes from. You carry the gun with the hammer back, and the safety on. The trigger pull on a SA is smooth and light because it only has to do one job, release the hammer, so it can fall and set the round off.
DA / DAO : Double Action, or Double Action Only. This means when you pull the trigger you are doing two things. You are cocking the hammer, and you are letting the hammer fall, all through the same trigger pull. This will result in a longer, heavier trigger pull. Because as you start to pull the trigger the hammer will start to move to the rear, and through the pull of the trigger eventually the hammer will go to full cock, and then instantly fall, setting the round off. This type of action can be found in full size semi-autos. However, typically it is going to be found in mouse guns, or revolvers My Kel-Tec PF9 has a bobbed hammer and is DOA
DA/SA: This means that the gun is both Double Action, and Single Action. “HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?!?” Is the first thought I had when I was younger and asked a military friend of mine what type action his M9 was. Ok. So, imagine this, you just put a magazine in the gun, you racked the slide to chamber a round, and the hammer is cocked back. Most every DA/SA firearm will have a decocker on the side of the frame. It may look like a safety to you, and some of them are manual safeties and decockers, but anyhow, yeah it’s a decocker. What does this do? It decocks the firearm. When you press the lever down it will let the hammer fall to a “half cock” position. This brings the hammer down to a safe “pseudo decocked” position. Pseudo because it’s not technically all of the way uncocked. The hammer stops just before hitting the firing pin and stays there.
So, after having chambered a round and decocked the hammer, your first round will be Double Action. The first round you squeeze off will have the long and heavy trigger pull. After the round goes off and the slide comes back to eject the round, the slide cocks the hammer, therefore making all subsequent shots single action. The trigger will have a shorter pull, and be much lighter. This acts almost as a safety, because the first round has a longer heavier trigger pull. My FNP-45 is DA/SA
Striker Fired: This is how any firearm without a hammer operates, no matter whether the hammer is shrouded, bobbed, hidden, or whatever else. If your gun doesn’t have a hammer it’s striker fired. When you rack the slide it moves the firing pin back away from the cartridge about 85%. When you pull the trigger it brings the pin back the rest of the way, and then lets it fly forward, setting off the round. Types of striker fired guns are Glocks, XD’s, M&P’s and lots of others. My Glock 36 is striker fired
Caliber:
I’m going to be honest with you on this one… Do your own research on ballistics. First thing you have to do is make sure you can shoot the caliber comfortably. Effect of target is 10X more important than the hole made in target. If you can’t hit it, who gives a crap how big of a hole the round “would have made”. Personally I didn’t like .40 S&W. Found it very snappy and not to my liking. But don’t let the bigger calibers scare you, I hate .40, But I love .45 ACP. Every handgun I own except for one is .45 ACP.
This is a personal choice, and why I said to research the ballistics on your own. I have made a personal choice not to carry anything smaller than 9mm or .38 special +P. Now that’s personal, because I can fit a tiny 9mm in my pocket and in my hands. If you can’t, .380 or even .22 mag may be an option you need to explore. I wouldn’t carry them personally because I prefer either a bigger caliber or something with more velocity. However, if that’s what works best for you, then carry it! Any gun is better than no gun.
So, you’ve decided to carry a gun. …What took so long?! Whatever the reason it was you bought a gun, deciding to carry it is the second step. After that, there’s a lot of time spent getting comfortable in your own skin. Comments from family, girlfriends, friends can be a deterrent. What kind of gun you carry, what caliber, what holster, all things to figure out. It can all become over whelming pretty quickly, and honestly there’s not any real good way to figure out what is going to work for you other than just carrying and getting the experience. I’ve been carrying for four years now, and I’d say I’m just now getting my setups exactly where I need for me. Now that’s the most important thing. My setup is perfect for ME. Not for you. The only way to figure out how and where and what you are going to carry is to find what works for you.
Now, if you have decided to start carrying a gun, it is most likely because you see the need for one. You can see the threats that are out there, you can see the reality of possibly having to defend yourself or your family one day. It’s a scary thought if you really take it in and ponder on it. Unfortunately lots of families in America have experienced these types of occurrences. Robberies, rapes, beatings, murders. It’s not a comfortable feeling, but imagine someone pulling you into the alley you were walking past, beating you, stabbing you, taking your money, leaving you for dead. What if you had a girlfriend? A wife? Could you protect them? These thoughts are sobering. Now I want you to think about just last week when you had to run to the gas station around 7-9pm for some random reason and really didn’t feel like holstering up. You were wearing sweats, didn’t want to change, didn’t want to have to put on your IWB holster and all of that, it’s honestly just a pain. That night, is when these things happened. You had prepared so much, you had gone to the range once a month, you practiced drawing, shooting, you were ready for anything. …But you didn’t have your gun.
If you were wise enough to realize that there are real threats out there to you and your family, and that you may at some point need to defend yourself, please also be wise enough that you will NEVER be prepared for it. If you can know when or where a crime against you was going to happen there would be an extremely simple solution, don’t go there. Unfortunately we can’t see into the future, so that means CARRY ALL OF THE TIME. You’ve already made the decision to have a gun on you, so do it. Do it always. Not sometimes, all of the time. It is a logical fallacy to realize you need a gun, and then to only carry it sometimes, or only when it’s comfortable for you to do so. Would you buy car insurance that only covers accidents every other day? Hell no! and that’s just your car! …This is your life. Guns won’t always be comfortable to carry. We can get some of them pretty damn close to perfect, but it won’t always be convenient. Suck it up. Don’t be an idiot. Take the five extra seconds to arm yourself, it may just save your life… This is where making your set up work for you is most important. Make it as comfortable and convenient as it can be, and carry it all of the time.
This is a …well …uhh …poem? That I have found in my internet travels. I don’t know who wrote it, but I think it pretty well speaks to exactly what I’m saying.
Better than nothing:
“When I got my permit to carry concealed, I worried about how little practice I had, and wondered if I should even be carrying a gun.
I don’t have much confidence in my ability to draw quickly, but if I wait until I’m flawless, I’ll never have my gun with me.
I may still be practicing on how sights work, but if I wait until I can consistently drill two rounds through the same hole, I’ll never have my gun with me.
I may not ever be tacti-cool enough to keep moving while reloading and firing but if I wait to carry until I am, I’ll never have my gun with me.
I may not be as aware of my surroundings as I should be, but if I wait until I’m free of other distractions, I’ll never have my gun with me.
I may never have the time to train to reach any of the above goals, much less all of them, but if I wait until I do, I’ll never have my gun with me.
Some say having a gun makes you a target. Some say having a gun serves as a deterrent. If I waited until that debate was settled (including my internal one), I’d never have my gun with me.
And don’t even get me started on the caliber wars.
Some of us come late to the realization that the only ones we can count on to keep us safe are ourselves. So we open our eyes, and we travel that road – all with different starting places, and going at difference paces. But as long as I’m making progress, however slow, I’ll keep plodding along. Because no matter how much I have to learn, or how much I need to Improve, I’ll keep carrying my gun. Because something is better than nothing.”
Rule #1 Always carry your gun
Rule #2 Outright refuse to be a victim.
On that note, I think you should all watch this video. It’s from the 90’s about a man named Lance Thomas. It will give you a little insight to being prepared, to doing what you need to do, and refusing to leave your life up to someone else’s mercy.
http://youtu.be/pkWgp2abM2w
Ok, now that I’ve yelled at all of you for long enough, we’ll get into some of my experience in carrying guns, and hopefully I can shed some helpful insight through my own experiences, and I’ll do my best to leave the rest of this a little more organized with BOLD talking points and Bold Italicized for sub points.
Types of Carry:
There are really only two types of carry. Concealed Carry, and Open Carry. We won’t get into these very deep.
- Open Carry: Carrying a holstered gun that is readably visible by the public. i.e., how a cop carries. If you intend to Open Carry you need to KNOW THE LAWS. It is not legal everywhere. For the most part it is regulated by the city, not the state. So even staying within one state, the laws and legalities can and will be different from city to city. If you want to know more about OC in MISSOURI ONLY you can PM me. Otherwise please visit the forums at www.opencarry.org. There is a sub-forum there for each state, and very helpful people who will help you learn the laws.
Concealed Carry: Carrying a firearm that is hidden from view. Almost every state in the US will allow you to carry concealed, you just have to have a permit to do so. There are one or two states that don’t let you carry no matter what, and a few that let you carry without a permit. Check your local laws. The majority of this post will be about concealed carry.
Here in Missouri we can pretty much carry wherever we want. But hey, we’re smart people here, and my daddy is stronger than your daddy. Virtually every “no carry” place like churches, bars, parks, carrying when drunk, places with no gun signs, are technically suggested no carry zones. Missouri law says right after all of these things says “None of these shall be a criminal offense” I’m not saying all of these situations are an intelligent place to carry. …But I can tell you I carry everywhere & at all times. Now I’m not saying you might not need a lawyer for the pickle you’re in, but I can tell ya, the cost of a lawyer thumping the judge on the head and telling him “there is no law against it” is worth preventing the cost of my life. DON’T TAKE THIS AS PERSONAL ADVICE. ESPECIALLY IF YOU DON’T LIVE IN MISSOURI. You need to personally research the carry laws of your state. Also obviously federal laws still apply like no federal buildings or court houses.
What gun to buy?:
Well. That’s a loaded question. Ha! *rimshot* I made a pun. And I didn’t even mean to.
There is no one answer to this question. Because it is ALL based in your preference. Use these rough categories to figure out what you want, and then see how those type of guns fit your hand.
Size:
This completely depends on your intended use for this firearm. Obviously I’m not going to pocket carry a desert eagle.
Guns range from long slide, full size, compact, sub compact, mouse guns, it’s literally endless. I guarantee you, there is a gun size out there for every intended purpose you could need. Obviously my tiny 9mm Kel-Tec PF-9 is not intended to be a target shooter or a range hog. Every gun has it’s purpose, so don’t have animosity against one just because it didn’t fit you’re intended purpose.
Now personally, this is why I have several. You will hear lots of people saying “you should only have one carry gun and one alone, so that you know the mechanics of it.” Realistically, that’s never going to happen. There are so many different carry situations people encounter in every day life. You don’t have one outfit do you? You have running shoes don’t you? And dress shoes? Flip flops? Mowing shoes? …you get the point. The reason you need multiple guns, is because one particular gun will not always be the most comfortable in every situation. This goes back to always carrying. If your gun isn’t comfortable, you probably won’t wear it.
I do agree with the “knowing the mechanics of your carry gun by keeping it the same” concept in one way. None of my guns have safeties. Now that’s not me saying safeties are bad, that’s me saying I’ve never trained with one, and I don’t want to start now. I don’t want to pull a 1911 one day, and think it’s my Glock, wondering why the trigger isn’t making it go bang. If the moment comes for a defensive use of a handgun I’m not going to be able to tell you which one I’m carrying, I’m just going to pull it, point it and the bad guy, and press the trigger till he stops being so bad. If you’ve trained with a safety, great, you’ll automatically flip it off without even thinking about it. I haven’t, so I don’t want them on my guns.
Going back to size, I have three main guns that rotate in my carry:
FN FNP-45: for night stand duty and Open Carry. Sometimes in the winter I’ll Conceal Carry it under a coat.
Glock 36: This is my main carry gun. Used mostly always for IWB Concealed Carry, Open Carry now and then.
Kel-Tec PF-9: This is for Pocket Carry or Deep Concealment. I use it with a pocket holster for the times I’m running to the gas station and don’ want to holster up. Throw it into your pants pocket, or a jacket pocket and you’re good to go. This would also be the gun I use when needing to be absolutely sure no one knows I have a gun. It’s the smallest, so it’s the easiest to conceal.
Type of Action: Holy hell…are we really still on gun choice? …this is going to be long.
SA: Single Action. In a revolver, this means you would have to pull the hammer back every time you wanted to shoot. You would have to pull it back to cock it, and then when you pull the trigger the trigger performs one action, releasing the hammer. In a Semi-Auto this will mean that as soon as a round is chambered the gun will always be cocked. Almost always this will also mean that the gun has a manual safety. This is where the term “cocked & locked” comes from. You carry the gun with the hammer back, and the safety on. The trigger pull on a SA is smooth and light because it only has to do one job, release the hammer, so it can fall and set the round off.
DA / DAO : Double Action, or Double Action Only. This means when you pull the trigger you are doing two things. You are cocking the hammer, and you are letting the hammer fall, all through the same trigger pull. This will result in a longer, heavier trigger pull. Because as you start to pull the trigger the hammer will start to move to the rear, and through the pull of the trigger eventually the hammer will go to full cock, and then instantly fall, setting the round off. This type of action can be found in full size semi-autos. However, typically it is going to be found in mouse guns, or revolvers My Kel-Tec PF9 has a bobbed hammer and is DOA
DA/SA: This means that the gun is both Double Action, and Single Action. “HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?!?” Is the first thought I had when I was younger and asked a military friend of mine what type action his M9 was. Ok. So, imagine this, you just put a magazine in the gun, you racked the slide to chamber a round, and the hammer is cocked back. Most every DA/SA firearm will have a decocker on the side of the frame. It may look like a safety to you, and some of them are manual safeties and decockers, but anyhow, yeah it’s a decocker. What does this do? It decocks the firearm. When you press the lever down it will let the hammer fall to a “half cock” position. This brings the hammer down to a safe “pseudo decocked” position. Pseudo because it’s not technically all of the way uncocked. The hammer stops just before hitting the firing pin and stays there.
So, after having chambered a round and decocked the hammer, your first round will be Double Action. The first round you squeeze off will have the long and heavy trigger pull. After the round goes off and the slide comes back to eject the round, the slide cocks the hammer, therefore making all subsequent shots single action. The trigger will have a shorter pull, and be much lighter. This acts almost as a safety, because the first round has a longer heavier trigger pull. My FNP-45 is DA/SA
Striker Fired: This is how any firearm without a hammer operates, no matter whether the hammer is shrouded, bobbed, hidden, or whatever else. If your gun doesn’t have a hammer it’s striker fired. When you rack the slide it moves the firing pin back away from the cartridge about 85%. When you pull the trigger it brings the pin back the rest of the way, and then lets it fly forward, setting off the round. Types of striker fired guns are Glocks, XD’s, M&P’s and lots of others. My Glock 36 is striker fired
Caliber:
I’m going to be honest with you on this one… Do your own research on ballistics. First thing you have to do is make sure you can shoot the caliber comfortably. Effect of target is 10X more important than the hole made in target. If you can’t hit it, who gives a crap how big of a hole the round “would have made”. Personally I didn’t like .40 S&W. Found it very snappy and not to my liking. But don’t let the bigger calibers scare you, I hate .40, But I love .45 ACP. Every handgun I own except for one is .45 ACP.
This is a personal choice, and why I said to research the ballistics on your own. I have made a personal choice not to carry anything smaller than 9mm or .38 special +P. Now that’s personal, because I can fit a tiny 9mm in my pocket and in my hands. If you can’t, .380 or even .22 mag may be an option you need to explore. I wouldn’t carry them personally because I prefer either a bigger caliber or something with more velocity. However, if that’s what works best for you, then carry it! Any gun is better than no gun.
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