Concealed Carry Corner: Practice Makes Perfect

Welcome back to another edition of Concealed Carry Corner. Last week, we took a look at some items you should regularly clean, along with what you should maintain. If you happened to miss that article, be sure to click the link here to check it out. This week, I wanted to take a closer look at why it's important to practice not only firing at the range with your actual carry gun but also taking the time to draw from concealment. Let's take a closer look at how practice makes perfect.

Drawing From Concealment

I was recently standing in a crowded event on the main street in my town and I couldn’t help but think about how difficult it can be to draw from concealment quickly in a self-defense situation. I always talk about how important it is to be aware of your surroundings and avoid potential issues before they push you into a corner where you run out of options. There are certain situations, though, that can force you to take action in a split second, which is the toughest to train for at the range. I started thinking to myself, how is it possible to try and successfully draw your handgun to defend yourself when you're always in a reactive stance and behind the eight ball from the beginning?

Some of the quick tricks I do before leaving the house are a few practice draws from concealment. This can also happen at the end of the day, since you're tired at this point, it'll most likely show you the specific points you need to practice more. If you consistently practice drawing from concealment, the action of clearing your cover clothing and quickly drawing your pistol becomes easier as well as starts to happen effortlessly. Part of being able to succeed is being consistent, though. If you're the type of person who switches out carry guns every week, it's hard to train consistently. Part of the solution is carrying the same handgun in the same position every single day.  

Starting out, though, you really only need a piece of paper or small items to aim at and your unloaded gun in the holster. So many people think you need all these products to have a good training session when all you need is your gun, a holster, and something to focus on when drawing and finding your sight picture before pulling the trigger. Practicing these skills costs you nothing, but you can practice 80-85% of shooting fundamentals. If I could have you take one piece of advice from this article, I would stress how useful dry firing is and there's absolutely no reason why you shouldn't practice at home with an empty handgun.

Live Fire Training

There's only so much you can do at home before you need to hit the range in order to polish the skills you build up at home during dry firing. To put everything together and build off your dry firing, you absolutely need to put the range time in. I know for some of you, it can be tricky finding a spot that allows you to draw from a holster and fire. Many indoor ranges, as well as some outdoor ranges, don't allow any drawing from holsters, so that's another reason why it's important to dry fire. Two of the biggest factors that are only practiced through live fire are recoil management and resetting your sight picture and trigger after every round.

So what do we do when we have the basics down and can shoot accurately? That's when things can get interesting because you have to start speeding things up while keeping your shots accurate. There are certainly ways to add artificial stress by using a shooting timer or adding multiple targets that you have to clear against a friend or fellow shooter. The best way is to have a time baseline and work towards that goal. Once you hit your first goal with speed and accuracy, then it's time to change your goal to a faster time while maintaining accuracy. This allows you to build off baseline times and can show you how much you improve over time.

Overall Thoughts

Your responsibility to constantly better yourself starts when you strap on your handgun to carry concealed every day. So many people do the bare minimum and call it good when that's simply not good enough. Whether it's dry firing, practicing your draw stroke or putting in work at the range, all these aspects help you become a better shooter as well as keep your skills polished. If you take the responsibility to conceal a handgun, you also need to put the work in.

Let me know what your thoughts are down in the comments below. If you have questions about carrying concealed or firearms in general, feel free to shoot me a message on Instagram @fridgeoperator. Stay safe out there and we will see you next week for another edition of Concealed Carry Corner.

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