We did a podcast on ten mistakes concealed carry permit holders make, and it’s one of the most downloaded episodes we’ve published. In it I said that it was far from an exhaustive list, and that I’d be doing another one on mistakes, so here it is.
Our first mistake episode, if you haven’t listened to it, covered these ten mistakes. Not carrying every day. Wearing the wrong clothing. Adjusting your pants. Checking your gun. Not practicing drawing from concealment. Not training with your carry gun. Not dry firing. Just training for marksmanship. Not carrying extra ammo. Not getting additional training. If you haven’t heard the first one yet, I recommend doing so after you finish this one. Here’s the ten more mistakes concealed Carriers make.
1. Not Having A Permit
We get it. The second amendment is all the permission we need. But laws are laws, and if you live in a jurisdiction where a concealed carry permit is required by statute, you had better have one. Get caught carrying without a permit, and the consequences can be dire.
Should you ever have to employ your gun in defense of yourself or others, how can you explain away your willingness to break the law when you’re desperately trying to portray yourself as a law-abiding citizen? Believe me, whoever is prosecuting you criminally or representing the plaintiff in the civil suit is going to pound away at your willingness to break the law by carrying a gun illegally.
Just get a permit if one is required. Take the time, spend the money, and get the permit. Most states don’t set the bar very high as far as test or qualification scores, so if you have a decent instructor and pay attention in class you’ll pass with no problem. I have never had a student fail the written test, and I’ve had students who had never even held a gun before pass the range qualification. This doesn’t necessarily speak to my abilities as an instructor, but more to the criteria my state has established.
And if you’re fortunate enough to live in a state that has constitutional carry, if your state still offers permits, get one. Unless you plan on never leaving your home state, travel through other states that require permits and extend reciprocity to yours will let you stay armed as long as you have a permit.
2. Getting Complacent With Gun Safety
Remember when you first started shooting, and you were hyper-aware of where your muzzle was pointing and the condition of your gun? Are you still that way, or have you become lackadaisical when it comes to the safety aspect of guns?
I have a firm belief that if you haven’t already had a negligent discharge, every day you don’t puts you one day closer to the day you do. See, the more we handle and shoot guns, the more familiar with them we become. We take a journey that starts out in fear, travels to understanding and respect, and, hopefully, ends in the village of comfortable competency. Over the course of our journey, we have invariably broken one of the four laws a time or two. But when we did nothing bad happened. We didn’t pay attention to what we were doing and inadvertently pointed our gun at someone. And nobody died. So we eased up a little on our muzzle awareness. And every time we broke a rule and got away with it without consequences, we got a little more lax.
Give a good, healthy shake of the Dunning-Kruger effect where we think we’re much better at gun handling than we really are into the formula, and it rapidly devolves into a recipe for disaster.
Personally, I think that my being an instructor keeps my safety level where it needs to be since safety is always top of mind. When you’re teaching a class, you have to realize that the students are paying way more attention to what you’re doing than what you’re saying, so you really have to lead by example. Being a safety officer in IDPA and other matches also helps keep me focused on safety.
What I see all the time from too many concealed carriers who might visit a range once or twice a year is a total disregard for safety. The scariest part is they don’t even realize what they’re doing wrong. From stapling targets with guns in their hands to looking at their own muzzles, the mistakes range from simply negligent to absolutely egregious.
Stay true to your training, and always, always keep safety top of mind when handling guns. Remember kids, every safety rule is written in blood and human lives.
3. Not Training With All Your Concealed Carry Guns
You don’t just go shoot with your concealed carry gun, you actually train with it. Kudos for that. But you have a few different guns you carry concealed, don’t you? You know, something light for in the summer you wear in an inside-the-waistband holster, something a little heavier that you can hide under a coat in a sweet Sonny Crocket Galco Miami Classic? Both, if not more, guns are different calibers. One has an optic. But you only practice with one. It’s the one you shoot the best with, and the most fun or economical to shoot.
And sure, you shoot the other one every once in a while. After you’re done training with your other gun you pull it out of its case and send a few rounds downrange. But you find yourself carrying this poor, neglected child once or twice a week. Maybe you’re going to make a quick run to the store and tuck this into your waistband holster, because really, what can happen at the store, am I right? Yeah, we’ll cover mindset in a little bit.
You need to be equally proficient with every gun you carry concealed. You need to be able to operate and shoot them as if they’re an extension of yourself without thinking about how to do it. Because believe me, in a gunfight you’re not going to have a whole lot of conscious thought going on.
4. Buying a Cheap Holster
Please, don’t go cheap on your holster. Sure, that ten buck nylon thing with the belt clip will hold your holster securely and cover the trigger guard. But spend the money to get a holster that will really hold your gun securely and allow you to re-holster your gun one-handed should the need ever arise. A good kydex holster isn’t going to set you back that much, will securely hold the gun, and drawing from it and re-holstering will be much, much easier.
And by all means, use a holster. Just sticking a gun in your waistband like some two-bit movie gunsel really gets on my nerves. I hate that like Jason Voorhees hates horny teenagers. When you’re walking down the aisle in the store and the gun slides down your pants leg perfectly timed for you to kick it into the electronics section you’ll have more than a little embarrassment to deal with.
5. Using Multiple Carry Holster Systems
Let’s get back to that Sonny Crocket Galco Miami Classic. You wear a shoulder rig when you wear a suit, a strong side outside the waistband holster with your jeans, and a small of the back holster when you’ve got those kick ass cargo shorts on. And then, when you really need your gun like right now, you start flailing away at the various places you carry frantically trying to find your gun but just looking like you’ve got a bad case of Saint Vitus Dance. While your impersonation of an epileptic chicken may distract your opponent briefly, you’re going to be much better served smoothly drawing your gun and addressing the threat. Pick a spot, adjust your clothes to conceal your gun there, and train drawing it from there.
6. Using A Poor Quality or Ill Suited Belt
So you’ve got a good holster, but now you hang it on a half inch alligator belt festooned with silver medallions. Yeah, sure, it kills at the club in your skinny jeans and smedium tee shirt, but the weight of the gun makes your holster take a thirty degree list to starboard. When you do try to draw your gun, the holster slides until it hits a belt loop because the holster’s belt slots or clips are twice as big as your belt.
This is another place you’re going to have to spend some money and get a dedicated gun belt. I run Either a Mag-Pul Tejas or a Nextbelt depending on how I’m dressed. These have proven to be great belts, supporting the gun as they should, comfortable, and they wear like iron. I’ll put links to them in the show notes. A good gunbelt with keep your gun where it’s supposed to be and enhance your draw, so treat yourself.
7. Not Documenting All Your Training
Throw a notebook in your range bag. When you go to the range to train, write down exactly what you’re going to work on that day, and how you’re going to do it along with the round count. Doing this will keep you focused, let you set an obtainable goal for yourself, and document the training. If you ever have to go to court over a shooting, this will go a long way towards being able to show that you take carrying concealed seriously and that you’ve responsibly put forth the effort to maintain and improve your skills. A side benefit of this is that you’ll have a round count for your gun so you’ll know when you have to do maintenance based on the number of rounds through the gun, like spring replacement.
If you shoot in organized matches like IDPA, USPSA, Steel challenge, whatever, document those in your notebook. If you have the ability to obtain your scores and times and can copy them or print them off, do so. If you take training classes (and you really should) be sure to get a certificate or some other form of completion from the instructor. Just like never bringing too much ammo to a gunfight, you can never bring too much proof to court.
8. Training As a Stationary Shooter
Unless the only gunfight you plan on getting in is an old-fashioned duel, you need to put some movement into your training. In my concealed carry class I teach getting off the X as you draw your gun. This statement will have a different meaning to you depending on what cartoons you watched as a kid. If you were a Disney type, you won’t get it. If you were a Warner Brothers kid, you’ll remember that every hair-brained scheme the coyote came up with to catch the roadrunner involved an X. The roadrunner was supposed to stand on the X, and an anvil, boulder, explosion, or something was supposed to hit it there. In other words, nothing good happens when you stand on the X.
So when you train, train to draw your gun as you’re moving to cover. This accomplishes two things; it puts something that will stop bullets between you and your opponent, and disrupts their thought process. Instead of you reacting to them, they have to react to you. If you can take control of the fight you stand a much better chance of surviving.
With practice, you can also deliver effective hits while moving. But it takes practice. Now I realize that it may be difficult to find a range where you will be able to practice this. Hell, most indoor ranges won’t even allow you to draw from a holster. This is where getting involved with one of the shooting sports will pay big dividends. I’ll put links to the IDPA and USPSA web sites in the show notes. I can’t recommend IDPA strongly enough for concealed carriers. The stages you will shoot incorporate everything you need to be proficient at to survive a gunfight. You’ll be moving, shooting, reloading, shooting at moving targets, and practicing target discrimination. Watch some of the YouTube videos on it, go watch a match, then start shooting in them.
9. Carrying Where You're Not Allowed/Not Supposed To
Yes, gun-free zones exist and they suck. This is where a thorough knowledge of the laws in your jurisdiction is a must. There are places that you’re not allowed to carry in that don’t have to post a no concealed carry sign here in South Carolina. Most do, but not all. And if you don’t know you’re not supposed to carry in those places and you do carry, you’re breaking the law. Stay current with the laws that apply to you wherever you carry, both in your home state and anywhere you travel to that grants reciprocity. The last thing you want to do is lose your right to carry because you made an honest mistake. Remember, ignorance of the law is never an excuse.
10. Locking the Gun in a Glove Compartment
There are going to be times when you will have to disarm yourself to go into places where you’re not allowed to carry. Mailing a package at the post office, going into a bank, whatever, you’re going to have to leave your gun in the car. The glove compartment is the last place you want to leave it because that’s the first place thieves are going to look. Show me a glove box you can’t get in armed with just a screwdriver.
Get a decent lock box for your gun. While this won’t stop a determined thief, it will slow them down some. A lock box secured to a frame member in the trunk is your best bet of finding your gun intact when it comes time to slip it back into your holster. Let me know in the comments if I missed any, or if there's a particular subject you want to hear about in a future episode.
That's going to wrap it up for this week. If you enjoyed this podcast, tell your friends about it. And if you're in the Anderson area and you're looking for training, visit our website and check out our training calendar. Until next time, shoot safe and have a great day.
