Gun Digest's Open Carry vs. Concealed eShort by Massad Ayoob

Author:Massad Ayoob [Ayoob, Massad]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4402-3424-8
Publisher: F+W Media
Published: 2012-04-07T04:00:00+00:00

Open carrying in a Starbucks, Ayoob keeps his gun side toward the counter, a reasonably secure posture.

Later, in court, I had occasion to closely examine not only the videotape, but also the giant blow-ups of the stills that were introduced as evidence. A couple of people in the courtroom told me that they’d hadn’t realized that I was armed, even though the big 41-framed revolver was toward the cameras and in plain sight. I asked a few other folks, showing them the pictures, and most when subsequently asked hadn’t noticed that I was wearing the big six-gun.

Hmmm…interesting.

I thereafter made it a point to bring black or very dark gray gun, holster, shirts, and trousers whenever it looked as if I would have to “open carry.” The gorgeous, high polish Royal Blue of the Python had not reflected enough to show up in the pictures or the video, but that was only because the ARG holster hadn’t exposed much of its sideplate. Later experience with flat black Glock pistols, and a Kimber with a flat gray/black finish that resembles Parkerizing, showed me that these finishes blended beautifully with black holsters and belts, and black clothing.

The holstered guns were still in plain sight. They could be spotted by someone looking for them. But they did not draw the eye.

One evening I found myself stopping on the way home from the range at a supermarket that must have had a hundred people in it. I was open-carrying the dark Kimber 45 cocked and locked in a black basketweave Gordon Davis thumb-break holster on a matching Bianchi dress gun belt, with black polo and black BDUs. The old “one of a hundred people will notice” prediction absolutely came true. The only person who showed indication of having spotted the big military auto pistol was a little girl, and that was probably because she was only a couple of feet away from me in the aisle, and her height put her at eye level to the gun.

I saw the little tyke’s eyes widen in alarm, and watched as she urgently grabbed her dad’s sleeve and began tugging. When he looked down, she wordlessly but vigorously pointed at the 45. I had made a point to wear my police badge clipped in front of the scabbard, and her dad spotted it at the same time he saw the pistol.

“Aw, it’s OK, honey,” I heard him tell her gently. “He’s a po -lice.”

So far, so good. There are some dads out there who might be macho enough to feel a need to impress their kids if those kids were alarmed by what the father perceived as an ostentatious display of a deadly weapon. In this case, there was no problem. And the lesson is, black gun in black holster against black clothing draws very little attention from those who aren’t at eye level with the handgun.

As noted earlier, an inside the-waistband holster buries much of the gun in the lower body’s clothing. The gun is still exposed per se, and therefore still openly carried.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.