Do you have a Glock 42? Do you need a frickin’ laser beam? Crimson Trace lasers for the Glock 42 are now available direct from CTC.
5 things I learned from Open Carry
I spent the last two weeks open carrying as part of my OC Experiment. I wanted to get a first hand feel for what OC was really all about, and why people would choose it as a primary method of carry. At the end, I was frustrated, not with OC or my interactions with the public, but with my interactions with hardcore OC advocates. You can read the final summary post here.
It wasn’t all a waste of time though, because I did learn a lot. Here are the five most important lessons I learned from the Open Carry experiment.
1. Most people won’t even notice your gun
As long as you’re not doing something retarded (like carrying a slung long gun across the front of your body) most people won’t even notice that you’re carrying. The simple fact: most people are so absorbed in their own heads that they won’t even notice YOU unless you’re specifically A) drawing attention to yourself or B) interacting with them in a retail/normal manner. The average dude walking around is probably so deep in his iDevice that he might trip over a parking meter. It is hard to empirically prove this of course, but the reason I’m comfortable making this statement is because of the point 2 below this.
2. The people who do notice have obvious reactions
I could easily tell when people noticed that I was open carrying. They’d look at me, look at my gun, back at me, and then would either continue to act normal, or would or would pretend to act normal with slightly wider eyes than before. It’s that second one, when people would pretend to be okay with it, but clearly uncomfortable that I found especially frustrating. There shouldn’t be anything weird about a dude carrying a gun, but there is (in some places). There was one time this was humorous – I was walking the dog, and a gentleman asked me if my dog was a drug dog. I realized that wearing a tucked in polo, khakis, aviators, and carrying a gun resulted in a very specific look. Whoops.
3. Most people who OC are cool bros (and ladybros).
It’s really true. The majority of people who open carry are just carrying their guns and going about their lives. Do they sometimes use shitty holsters with embarrassingly awful guns on terrible belts? Yes, but that doesn’t make them bad people. They’re just honest folk doing something perfectly legal. And that’s awesome. I would go so far as to say that 95% of people who OC on the reg are just fine folk.
4. The other five percent of OCers are wretched trolls.
I mentioned in the post the other day that what really frustrated me about my OC experience was being accused of being an anti-gun shill for Bloomberg by people who were ostensibly on the same side of the gun issue as me. That is annoying. I had some pretty choice words for those people, and I stand by them. The frustrating level of tone-deafness I encountered was shocking. Here’s the thing: we now have actual, documented incidents where OC has actively harmed the pro-gun movement. When private corporations says “hey, don’t bring your guns in here” that is a loss. It may not be a big one, but it’s still a loss. So when I hear OC advocates talking about “educating and desensitizing” I’ve realized that’s code for “carrying my gun and video taping the cops.” That doesn’t help. The 95% of OC dudes that are cool? They don’t do that. They just get up, carry their guns, and go about their business.
5. In the end, it doesn’t really matter how you carry, so long as you’re not a jerk.
I feel like that should be self-explanatory. Don’t be a jerk. Don’t be rude to people, don’t run your mouth, don’t scream at traffic. In the words of the poet William Smith to a space cockroach: “Don’t start none, won’t be none.”
Training with limited time and ammo
Time is not on our side. Time is an awful, cruel mistress, the worst zero sum game of them all. For every second you spend doing anything, that is time that you cannot spend doing something else. For shooters, time spent on the range shooting is frequently time away from work, from family, from other hobbies. I’ve been rolling this one around in my head for a while – how can people make the most out of their range time? If I could only pick a few simple drills, what would those drills be?
There are a couple of options. Some people maybe only make it to the range once a month, but they’re able to carve out a bit more time that one trip – call it a 300 – 400 round session. That gives them options, and options are good. Other people might be able to make it to the range once a week, but only have time for a couple of boxes of ammo. Those are sort of the extremes that are available.
One of the difficulties of limited range time is setting up and understanding programming in your training. There is a huge difference between going to the range and blasting away, and actually going to the range to practice and train. There’s a difference for me when I’m reviewing a gun vs. actually trying to practice and refine my skill with a gun. Programming is important because it allows you to build specific skills and measure against past performance. I’ll draw an example from my latest hobby – running. I’m training for a 5k. My programming says “run x miles this day, x miles another day” and has me repeat this program for measured amounts of time. This way, I can go back and look at my training and say “I ran a mile in 7 minutes last week, today it says to push hard for a 6:30.”
But how do we build programming in if we only have limited time? The answer is to use simple, yet effective drills. One of my favorite drills for shooters on a limited time budget is the 99 Drill. It’s 99 rounds, and looks like this:
This was developed as a way to practice fundamentals (marksmanship at speed, draws, and reloads) with limited time and ammunition. Individual drills are shot multiple times to provide actual training benefit rather than just serving as a test of current skill level.
7 yards, 2.5sec PAR: draw and shoot three (10 times, total 30 rounds)
7 yards, 5.0sec PAR: draw, fire one, reload, fire two (10 times, total 30 rounds)
10 yards, 3.5sec PAR: draw and shoot three (10 times, total 30 rounds)
15 yards, 5.0sec PAR: draw and shoot three (3 times, total 9 rounds)Either 4×6″ or 3×5″ cards can be used as targets. The 3×5 version is obviously significantly more difficult. All shots must be fired before the end of the PAR time; shots fired after the PAR count as misses.
The nice thing about this drill is that you can mix it up with par times and target zones to make it more applicable for your training. For example, when I shoot the 99 Drill, instead of 3 shots to the body, I’ll do 2x body and 1 head shot if I’m preparing for an IDPA match. In fact, if you want to adapt this drill for IDPA, I’d shrink the pars by 0.5 seconds across the board and go 2x body and 1 head, using the entire down zero in the body as your target.
Now, the 99 Drill is great, it really is. But it’s sorely lacking in long range practice. I do think as shooters we spend too much time at 7 yards and don’t push things far enough. That’s where the other “quicky” drill comes in: The Humbler. It’s 70 rounds, all shoot at 25 yards. Kyle Defoor calls it the best teacher of basic fundamentals out there, and I wouldn’t disagree with that.
Range: 25yd
Target: NRA B-8
Start position: varies
Rounds fired: 70The Humbler is the nickname for what is otherwise known as the 700 Point Aggregate. As of this writing, no one has ever claimed a perfect 700 on the drill.
The drill uses NRA B-8 bullseye targets at a range of 25 yards. A fresh target is used for each string to minimize scoring errors. Rounds impacting outside the marked scoring zones are zero points.
Stage 1: Slow Fire
10 rounds
freestyle
time limit: ten minutesStage 2: Timed Fire from the holster
5 rounds
freestyle from the holster
time limit: 20 seconds
repeat a second time for total of 10 rounds firedStage 3: Rapid Fire from the holster
5 rounds
freestyle from the holster
time limit: 10 seconds
repeat a second time for total of 10 rounds firedStage 4: SHO Slow Fire
5 rounds
strong hand only
time limit: five minutesStage 5: SHO Timed Fire from the holster
5 rounds
strong hand only from the holster
time limit: 20 secondsStage 6: SHO Rapid Fire from the holster
5 rounds
strong hand only from the holster
time limit: 10 secondsStage 7: WHO Slow Fire
5 rounds
weak hand only
time limit: five minutesStage 8: Kneeling Slow Fire
5 rounds
kneeling freestyle
time limit: five minutesStage 9: Kneeling Timed Fire from the holster
5 rounds
begin standing, draw and kneel at buzzer
time limit: 20 secondsStage 10: Prone Slow Fire
5 rounds
prone freestyle
time limit: five minutesStage 11: Prone Timed Fire from the holster
5 rounds
begin standing, draw and go prone at buzzer
time limit: 20 seconds
The Humbler is a serious test of marksmanship at 25 yards, and will exposure any weakness in your fundamental marksmanship skills. It usually takes about 45 minutes to an hour to set up and shoot properly. It’s also quite useful if your range has silly limits on shots per second, only 25 yard shooting, that sort of thing. If you’re not allowed to draw from the holster, for example, you can modify the drill to go from the low ready for Timed and Rapid fire. Can’t go prone? Cut out the prone and kneeling stuff for a “Speed Humbler” that only uses a single box of ammo.
If you want a really ballbreaking accuracy session, shoot the Humbler back to back with Dot Torture.
I really do like these two drills. If you can mix in a little bit of dry fire to work on things like reloads and draws from the holster, and then use these drills at the range, carefully measuring your progress and diagnosing your mistakes, you will see improvement as a shooter. I’m so confident in this statement, that this is how I’m going to train for the rest of the year. I’ll get out to the range this week and post my initial baseline scores for the Humbler, the 99 Drill (which we’ll modify to make more appropriate for our purposes) and Dot Torture. Then hopefully I’ll be able to get regular performance updates in to you.
Beretta 92FS Two-tone
All two tone guns should be blue on the top end. Not the other way around.
Defensive shotguns
Top: Mossberg 930 SPX with extended magazine tube, for 10+1 rounds of 12 gauge goodness.
Bottom: Remington 870 Tactical in FDE with Magpul furniture, 6+1 total capacity.
Both of these shotguns would do just fine in a defensive situation, and being a bit of a traditionalist I actually prefer the pump gun. But it’s hard to argue with the capacity and shootability of the semi-auto. Next week we’ll have a shotgun video up talking about patterning, and showcasing these two guns plus a Beretta 1301 Competition!
Crimson Trace 20th Anniversary LaserGrips
These grips are part of a limited series of 1,000 to commemorate Crimson Trace’s 20th Anniversary. I think they’re perfect on a genuine Colt 1911.
The Open Carry Experience part 8: So long and thanks for all the fish
Today’s the last day I’ll be OC’ing as a primary means of carry. Two weeks was enough. I didn’t have any run-ins with the cops, no one tried to talk to me on the street, none of the negative consequences I anticipated occurred. Yet, I’m still exhausted, and the reason I’m exhausted is because of Open Carry people.
As I’ve been writing these OC pieces, I’ve asked myself hard questions about Open Carry. It’s practicality as a primary means of defensive carry, it’s effectiveness as activism, that sort of thing. The problem is when I do ask those questions, a lot of the responses I get are from OC people who say that I’m a shill for Eric Holder, I hate gun rights, blah blah blah. It’s exhausting. The thing is I actually have enjoyed OC, because I’m kind of lazy. I don’t want to dress around the gun, I want to carry a full size defensive pistol and not worry about it. That’s kind of nice, and it’s super comfortable. To avoid repeating myself though, here are my definitive thoughts on Open Carry, copied from our FB page:
You know what’s funny? I’m not against open carry. I am against f***wits using open carry inappropriately and getting our rights restricted. For example, the idiots in California. Or the idiots in Texas. If you want to open carry, fine, just carry your gun. But don’t be a halfwit about it. Don’t do it to get attention, don’t go on “open carry walks” just carry your f***ing gun and stop trying to “educate” the public and stop being s***heads to cops.
That’s really it. Do I think OC is the best choice for self-defense? No. The only thing I really can’t stand is when I people OCing in garbage holsters. That bothers me because it’s dangerous. But if I see a dude OCing in a proper retention holster, just going about his business? I don’t care even a little bit.
I look at the OC situation, and what I see are lots of good, normal folk who use OC as a regular tool for self-defense. Then I see their voice drowned out by the actions of worthless, attention seeking, thumb sucking, fatass losers who were probably denied their mother’s breast when nursing and grew up into mentally deficient man-children who can only achieve some measure of validation through negative attention.
So you know what? I’ll still talk about OC in the future when it’s relevant, if it’s in the news, or even to discuss as a legitimate option to concealed carry. But the worst thing about Open Carry that I’ve seen isn’t the actions of most Open Carriers, but the actions of a few, vocal members of the group. People whose actions make us all look bad.
Because if there’s only thing that anyone takes away from these articles, let it be this: No matter what you might want to believe, when you Open Carry you are acting as a de facto representative for all gun owners. Your actions and conduct influence the public’s perception of us all, and what you do can absolutely affect the state of gun rights in the country. If you don’t believe me, try to OC a gun into Starbucks or Chipotle some time.
A little bowling pin murder for #tbt
I can’t believe this video is almost 4 years old. We straight up murdered bowling pins with shotguns. It was fun.
The Open Carry Experience Part 7: Why OC?
As I’ve been open carrying for these articles, I’ve been forced to ask the question over and over again. Why Open Carry at all? I touched on this in part 5 a little bit, but I want to flesh it out today and really talk about it. In answering my own question, why OC, here’s what I’ve come up with as reasons people open carry.
- Because it’s more comfortable to carry a full size pistol that way than to conceal it
- Because concealed carry may not be an available option for various legal/physical reasons
- To bring attention to a bad law, such as Florida Open Carry or the VCDL
- To be dumbass attention whores, such as CJ Grisham and Open Carry Texas.
- Because f*** you, it’s legal.
Now, we’re not talking about occasional OC here either, but OC as a primary method of carry. When you you look at that list, obviously you want to fall into #4. So if you’re going on Open Carry walks with your AR and video camera, just hoping the cops show up, you’re #4, you suck at life, and you should go back to your mom’s basement and cry yourself to sleep on your CrapCo’d AR15 or bastardized Mosin.
Looking at the other options on the list, number 1 makes the least sense to me – it goes back to the concept of “lazy” carry. You can carry a full size pistol pretty easily, you just have to dress thoughtfully for the gun. I’m not a big guy, and I can successfully conceal a full size 1911 in shorts and a polo shirt. I feel like if #1 is your reason for choosing OC, you’re just not trying hard enough. Or, perhaps you don’t really need a full size gun! I know, that’s blasphemy, you know what I carry most of the time? An M&P Shield or a J-frame. If I get into a running gunfight in DTSF and need more than whatever those guns carry, I’m probably hosed anyway.
#2 makes sense to me. There are a few scenarios where a person could be 100% legal to own and carry firearms, but various factors (time, geography, finances) prevent them from getting a permit. It’s hard to beef with that, because I believe that every law-abiding citizen has the same rights to armed self-defense.
#3 is where things can go off the rails. I’m sure if you asked members of Clown Show Texas Open Carry Texas they’d tell you that they’re doing number 3, because they want to get OC of handguns passed in the state. The problem is that they’re doing it wrong, objectively. I’ll use VCDL (again) as an example, because they did it right. In Virginia, it used to be illegal to carry concealed into restaurants that served alcohol, regardless of whether or not your were drinking or sitting in the bar. So you couldn’t go to Chili’s and legally conceal you gun. VCDL held events where groups of organized people would dine in at these restaurants while Open Carrying. They would also get in touch with local PDs in advance of their events to let them know what was up, and would also talk to the managers of the restaurants. Then, once the events were held, they’d also meet with their state representatives and actually lobby to get the law changed. They were successful.
Approach 3 only works if you actually have a plan of action. It breaks down and becomes #4 if your plan goes like “Open carry, get attention…then laws get changed!” Because that’s not how things work.
Finally, we have #5. I’m totally fine with number 5. I’ve had people tell me essentially that “I open carry because it’s legal and I can.” Not trying to make a political statement, just folk going about their business. Works for me.
As I get close to wrapping up my open carry experience, I’m not convinced that Open Carry is the right choice for anyone – and I’m nearly certain it’s the wrong choice for me. I prefer the options that concealed carry allows, in terms of dress, in terms of places I can go, and other discretionary things. It makes life a lot simpler for me to just conceal my gun.
Oh, and here’s a quick protip for telling if you’re #3 or #4: if your “OC events” have actually caused private business or government entities to ban guns, you’re #4 and you’re doing it wrong. See the OC in California, and Open Carry Texas for more examples.
Get GunUp the Magazine to go!
Download the GunUp the Magazine app for your iPad/iPhone today and get the hottest gun magazine in your pocket at all times!