Confessions of a Gear-Paralyzed Gun Nerd
The extremes of carry gun choice. The mental evolution gradually drifted from "must the tiny" to
"I'll figure out how to carry a normal-sized gun.
A couple of decades ago, when I first started my concealed carry journey, I did some really stupid stuff.
Looking back on it now, I might refer to it as gear paralysis. By gear, I meant everything: ammunition, holsters and the corresponding carry method, and, of course, the gun. You name it, I analyzed every possible detail, trying to decide, not which combination of stuff might get the job done, but which was the ultimate, optimal solution. And therein lay the problem. You know the old saying, Perfection is the enemy of good.
Also, looking back and pondering this colossal waste of time and energy, I wonder if indecision was such a big factor because of the potential life-and-death consequences (at least in my brain) of making a less-than-optimal decision. And “optimal” is the keyword here. Knowing what I know now, it’s clear that 99.7% of the “carry” guns on the market will do a perfectly acceptable job of serving as a tool to help save your life, assuming you know how to use them. It’s not like the gun that comes in 3% less on the giant feature function benefit matrix is going to fail in its mission, while the next one higher on the chart will result in victory and living happily ever after.
Anyway, that’s all clear now, but at the time?
The Perfect Gun
For example, I can’t even tell you the countless hours I spent looking through magazines, catalogs, gun stores, and every resource I could get my hands on in a never-ending effort to find the perfect carry gun. Mind you, I couldn’t afford all these guns I was looking at, but that didn’t stop me from spending hours and hours and hours looking, comparing and carefully considering every minute feature. The funniest part was that I really wasn’t able to act on any of my fact-finding, given my budget at the time. Well, the budget was zero, so …
There was a time I was convinced that if I didn't have one of these, I would die an ugly death.
Of course, caliber was a big factor in all this mental brain wrangling. Was .380 enough? I was big on easy and discreet carry at the time, and .380s were (and are) generally smaller. Or 9mm? What about 45? And then, when you go larger in caliber, there’s the capacity issue. Could I possibly survive with fewer than 10 rounds? You get the idea. Lots and lots of agonizing over … not much.
And then there was the type of action. Striker-fired? Single action? Double action? I vaguely remember going through an entire phase of becoming enamored with something called Light Double Action. As I recall, it was a feature hyped by Para-Ordnance at the time. If I didn’t have that, I’d probably be killed on the mean streets, and Miley Cyrus would lip sync at my funeral. But if I just had a Light Double Action 1911-style gun with a double-stack magazine, I would somehow be immortal.
Yeah, and again looking back, I was probably a paranoid freak. Okay, let’s revise that. I was definitely a paranoid freak.
And a laser was a must-have piece of gear ...
The Only Ammo That Could Ever Possibly Work?
Parallel with this insane waste of time was a road trip into the ammo market. I can’t tell you how many types of ammo I explored, investigated, and occasionally tested at the range. What was I testing for on a range with paper targets? Well…
I thought about figuring out ways to shoot these various types of ammo into trash cans full of water, or wet newspaper or maybe even a swimming pool. Why? To see how it would expand! All these plans seemed somewhat ridiculous in retrospect.
Yeah, I used to do a lot of stuff like this.
I guess the idea of one ammo type expanding a little bit better in a pile of wet newspaper was supposed to provide peace and comfort as my ideal carry choice. As for shooting into a container full of water or swimming to a pool, I have no earthly idea what I had convinced myself that was going to tell me or how it was going to help my carry strategy, but boy, it did seem important at the time.
Looking back on all this, I was a dope.
When I started pondering carry, the Cor-Bon Safety Slug was all the rage.
I never found out if it was true, but the story was LE folks on planes used them.
The Right, and Wrong, Holsters
If you think my agonizing over the ideal gun and ammo combination was ridiculous, things got really crazy over choosing a carry method and corresponding holster gear.
I was working in an office at the time, so concealment was pretty high on the list of desirable features. As a result, I tried every unorthodox carry method under the sun.
Ankle carry was a favorite for a while, and of course, that completely restarted the obsession with the right gun and ammunition combination all over again. Sigh.
This was a favorite for my ankle carry days, when "tiny" was the most important attribute in my mind.
Then there was the tuckable holster stage. That’s not a bad method, even knowing what I know now, but I was freaked out and paranoid about everybody on planet earth seeing the exposed portions of the clips when wearing a tucked-in shirt. As it turns out, nobody cares, and very few people look at your midsection when you’re out and about in public. I might have gotten a little carried away with that concern.
And then there was the crotch pouch solution. I forget what these were called, but they were an elastic belt with a big fabric pouch that hung down inside your pants, completely under the waistline in the very center. If your pants had some room and were loose enough, I suppose it worked, but it was a little strange. OK, maybe a lot strange. Then again, I guess conceptually it’s not too different than appendix carry, which seems to be all the rage these days.
This was a nifty and quite portable option back in the day.
Under-shirt carry? Yup, did that too. That one stuck around in my ensemble for a while because it was convenient. Concealment was fantastic. It was somewhat comfortable whether sitting or standing. Of course, the downside is that accessing your gun requires some serious gymnastics and a corresponding amount of time, so that’s a checkmark in the cons column.
Yeah, this happened. Note the crotch pouch in the upper left...
Lessons
The big learning from all this, that came with time and experience?
Chill out!
Sure, that’s easy to say now, but it took a lot of hours of concealed carry, training, and practice to arrive at that very obvious (in retrospect) conclusion.
As is very clear now, optimizing gear matters very little, provided it’s gear that functions reliably, and provided you train and practice with it, and provided you maintain it properly going forward. Guess what? It’ll work!
Boy, looking back, I wish I could reclaim all that time and energy and invest it in practice and training instead.
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