When visiting with folks, you often hear some poorly thought out comments about personal defense. One of my favorites is, “I have a defensive gun and I carry it when I think I need to.” Dear friends, if you could accurately predict when you are going to need a defensive handgun, you could make a fortune just selling that information to others. We carry all the time because we don’t know when violence is going to raise its ugly head.
But I get it. When we first start wearing a concealed handgun, it feels very uncomfortable. What’s more, we have the feeling that everyone around us knows we are armed, sees the bump under our covering garment and is staring at us. And all of that makes us even more uncomfortable. I had the same feeling as a young policeman when carrying while off duty. The temptation is to avoid the embarrassment and leave the gun at home.
Col. Jeff Cooper talked about the importance of becoming one with your firearm. He said that we should live with our gun. We should wear it during our waking hours whether at home or abroad. The more we handled it, wore it and shot it, the quicker we would become familiar with it and more comfortable with its presence.
In my case, as a young cop, I quickly learned a lot about the value of a proper belt and holster. And I garnered a lot more knowledge about suitable concealment garments. It takes a little time and thought to properly match our defense gun and gear to the way we dress and to the options that are available to us.
Dry practice also helps with the familiarization process. Minus the boom and kick, we get a better feel for the gun’s pointability. We become more familiar with the grip and develop a more uniform trigger press. All of these things help us to become one with the particular defensive gun. And that’s what Cooper meant about living with the firearm.
Mind you, none of what I am suggesting should be construed to suggest playing with the defensive gun. It is a deadly tool and should always be treated as such. Negligent discharges happen when people play with guns. Instead, we focus on the task at hand, whatever that might be. For dry practice, we unload and then we check and double check to make sure that the gun is actually unloaded. Safety should always be our primary concern.
After all these years I have more than a passing relationship with personal defense and yet I still can’t predict when and where I will next need to defend myself. That is why I have learned to live with a defensive handgun. It goes on in the morning with my clothes and doesn’t come off until bedtime. And even then, it is close by. I have learned to properly conceal it so that most folks never know that it is there.
Given the world events of our day, learning to live with your firearm is really not a bad idea at all.
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