Hello, my Concealed Coalition family, Austin Davis, your national director of training and your source for all things concealed carry in this world. This month's topic is basically a collection of questions I get no matter what type of class I'm doing, whether it's a license to carry class, it's working with my officers, talking about off-duty carry or my civilians or people who are talking to me about Virtual Tactical Academy and how their carry system relates to life. So we're going to talk today about every day carry issues and while there is no real overarching topic, like usually take one topic and I go down it, this does have a theme. Now before I start, I don't want to make anybody mad carry anything you want. This is America. That's okay. Carry as much as you want. If you want to carry 30 extra magazines, go big. But my whole point of this topic is to help you find that happy little place that's not too much, not too little, that gets you ready for what you think may happen in your world.
See, in my world, the whole reason for everyday carry is for me to be prepared for those things that I like to think that we have a crisis that's sort of a come as you are party and if I have to go back to my car or go back to my house or go back to my hotel or go back to my office to go get a vital piece of gear, it's too late. So when I think of everyday carry, I think of carrying the right amount of gear so that I don't end up going, man, I can't fix this problem. I don't have it with me, or I'm creating a problem, I got too much stuff or not enough stuff. So that's where the happy balance comes from. Now we're talking about everyday carry. Let's start up with the basics. You probably going to want to carry a handgun.
Now, before we go any farther handguns, let me tell you how I feel about a handgun. A handgun is a very useful tool for a very narrow set of problems and those narrow set of problems we need to be carrying a handgun for are three things. One, to save human life, not stuff, but to save human life. Two, not harm innocent life. That means when we shoot, we have to be accountable for everything that leaves our barrel. There are no misses in a defensive use gunfight, those bulls will hit somewhere and we as good people, defenders are responsible every one of those rounds. So the third thing is the tool of last resort. So hopefully you have good sational awareness, good deescalation skills, good sense of tactical skills on time. Don't want to wait now or do it now or wait later when it's better on my turn to act.
Don't want to get closer, farther or distance. Can I save ankles? Can I get offline and get behind something that serves as a ballistic protection for me and the thing that's trying to hurt me or my people? Now when it comes to a gun for everyday carry, here's kind of the problem. A lot of people usually have two types of guns. They have the gun they bring to class which they want to shoot and shoot well, which is a full-sized gun and they have this little tiny thing they want to carry day to day. Clint Smith once had the best line. All guns are too big to carry and they're all too small to fight with. So we're looking for some sort of happy balance. Now, the type of gun you want to carry may be determined already by your situation. You may only have one gun and that gun you inherited or bought a long time ago, that's the only gun you got.
And right now with your financial situation, that's what you got to work with. And if so, trust me, I feel you and I understand you. The case is if you just have a gun, and for a lot of people that's the gun that was issued to them from their police department that they have to carry off duty and in that case, here's what we're going to do. We're just going to commit to learning that gun and learning it as well as possible and hopefully we can do most of that with dry fire practice. So if you have a choice of guns, one of the things that makes me very nervous about everyday carry is when I ask somebody, what do you carry for every day when they're asking me some sort of question about their problem, I'm trying to diagnose the problem and they go, well, it depends.
I think it depends on what, and they give me this laundry list of five or six different guns. Many of the times these guns they talked about have different controls. Sometimes I carry my 1911 style pistol with internal safety. Sometimes I carry my double action like say ABR A 92 F or something with a decocking lever and sometimes I carry a polymer striker fire pistol that has no external controls the sun as they carry a revolver. The problem is it's very difficult to master those firearms for you to be able to work them efficiently from procedural memory where you don't have to think about it so you can spend more of your attention solving your problem than trying to figure out did I put the safety down to take the safety up? I had this recently in one of my firearms qualifications. One of my officers, they switched to a staccato and we had some problems and qualifications where they went out to shoot and then realized, oh man, I haven't dropped the thumb safety.
Then they also had some issues with the string of fire because where they're putting their thumb, it was popping the safety back up and putting the gun back on safe through a string of fire. Does this mean I'm against 19th 11 style guns with external safeties? No. All I'm saying is if you want to carry that style of gun, really, really master it. Now I have my duty pistol and I'm using this. An example that I've been carrying for the last five years is my uniform police external level three holster carry gun. And so recently I decided I was going to change my tried and true block safe gun tried and true Glock and switch to a shadow systems, but you haven't seen this in my holster in the real world yet because I need to put about 1,015 hundred rounds through this gun in a realistic practice to make sure that this thing comes out of the holster, this point of impact, point of aim, and the trigger on this, while it's sort of like a Glock, it is completely different than my Gen five Glock.
The shadow system's trigger is amazing, but it's a whole different creature when you're running it under stress. So if you do want to rotate guns and for different reasons you want to carry different guns at different times, that's great, but let's just think about 'em as you're going to need to qualify with it before you start carrying. So if you decide you're going to switch from a gun to another gun and it's not just a single stack to a double stack Glock, but it's a whole different platform, go ahead and take it to the range or take it to a glass, run it, make sure that it's working with you, you're working with it and you know what point of aim point of impact is. And finally, please, for the love of all that is holy, please safeguard. Please stop putting Punisher plates on there or come and take it or smile for the flash, all that kind of stuff.
Anything you carry for personal defense, and I assume that's the crowd I'm talking to on this talk, you're going to have to explain to an attorney and you're going to have to explain, excuse me, not an attorney to a jury and they may not understand your whimsy and this could create a whole nother problem. Remember, we're at a defensive shooting. It's a very unique situation. Almost everything, you have a presumption of innocence when you're a defensive shooting encounter. It's you're trying to prove you had a self-defense claim on this, which means yes, we know you shot them. There's no mystery, there's no 24 hours or some sort of TV show to find the killer. We know who put the bullet in that person. We're just saying we had a just follow reason to do so and all those accessories you put on your firearm that have those whimsical sayings could cause problems.
Also, be very careful about some other accessories you may decide. Many people I talk to decide they need to put in an aftermarket trigger. Lemme ask you a question about aftermarket trigger on a defensive gun. Do you really think that's going to make or break your defensive shooting? I don't know. I don't think so. But it can make or break your defense because you had a hair trigger or an aftermarket trigger. So when you make your modification to carry a gun, that's something to think about. Next thing is if you carry a semi-automatic handgun, it's going to be magazine fed. I want y'all to start thinking of magazines as consumables and I don't think you ever had a gun that runs real reliable, the sun, it doesn't run reliable. The sun, it runs reliable so it doesn't run reliable and you can't figure out why.
Well, one of the big problems could be you have a magazine issue. You'll notice all my magazines. I take a paint pen and I write my name on them and I've got AD 41 on this one. There's probably another 40 others somewhere around me. All my magazines get numbered then if I'm shooting my gun and suddenly it has some sort of reliability issue, but every time it's AD 41, we call that a police work a click and that thing gets damaged and thrown away. I don't keep them. I don't keep 'em as training tools to me, they just go away. Also, even though I'm becoming a bigger fan of shadow systems for a lot of reasons and it's sort of a Glock Gen four knockoff, they ship them with Magpole magazines. All the magazines I carry in the real world are going to be factory magazines.
I just had better luck with this. I was at a alert training school, which is called Sword Solo Officer Rapid Response Training, and this is about teaching officers zeal to active shooters for their off duty. Almost everybody who had the smaller framed nine millimeter block handguns with the 15 round aftermarket magazines couldn't run the course of fire reliably. Now you may tell me, Austin, I have had these magazines for two years and they all run great, super good luck on you. My experience is when we put officers under real stress, under realistic training and a realistic course of fires, those things were hiccuping. So remember, your everyday carry firearm is like my parachute, and that is, it's a lifesaving tool and if we need to call on it, it has to work. It has to work reliably, and there's really no excuses. Please don't make excuses for your gun.
Sometimes it shoots, sometimes it doesn't shoot, it's not working. It needs to be a hundred percent reliable and before you go out and put a magazine in there, make sure as you label 'em and you baby 'em. In my world, if I ever drop a loaded magazine on our surface, it goes away. I would like you to think about getting some more magazines and you think you'll ever need that way if you have any doubts about whether or not when that hard drop happened, it cracked a piece of the base plate or that little nick is a little something that may impede getting it in or getting out or keeping it in. You feel very comfortable because you have enough in reserve and on the way, and right now we're probably in the cheapest place you're ever going to find magazines even though the prices have gone up, if we have some other big political catastrophe or something else or some sort of legal move.
If you've ever been in this industry long enough, you'll know all the magazines go away and you'll be struggling. So buy enough magazines to make sure it works out for you. Next thing is a holster. Your holster needs to have a couple things in common. Number one, it has to be built for your gun. It has to hold the gun and it has to completely protect the trigger guard. Personally, there's three manufacturers I'm a really big fan of. I don't make money off any of these. I don't know any of their owners, but one of them is tenor. I'm just a huge fan of tenor holsters. I think that Jeff Mao really spends a lot of time on every little detail of these things and you will find out really quickly say gun, you can take even a full size handgun with a light in one of Jeff MA's holsters, and if you do what he tells you with finding the right spot without the clips on it, taking the pencil mark and then adjusting it, you can find that even on a guy in my face, I'm six foot tall, about 175 pounds, I can hide this rig all day, no problem in just a plain black T-shirt.
So once you figure out what holster you want, also make sure the clips are metal. I don't have, I was going to pick up an example of the whole show of plastic clips, but I've replaced all my plastic clips with metal clips. One of the things I noticed in reality based training is when I'm doing realistic training struggling with guns, the plastic clips have a tendency to snap and pop and break my metal clips. You can tussle over these things and remember, sometimes some people see you with a gun and they want to make it their gun, and we have a fight over control to keep it to our gun. So make sure that your holster fits your gun, has incredible coverage on your trigger guard and also that has metal clips and you may need several carry options. One of the options that I'm a big fan of other than tenor and tier one holsters is say, gun my fil aig Mike.
Now ster, I don't know what magic elf materials you make this out of, but by the time you get the sport package on the back and the leg leash and the blah blah, blah, this thing ends up being fairly expensive. I think it got over $200 in our holster. Only RA once about price cry forever about quality. The thing about the enigma is if I'm wearing just basketball shorts or something around the house, the enigma works. If I'm going to wear a suit and I want to tuck that thing in, it can work as a concealment where I can just pull the whole shirt up and get to the enigma. And for some people a holster light, the enigma may be a big help. Now there's something that's like a holster, but it's not a holster. It's called off body carry where you carry it in your purse or your backpack if you're going to do that, let's just try to find some commonality here on this.
Number one rule number one of carrying a gun is bring a world of mourn of a gun, but it is bring the gun. Rule number two, if it doesn't fit your lifestyle, you won't do rule number one. So for some people, a backpack or a purse is the only way it's going to happen. And if that's your decision, that's okay. Let's make sure the purse or the backpack was designed to hold a gun. It's not just floating on or out of your loose. Make sure that you do a bunch of dry fire practice because it's sort of like if you think of a purse with an off body carry, but sort of a strap here, it's just sort of a belt line holster with a lot of horizontal movement. So if you might want to start practicing on that, but the big problem I have with off body carry, it's not really the carry, it's the minute you set it down and you think I'm just setting down my backpack from my purse for a second, know you're actually setting down a firearm and leaving it unattended.
So if you're going to carry it, carry it on your body and keep it attached to your body because as you know, there's only three places for a firearm. Hand of a rational, sober, competent, trained adult attach the body by slinger holster, competent, sober, trained adult walked away. For anybody that's not a confident sober trained adult firearm ownership is our responsibility, but safe storage, excuse me, firearm ownership is our right, but safe storage is our responsibility, so make sure that if you decide you want to go for an off body carry that when you set it down, you just locked in a place that's completely inaccessible to anybody that's not a competent, sober trained adult. Next thing is belts. I really enjoy getting a belt from the manufacturer that made my holster. I just seem to find in my world that things just work a little better.
I believe this is 10 core zero belts and what happens with this is is I can adjust it any way I want to any level and then once I pull the tension on it, it locks it down and then I can move this off the seminole line of my body and all you have is this nice piece in the front, which a lot of times in a carry belt, the problem is is the buckle and the clips if they're plastic, is actually going to send out more than your firearm. Also, what I like about buying the holster from the same place I buy the belt is they know how much flexibility needs to be in it. If I was going to carry strong side outside the waistband, I need a lot more stiffness than if I'm carrying an appendix. And when you buy the belt and the holster either from the same manufacturer or a manufacturer's recommendation, they know how much flexibility you need in their application for their holster.
Trust me, in their r and d, they figured it out. Tier one tenco fieldster all make great holsters. I'm sure there's a thousand others I didn't mention, but if you go with those, you pretty much can't go wrong. Now what's the next thing we're going to have on our everyday carry? There could be a whole lot of things you could consider, but for me it's pepper spray. If you've ever seen my concealed Cion University course, if you've ever come to one of my pepper spray classes, you hear me say this, it's not scientific, but that it's accurate. In about 85% of the cases, your firearm is 100% the wrong tool. Remember, a firearm is a very good tool for a very narrow set of circumstances. Save human in life, not harm cent life and the tool lasts resort. If someone comes up and slaps me, that is probably not a proportional response to pull out a gun and shoot them.
Unless I'm presented with a deadly or a serious bottle injury threat, I can't even pull out and present my pistol. But with this in my hand, I'm all set and a lot of people say, I don't want to bring pepper spray to a gunfight. Well, a lot of times that gunfight starts off as some sort of verbal altercation. I can get 'em blinded. That sure might make your defensive gun use a whole lot easier. Also, I think if we had to explain to a jury and you said, man, I pepper sprayed them. That didn't have effect. I dropped it and I went to my firearm and I did what I had to do to save my life for the life of a third party I'm responsible for or I assume responsibility for. I think this looks really good to 12 people who are selected a random from your community.
So for me it's always about carrying an inner use force weapon. I have a very close friend of mine, he sent me these actually, these are leather SAPs and if you understand that they're an impact weapon and the only problem I've got with the leather sap is I think they make a nice intermediate use force weapon, but if you don't live in a state that allows this, you're now carrying a prohibited weapon and in some states carrying a leather SAP may be considered problems. We want to carry a SAP as an alternative use of force tool. I'm all for it. I think with the right training, I'm thinking about writing a book about the subject. I think they're very effective and legitimate tools, but the areas that you can carry them are kind of limited by law and we never want to carry an illegal weapon to what we hope is a legal defensive gun use because this could put us in some long range problems.
A lot of people tell me, I don't carry a knife or I carrying a knife because and I carry a gun because I've got to be able to stab 'em with varying degrees of effort and force. For me, this is a lethal tool and if you're going to carry a knife, you have to decide if you want to carry a folding knife, which is one more step in getting it open and it's a complex motor movement skill movement when you may be short of fine motor skills. Some people say, I want to carry a fixed blade knife on me and if I can't get to my gun or if they go for my gun, I'll cut 'em off. That's all great in theory, here's my problem. Just show me where that happens. In the real world, if you show me one or two episodes of the 2 million a year defensive gun uses that don't result in shooting and gosh knows how many actual live fire defensive gun uses we have in this country, it's a one-off now carrying a knife.
Heck yeah. One of the things I carry almost daily is my little skeleton tool. It's not so much for defensive use, but just it does everything for me. Now the next thing you might want to consider carrying is a light. Now when it comes to lights, we have two problems. Now a lot of people go, but Austin, but Austin save gun. I see that you have a gun that you carry off duty. It's also going to be your new patrol pistol when it earns it slot in the holster and I see you have a light on it. You have to understand there's two kinds of people in this world where those who either by temperament or by profession have to go to trouble. There's some people that just need a gun to get away from trouble. The problem I've got is if you have a weapon mounted light that is good for once you decide to shoot them after you shot them to see if it works, if they need more bullets, if they have other things around, that's okay.
We can't point a gun in. You're not willing to kill or destroy. Yes, you can umbrella light or you can baseboard light and bounce a light off, but if I'm looking for my car keys, if I'm just walking around town casually, I have this in my hand. If I'm walking out of restaurants, the dudes right behind me, whoops, sorry, I didn't see you blind them right in their eyes and I can see their eye. I can control their visual horizon. I can see what's in their waistband in their hands, their whole body demeanor and things in their wingspan. For me, carrying a light is really helpful. Now you can carry a how at huge light. You carry one of the old school eight cell flashlights with you and use an impact tool and that's cool, but this is the Surefire Stiletto Pro. I'm going to be carrying the new two headlight as soon as I can find one.
It seems like they're sold out everywhere. When I go overseas, I usually carry this one. This is a cloud defensive and this is their MCH and this bad boy is about three times as bright as that. It comes with a theorem ring, which means I can go ahead and take this and work with my hands and pull it back in. Also, if I need to use as an impact tool, it's a very handy impact tool, but I think carrying a flashlight, a handheld flashlight is a really important everyday carry thing. I think a weapon on a light, a nice to do thing, I think you'd have a hard time showing me where a civilian everyday carrier needed a weapon mounted light. And it does add the complexity of carrying that light and make sure that if you carrying a weapons mounted light for goodness sake, if you're practicing with it at the range, that you go ahead and activate it with your thumb, not your trigger finger. Even if you're shooting in broad daylight, practice shooting with this thing to make sure you understand this is going probably in some way somehow modify your grip somehow and you need to figure that out and dry fire and then live fire before you go out to the real world and depend on that tool. Next thing is gunshot wound kit.
A lot of people talk to you about, man, I carry gunshot wound ankle kit everywhere I go. And it's a wonderful thing if you want to do that. I have dealt a lot of people in the industry over the years who I've seen talk about this and we're at some sort of conference or some sort of event. I'm around with some other people, some names you might recognize and they're not really carrying their ankle mounted kit. This is a great idea and if you think you need it, it's a great idea. The only problem I've got with this is skinny jeans aren't working. Your business suits probably not working. I don't know how you get to it if you got a pair of boots. So yes, carry medical gear. Now, if all you wanted to do was carry a slim line tourniquet for snake systems, a pair of small compact North American rescue trauma shears with you and a roll of flat pack gauze, you probably solved 90% of your problems.
But having gunshot wound kit for everyday carrying great idea, I can see where it could save lives. I'm going to stop the bleed instructor. I'm an alert first responder medical instructor. I get it, but it's a real pain. And the problem with everyday carry is if you carry so much stuff after a while it starts getting too much of a hassle and you stop carrying and it keeps going on down. So I want you to find the right amount of gear that fits the right size of your lifestyle. Next thing you got to carry is your phone. If I'm carrying a handgun, I have to carry my phone. Now this is the second most important thing after a gun that I need to have with me when I'm in everyday carry. And the reason for that is pretty simple. I want you to imagine you're at a gas station.
Somebody approaches you, they ask you a socially acceptable question before you know it, you see an elbow go in a position, you see the garment clear, the gun comes out, you know have a one and a half second draw. The first shot you pull, bang one shot down goes the bad guy. Gun goes the flying man. You win the gun fight. As you know, your problems in life have just started. They have not ended at that point in time. If you don't have a phone with this, how exactly are we supposed to handle this? Okay, if you don't have a phone, do you turn to the nearest person and say you call 9 1 1. Tell them what happened. Give me some police. Probably not the best idea, especially if the person who's calling 9 1 1 to explain this before you is somehow related to the person you just shot.
Yes. What if there's no one around that? You can say, call the police. What do you do? Well, I'll just go find me a phone and call them. Do you leave their gun there or do you put their gun so it doesn't walk away and your waistband and then go someplace else to find a phone. These cause real problems also, you might be in a situation where police show up before you're ready to make that call and in which case they're going to seize your phone. That's why Ike, this laminate piece of paper can't show you the back of it because it's got all the names of all the people I need to have. The only problem with that is, is I keep this in the back part of my phone. My brother has a better idea. He keeps another one just like that inside his money clip or his wallet.
That way if your phone does get seized by the police, you can always have that on you. Remember when they take this from you and you get out of jail, you may not get it. You may need to bar someone else's phone. So having those numbers and having your phone if you have a gun is non-negotiable. Now, I covered a lot of things about everyday carry and we think about everyday carry. So these are pretty obvious to you. Carry a gun, carry a gun you're familiar with, make sure you vet that gun. Make sure it works with your street ammo the same way it works with your range ammo. Have a good holster that stays in place. If there's a struggle or you have to move quickly that fits your gun, a belt that works with it, have a pepper spray, some other interviews, force a weapon, all that sc.
What's the last thing you need to have with everyday care? Legal defense for self-defense? The problem I have when we talk about everyday care is we tend to talk about gear and we forget the real thing you need to be carrying and that is a card in your pocket for some sort of prepaid legal defense for self-defense. Personally, I would not carry a gun off duty or in my civilian world without having a policy that legally protects me because after you shoot somebody, you have basically committed murder, manslaughter, homicide, whatever in your area you're being charged with. And now we have to prove that yes, we did this. That's an affirmative thing. I put the metal into the meat, I got that, but there was a reason for it. Now some people say, well, it'll never happen to me. I don't have to worry about it.
Well, it's never going to happen to you. Don't carry a gun because this is never going to happen. Some people say, well, if I do, I'll get a court appointed lawyer. If that's what you want to keep you out of prison and for you to lose everything you own financially, great plan, go big. Some people say, well, I'll call my cousin Dave, who's a real estate lawyer and he'll get me out of trouble. At that point in time, you need a very specialized lawyer. If I broke my leg, I'm not going to go to an ear, nose and throw doctor. I'm going to go to somebody who does broken leg problems. If I've been in a gunshot, I don't need to go to an audiologist who fits hearing aids even though they might be a medical doctor. I need to go to a trauma surgeon who can fix the damage of this bolt.
It just ripped through my body. If you have to use your firearm or your pepper spray or your SAP or your hands or your Brazilian jujitsu, you're probably going to have a criminal or a civil or criminal and a civil. And you may have some social penalties you have to pay. You may have their friends come after you. You may have coworkers turn on you. You may have people in your house of worship, turn on you. You may have family friends. You're going to be isolated because you can't talk to anyone about what happened at all. And at that point in time, you need a good lawyer. Use any company is better than company. Right now I have firearms, legal protection, FLP. It protects my wife, my brother, my son and myself. Take that for what you want. I could use any policy with any company because it's really very few pennies, few dollars pennies a day.
It's dollars a month for my protection. That's who I choose. Whether you choose farm's, legal protection. And I think right now they are the ones that have the best coverage at the best price. And I have close working relationships with these people. I truly think they care about their members. I don't think you're a number. I really think they want the good people to stay out of jail, stay out of prison, and not be financially ruined. But if you're thinking about everyday carry issues and you're not thinking about legal protection, that could be an oversight. That could be a real problem, a real problem. Assume you're saying, well, I have a lawyer on retainer and that's great. The only problem is is you can get the justice you can afford to buy because then you run out of money, you're going to run out of a lawyer and then you're back to some sort of court appointed attorney or some sort of cousin Dave situation.
And we need real experts. So to close this on out, carry anything you want, carry as much as you want, carry whatever you want. But just make sure that whatever you decide to carry, you carry consistently over time. You have the training equipment and tactics already sorted out and how to use it in the time of crisis. This is not the time to be reading the instruction manual in the tourniquet. This is not the time to try to figure out whether that external safety that you think is so important to your carry firearm gets detached and put back on and immediately without having to think about it. These are things we want to work out before we get there. My theory is we've never been in a higher crime level than we are now. I think a lot of people aren't getting the true accurate number of the crime stats here. I think it's going up. I think it's a trend that's probably going to go even higher. And if you're a good guy, defensive gun carrier, make sure you carry all the tools you need to stay good guy and defensive. Make sure you carry is legal in the jurisdiction you're carrying. Make sure you practice with it to a point of unconscious competence. And if you forget everything, remember, be a guardian always and a warrior when need.
Credit: Concealed Coalition