The road to deciding to make concealed carry a constant in a person’s lifestyle is, well, complicated. There are so many factors to consider, from obtaining quality gear that will work with your body and clothing, to navigating lifestyle, work and non-permissible and permissible environments to understanding the legalities and coming to peace with the possibility of making a lethal decision. Each of those aspects is worth a deep dive, but so is the question of determining skills for carry. When potential conceal carriers say, “When I’m good enough, I’ll carry,” what does that mean? What is “good enough” and how can we know when we’re good enough to carry?
Adequate Holster Draw Skills
Consider this: “31.1 percent of gun owners, or approximately 25.3 million adult Americans, have used a gun in self-defense. In most cases (81.9 percent) the gun is not fired.” Read that last sentence again. “In most cases (81.9 percent) the gun is not fired.” That is a huge statistic to consider. If you know how to draw from a holster, the action of drawing might just be enough to save you from the threat you’re facing, even if you don’t fire a shot.
If you just read that last paragraph and decided I was crazy for suggesting that not shooting might still be an option, even in a situation where you do feel that your life is in jeopardy, consider this: “31.8 percent of gun owners reported that the mere presence of a gun has deterred criminal conduct, and 40.2 percent of these individuals indicated that this has happened on more than one occasion. Extrapolated to the population at large, this suggests that approximately 25.9 million gun owners have been involved in an incident in which the presence of a firearm deterred crime on some 44.9 million occasions. This translates to a rate of approximately 1.5 million incidents per year for which the presence of a firearm deterred crime.” In other words, simply having that firearm in hand was enough to stop the threat.
Having a holster that you know how to use safely is an important step. After all, in polite society, people don’t simply walk around with a gun in their hands in public like they’re in a video game. But having a holster and knowing how to draw from that holster are two very different aspects. Although many people purchase holsters, unfortunately most people never actually practice drawing from a holster. They holster their firearm, put their gun in place, and then expect that they will be able to successfully access that firearm under duress. We’ve seen time and time again in critical events across the country that speed of access does matter when lives are at stake, but this is still not a skill that most people practice. Practicing to get to the gun in a safe and speedy manner isn’t just for gamers and competitors–it’s an essential skill for those of us who want to be able to go home to our loved ones each day.
Although holster draw is an essential skill to develop, there’s often a challenge in accessing practice. Many ranges don’t allow drawing from concealment, and some don’t even allow drawing unconcealed. So how to practice a skill when the range won’t let you? Dry fire is the answer. With distractions put away, your ammunition in another room, your gun checked and double checked for clear, and aimed in as safe a direction as possible, you can practice drawing from holster over and over again until you’re consistent in your movements, all without spending a penny on ammunition. Once you feel comfortable with your draw, change your clothing and practice again. You probably don’t wear the same clothing 365 days a year, and you don’t get to decide when something bad happens, unfortunately.
Accuracy And Speed In Good Balance
The next skill that you want to work on goes hand in hand with holster skills. That’s a good balance of accuracy and speed.
At any public gun range, you can find people gleefully throwing rounds down range, content to just hit paper while letting that ammo fly as fast as possible. Looking down a few lanes from those people, you can find others, serious faces scrunched up in concentration, slowly putting holes in the same spot repeatedly, only looking up when the people happily blasting away a few lanes away from them throw their concentration. But, if you’re lucky, you might find a few people working on a combination of accuracy and speed. Ideally, having a good balance of speed and accuracy in your shooting skills will set you up for more success should you have to use a firearm for your own defense.
According to Karl Rehn and John Daub in their book Strategies and Standards for Defensive Handgun Training, the minimum proficiency for a concealed carrier is:
- Getting multiple hits on target
- Rounds should land in a small area, such as a 5- to 8-inch circle
- Distance is close, between 1 to 5 yards
- Time should be quick, 3 seconds or less
So how do we achieve this essential balance of speed and accuracy? Let me introduce you to my friend, Mr. Shot Timer. Many people never actually time their shooting process, but a timer, whether a physical timer, your friend using a stopwatch or a free app on your phone is an invaluable tool for assessing whether you have a balance of the two skills. It also encourages you to face the pressure and adrenaline rush of being under time constraints, something that can help you figure out when and why your performance takes a dive. If that sounds undesirable or intimidating, consider this: you don’t truly know how to succeed until you know what your failure points are. Learning where you’re in need of work will ultimately help you to improve your skills.
Working under a timer also allows people to have a way of measuring progress. I work under a timer almost every time I go to the range, and I know that smooth transitions and reloads are skills I need to work on as a result of that timer. I can also see when I get better and more consistent, which is harder to determine when there isn’t anything to measure the process. And while the shot timer is valuable for speed assessment, actually measuring groups of shots to see if your accuracy improves helps as well. Measuring your group sizes, pushing speed and measuring again, can help shooters to better assess what performance will be under pressure. This matters because each shot carries weight in real life. Having accuracy will ensure that you hit what you mean to hit, and having speed will ensure that you are able to go home at the end of the day.
Consistency Of Performance
Good enough to carry starts with consistency of performance. Trainer, three-time gunfight survivor and SWAT instructor Paul Ford has observed (based on his experiences and analyzing incidents involving other officers) that in a gunfight you will do about “70 percent of your worst day at the range”. If you are on top of your game during one range trip, but are struggling the next, and there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason for that, consistency is an issue.
Being consistent means that you can repeat your performance without a lot of variance from time to time. If you go to the range and one time hit your targets with beautiful 2-inch groups, but next time can’t seem to make an 8-inch group work, you’re struggling with consistency. If your grip changes and your performance falls apart, you’re also struggling with consistency.
When inconsistency happens on the range, many people look for a quick solution, but the answer for inconsistent performance isn’t to buy a new gun or new accessories, as tempting as it might be. The best, most accurate gun isn’t going to cut it without practice. 26.3 percent of gun owners are “public carriers,” which translates to approximately 20.7 million individuals who carry handguns in public. But of those 26.3 percent, only a small percentage of gun owners consistently get to the range to practice and hone their skills. Taking the time to actually practice, in live fire and dry fire, is important to build consistent skills that won’t be inadequate when your performance drops under stress in real world situations.
Strong Decision-Making Skills
A final skill to hone when considering if you’re “good enough” to carry isn’t actually a shooting skill, but a life skill. This is the ability to make intelligent decisions under pressure. This is so very important when considering the intense impact of a hasty decision in self-defense.
Under pressure, you may have to make very fast decisions in order to assess a dangerous situation, weighing leaving vs. staying, words vs. actions, lethal vs. less-lethal. If you haven’t practiced your decision-making skills, it’s easy to freeze or panic under pressure, and the results could be catastrophic in a life or death situation.
If you’re fortunate enough to have the opportunity to draw and do live fire at a live range, it’s very helpful to add decision making skills to your practice. Do you know how to draw and decide? Sometimes to shoot, sometimes to draw to low ready, prepared to shoot if necessary? It’s worth the time to add decision making to your holster draws since real life will require thinking under immense pressure. If you practice the decision-making process, there’s a much better chance you’ll be able to think under actual real life stress.
If you don’t have the option to draw at your range, that doesn’t mean you can’t practice decision making at the range. Bring a friend with you who can set up your target, designate shoot or no shoot symbols, and get to work. I like to use stickers on my targets. This could be as simple as red or green stickers added to targets to designate threats or non threats.
Outside of the range, mentally running through scenarios at the places you frequent most often can help with decision making as well. Thinking about the possibilities and what you might do can ease the analysis paralysis that could be life ending in a dangerous situation.
Conclusion:
It’s important to note that while holster skills, speed and accuracy, consistency of performance and decision-making skills are all important components of being “good enough to carry,” nowhere in this article is there a recommendation to have a certain gun, certain optic or any new and shiny option that’s out on the market right now to obtain that skill. Nothing you can buy, with the exception of quality training, will make you a better and more prepared concealed carrier. Nor is there any super special training trick that can make you magically ready for anything. Nothing can replace the simple practice of working on skills and then maintaining those skills. On that note, I’ll see you at the range.
