Not really concealed carry related, but it is firearm related


tattedupboy

Thank God I'm alive!
While I was at work earlier today (I am a security officer), one of the customers was a guy I know (I have tutored him at my other job) who owns his own security company. We immediately struck up a conversation and I then noticed his sidearm, which was not in a holster, but rather, just stuffed butt forward inside the waistband of his pants at approximately the 5 o'clock position.

I commented on it, saying that carrying that way with a round in the pipe is unsafe. He responded that he has never carried a handgun in a holster and that he has been carrying this way for 20 years and has never had a problem. He also told me that the weapon he was carrying, a Sig Sauer (he did not say which model it was), cost $1,500 and had a safety, so there was absolutely no chance of an unintentional discharge, according to him.

When I explained to him that safeties can and do fail and that carrying this way was dangerous due to the fact that there was nothing covering the trigger, he said that everyone has their preferences and that this was his. He also hinted that his twenty years of experience compared to my relative youth (I'm in my 20s) meant that I was in no position to tell him what is or is not safe or effective. He went on to say that holsters slow his draw, to which I responded that the purpose of a holster was to provide the desirable balance of speed of draw and safety, and that it takes practice, (which I have had plenty of with the Level III Serpa I just purchased for my Glock 22) for someone to be able to draw quickly from their duty holster.

He told me that if SHTF, he is prepared to kill if necessary, something I found to be rather curious, due to the fact that his sidearm was butt forward at the five o'clock position; think about it, how in the world is this a fast draw? The scenario he presented was that if someone came into my site shooting, my holstered handgun would put me at a disadvantage compared to his unholstered one. I responded that this would be the case whether the guard's handgun was holstered or not.

Lastly, I asked him if any of the security companies he had worked for in the past had a problem with him carrying his handguns this way, and he told me no. I could only think to myself, "Inf**kingcredible. How in the world does any security company worth its reputation allow its guards to walk around carrying their firearms this way?"

Overall, I can't quite say that this was a learning experience, but I can say that it is frightening that there are actually people out there, both security guards and ordinary people, who carry loaded guns unholstered either in their pockets or in the waistbands of their pants. It's a shame that I'm 20 years (give or take) this gentleman's junior, yet I know far more about proper security protocol and safely carrying guns than he does.
 

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Stories like this are not unusual. There are many people out there that carry that really have no clue and no training.

Your age has nothing to do with whether you follow good carry practices. Most, like the individual you describe have no idea how little they know about guns until they find out how little they know about guns.

Hopefully, he will learn this lesson before he is put into a position by a bad guy to learn just how little he knows.

Regards,

Palmach
 
Twenty years experience?

Stories like this are not unusual. There are many people out there that carry that really have no clue and no training.

Your age has nothing to do with whether you follow good carry practices. Most, like the individual you describe have no idea how little they know about guns until they find out how little they know about guns.

Hopefully, he will learn this lesson before he is put into a position by a bad guy to learn just how little he knows.

Regards,

Palmach


He also hinted that his twenty years of experience compared to my relative youth (I'm in my 20s) meant that I was in no position to tell him what is or is not safe or effective.


Twenty years, fifty years, it does not matter. If it is twenty years of bad practice it is still wrong. There could be conceivably a time when I might need to take a gun and not have a holster that I would have to tuck a gun inside my waist band but it is not a good practice at all. If you want to wear it inside you pants use an inside the pants holster.
 
Since police officers and possibly security guards are the only people qualified to carry a gun, perhaps they have some secret, non holstered handgun training we are unaware of. Maybe it is faster to twist your wrist around and draw backwards from your waist band. :D
 
during my ccw class we were told of a police officer who would carry without a holster when he was off duty. he carried a glock which too has a safety, on the trigger, but still a safety. one time he was adjusting his clothes somehow with his pants or his shirt doing some kind of pulling motion and somehow a piece of his clothing got just right inside the trigger guard and pressed the safety in as well as the trigger and the gun went off. he didn't get hurt nor hurt anyone else. but the same type of lesson learned here. USE A FREAKING HOLSTER!
 
Well, I can understand his point of view, don’t agree with it but do understand it. Nobody who is older likes to be corrected by somebody that they consider being their “junior” on a subject. A person needs to learn to get past this and accept advice based on a persons knowledge and experience rather than their age.

I have, on occasion, carried like this when I have had to grab a gun from the counter or the desk without having a holster available, but I would NEVER carry like this by choice nor would I advocate it to anybody else. There is just too much chance of the safety being disabled/neutralized by clothing and then the trigger is inadvertently pressed….OPPS!
 
The guy is a moron. Typical "I know everything, don't tell me spit" type of guy. I wouldn't want to be around this kind of ND waiting to happen.



gf
 
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Well, I can understand his point of view, don’t agree with it but do understand it. Nobody who is older likes to be corrected by somebody that they consider being their “junior” on a subject. A person needs to learn to get past this and accept advice based on a persons knowledge and experience rather than their age.

I have, on occasion, carried like this when I have had to grab a gun from the counter or the desk without having a holster available, but I would NEVER carry like this by choice nor would I advocate it to anybody else. There is just too much chance of the safety being disabled/neutralized by clothing and then the trigger is inadvertently pressed….OPPS!


Hopefully, every time you've carried like this, it was without a round in the pipe.
 
Actually, every time I have carried like this it was just for a matter of minutes while returning my previous activity and never lasted for more than 5 minutes or so. For anything longer than that I took the time to get a holster.

As for having one in the pipe… I hate to say it, but yes there is generally one in the pipe of anything I carry. BTW I only carry 1911 or Hi-power so at least I do have a manual safety. But, as I said, this kind of carry has never lasted more that 5 minutes or so.
 
Actually, every time I have carried like this it was just for a matter of minutes while returning my previous activity and never lasted for more than 5 minutes or so. For anything longer than that I took the time to get a holster.

As for having one in the pipe… I hate to say it, but yes there is generally one in the pipe of anything I carry. BTW I only carry 1911 or Hi-power so at least I do have a manual safety. But, as I said, this kind of carry has never lasted more that 5 minutes or so.


Doesn't matter if it's 5 minutes or 5 hours. Once you begin doing things in an unsafe manner you run a risk of causing serious injury and/or death. Manual safety or not, a dangerous act is what it is. It only takes a spilt second for tragedy to strike. If I "had to" carry my firearm in my waistband without a holster, I'd much rather clear the firearm and have the loaded magazine tucked in my belt or in my pocket.

NEVER intentionally violate safety rules. Doing so sets a bad precedent and can lead to bigger safety violations and evetually very, very bad consequences. I have no problem telling people of any age that they are doing something unsafe. Don't care if they're older or younger then I am. If they are doing something that's unsafe, they need to know about it and not let me see them doing it. We as gun owners catch enough "bad publicity" for various incidents. We don't need to be creating any more to give credibility go the "anti" folks.



gf
 
GF,
Your right. Unfortunately we all do stupid things sometimes and in my day I have done a few. All we can do is acknowledge our mistakes and try to learn from them while hoping that there are no dire consequences resulting.
 
GF,
Your right. Unfortunately we all do stupid things sometimes and in my day I have done a few. All we can do is acknowledge our mistakes and try to learn from them while hoping that there are no dire consequences resulting.

Don't want you to feel like I'm picking on you or anything like that. I've got a good example of an "older" guy who didn't listen to reason. This past weekend I was Chief Instructor for a NRA Basic Pistol class. We had one student that wasn't very happy to be "required" to take the class. He recently retired from the military and wanted to purchase a pistol here in Hawaii. The law requires that you have some evidence of firearms training. A letter from your commander would suffice for military folks, but most military folks find it extremely difficult if not impossible to get this letter from their commanders. In any case, the guy was rambling on and on about how he used firerms since he was 10, etc. He became a problem when he began mocking instructors and making unnecessary comments that weren't necessarily a positive addition to our class. In any case, I had a little personal "one on one" conversation with him. He agreed to conduct himself in a more appropriate manner.

We get to the live fire portion of the class. At this point we've gone over the NRA safe firearms handling ruled at least a dozen times. Anyway, the guy is ready to fire his first shot (.22LR). He's using a semi-auto pistol (Sig Mosquito). Has the "yeah, yeah, yeah" attitude again. Having given the o.k. to "fire", he articulates the safety lever and "bang". The guy literally jumped up and dropped the pistol on the bench. The guy's finger pressed the trigger while he was removing the safety. The instructor watching him was just about to tell him to stop when the shot went off. The guy starts rambling about how he was in the military, blah, blah, blah. There were a few other military folks (like myself) that had the same comment "Dangerous then, and still dangerous." He went to the back of the line and transformed into a "model student" for the rest of the class. :)

Needless to say, I hada a very interesting weekend. ;)



gf
 
Hey GF,
No offence taken. I have been shooting for about 40 years now and as I said I have done some things that I would not do now, nor want to see anybody else do. I guess the point I was trying to make is that on order for us to continue to learn and progress we need to do a couple of things. First, we need to be able to admit it when we have done something that is stupid. Second, we need to “get over ourselves” and recognize that it is not age that determines whether or not we can learn from somebody, but their level of knowledge. I try to follow both of these myself.

I spent some time in the Army and know exactly the kind of person you are referring to. When you “call them on the mat” they do behave better, but they still do not listen until they do something that scares them to the point that they realize that they need your help. I had a couple of guys working for me like that, not the easiest to work with.
 

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