"When you put a gun on in the morning something in you changes. Do you remember the first day you wore a gun outside your home? Don’t tell me you don’t remember some sort of feeling. It’s tough to describe. Was it a nervous energy? Concern? Anxiety? Whatever it was, you knew that gun was there and you knew what it meant. The responsibility level in your life just went up a notch."
Executive Editor of Concealed Carry Magazine Kevin Michalowski discusses everyday carry in this week's blog posting.
https://www.usconcealedcarry.com/joy-wonder-everyday-carry/…
When you put a gun on in the morning something in you changes. Do you remember the first day you wore a gun outside your home? Don’t tell me you don’t remember some sort of feeling. It’s tough to describe. Was it a nervous energy? Concern? Anxiety? Whatever it was, you knew that gun was there and you knew what it meant. The responsibility level in your life just went up a notch.
Fast-forward a couple years. You’ve been wearing that gun every day and that nervous energy is gone, but the responsibility of daily carry still remains. Yet, now you are thinking about other things.
I have to adjust the arms on my chair so when I sit down I don’t drive the pistol up into my side. Sometimes if I round a corner just right, my gun will clunk on the wall or the doorframe. Am I wearing an appropriate cover garment? What am I going to do with the pistol if I have to use the toilet in a public restroom?
These are important topics.
Consider this: An outside-the-waistband holster and an extra magazine on your belt will add a couple inches to your waistline. You can expect to hang up on chairs with arms. Sometimes as I fasten my seatbelt my holster gets in the way. I wear an IWB holster and that means I have to buy my pants and belts one size larger than I normally would. And then when I go into the dressing room to try on clothes, I need to make sure they “work” with my gun and my style of carry. That means I have to be VERY careful in the dressing room moving my gun and holster from one pair of pants to the next. Imagine the headline if there was a negligent discharge in a busy clothing store. Imagine if someone was injured or killed.
Pistol, holster, spare ammo, flashlight: That doesn’t sound like much of a kit, but carry that list of items every day and you begin to realize that everyday carry can lose its luster pretty quickly. Carrying a gun is a lot of work and that responsibility never goes away.
So why do we do it?
We do it because one day we MIGHT need to react in the face of nearly overwhelming aggression. I say “nearly” because to win that fight we need to respond with more force, more aggression, and more violence than our attacker. If that fateful day comes, those of us who carry guns every day will need to shift gears quickly. The goal will be to stop our antagonist quickly and effectively while paying attention to everything that’s going on around us. And then…we will need to shift gears again because once the threat stops, our aggressive action must stop. That’s a tall order and many anti-gunners cannot understand the paradox of the peaceful citizen who is armed and ready to use violence as a last resort in defense of innocent life.
Think about that. You are a good person who is ready and willing to visit incredible violence upon an attacker in the name of all that you believe. Some people can never make the connection or figure out that good people can live in both worlds—the peaceful and the violent. Some people never stop to think about these things, and the shock of the rapidly changing situation stuns them into inactivity. If they recover in time to win the fight they will likely be forever changed. If they do not, we will never know what they were thinking when the worst happened.
Carrying a firearm every day is not just something we do. It is something we must think about. Keep your head in the game.