So you’ve got your concealed carry permit. Now what?

So, you’ve got your CCW. Now what?

Help for Home Defense

Or, what to have in your home besides your gun. 

Now that you’ve had some training in your home defense firearm and have practiced with it to be familiar how it operates, what should you have in your home for self-protection besides your gun? If you’re a new gun owner, all of this may seem a little bit paranoid, and I totally understand. Don’t be afraid, though, because the point of this isn’t to live in fear, the reason for all of this is to gain the confidence that IF something happens, we can deal with it. Fear and paranoia should not be our driving force, but rather the desire to live our lives with free from fear because we are ready for the absolute worst day of our lives. 

Okay now, what do you need in your home besides a gun? 

A Safe Room

If you’ve created a self-defense plan for your home and have strengthened your doors and windows, designating a “safe room” as a refuge place should be part of that plan. In that safe room, you should have … 

A flashlight or two

Ideally, more than one. There is endless debate in the gunblogging world whether you want a weapon-mounted light like this Streamlight or a handheld flashlight like this SureFire. Each has its advantages and disadvantages, but my recommendation is get one of each. There is NOTHING handier for lighting up where you gun is aimed at than a weapon-mounted light, but sweeping the muzzle of your gun at everything just so you can see what’s there is not a good idea. Get one of each. 

Communications 

There’s an old, old saying out there that “two is one and one is none”. If you’re relying on your landline for emergency communications, it WILL fail when you need it most. 

Now what? 

Well, for starters, have an old unused cell phone plugged into the wall in your safe room. Any cell phone with a SIM card in it can be used to dial 911, whether it’s on a plan or not. We have an ancient “candy bar” Nokia in the safe room that still holds a decent amount of charge as a backup phone, and it performs that job admirably. 

Documentation 

If (God forbid) you have to use your gun defensively, you’re going to be talking with the police, and that means paperwork, which you should have ready to go when you need it. Imagine that panicked feeling you get when you’ve been pulled over and you’re fishing around in the glovebox for your license and proof of insurance, but even worse. Have a copy of your driver’s license, gun permit (if needed), CCW license (if needed) and keep them handy. Those around-the-neck badge holders you get at conventions are PERFECT for this sort of thing. 

As for what you’ll say to the cops after a defensive gun use, that is another thing altogether. I am not an expert on this subject and my suggestion is do some reading on this subject and then consult with an attorney or a professional firearms instructor for more advice. 

First aid 

If everything has gone wrong and you’re in your safe room with your firearm, chances are, someone is going to need first aid, and a band-aid probably isn’t going to be enough. The infantryman’s first aid kit (IFAK) was created by the military for this sort of thing, and it’s a great way to keep everything together in one small package. Failing that, make sure there’s SOME kind of first aid kit in your safe room, and supplant that with an Israeli combat bandage or two. And if you haven’t already done so, get some first aid and CPR training as well. 

This may seem like a lot to think about, and in reality, it’s a lot more than most people think about their whole lives. I have good friends and family who don’t even have a hammer and screwdriver in their home, much less a first aid kit. How they hang a picture on their wall, I’ll never know. 

If you’re reading this, you’re not like them. You’ve realized that you and not the cops will be the first person to respond when something bad happens. The question isn’t IF you’ll respond, the question is how and with what. 

Home Defense In Depth

If you’re one of the thousands and thousands of people who’ve purchased a gun in the last few years and don’t know what to do next, you’re not alone. There are many, many people out there who’ve made the most adult decision they can make in their lives and have chosen to purchase a firearm and become their own first responder. 

But owning a gun isn’t enough, because guns aren’t a talisman of self-protection with magical powers of protection. Guns are only as effective as the person behind the trigger. Think about it this way; who would you rather have on your side in a gunfight , Woody Allen with a .44 Magnum, or Chuck Norris all by himself?

I rest my case.

Now that you’ve realized that having a gun your unloaded under your bed isn’t going to keep you safe, what should you do? What should you have in your home besides your gun? Is owning a gun and keeping it unloaded under your bed enough? In a word, no. 

My first recommendation is to get some training so you can shorten your learning curve by benefiting from someone’s else’s wisdom.

Secondly, practice, because you’re not going to rise to the occasion if you have to defend your life, you’re going to fall to your lowest level of competence. 

Thirdly, I recommend trying out some form of firearms competition, be it a simple weekday steel match or International Defensive Pistol or United States Practical Shooting match. Competition is going to give you stress levels that won’t see anywhere else, and it’s the best test you’ll have to see what you can do with your gun under stressful conditions. 

Next week, we’ll talk about ideas about what to have in your home to help keep you safe besides your gun.

Why Train with your Gun?

“As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.” – Proverbs 27:17

There’s four schools schools of thought when it comes to firearms training: 

1. I don’t need it, because I learned how to shoot in the military/police/whatevs
2. I don’t need it, because dammit I’m an Amurican, and shootin’s in my blood.
3. I probably need it because I know I don’t know enough about gun safety or how to use my gun.
4. I know I need it because there are specific firearms skills I need to improve. 

If you’re in groups one or two, you still need training, we’ll get to why in a bit. If you’re in groups three or four, you’re right, you do need training, and good for your for realizing it. 

Reason #1 for Firearms Training: You don’t know how bad you really are

Let’s diverge here for a moment for a video of one of my co-bloggers shooting her very first 3 gun stage with a rather sweet JM Pro Mossberg shotgun specifically designed for 3 gun. 

3 gun, in case you were wondering, is kinda like shooting a practical pistol match, except you’re using (wait for it…) three guns: A rifle, a pistol and a shotgun. 

Now Jaci is a very good pistol shooter (better than me…), but she struggled when faced with a new challenge like shooting and reloading a shotgun quickly under the artificial stress of competition because she didn’t have any practical experience with this type of match. However, by watching this video, she learned what she needed to learn, and sought out some training from some of the best shooters in three gun. 

This video allowed her to see where her troubles were and make the necessary corrections to solve the problem, and this sort of thing is ONLY available when you have someone else around you who knows what they’re doing.

In other words, a training class. And yes, she won the video contest. 

If you just hang out with your friends and shoot and you think you’ve got all the firearms skills to pay the bills, what are you doing to get better? What are you doing to fill in the gap between what you THINK you can do and what you actually CAN do? If (God forbid) you need to use your gun in a defensive situation, you’re not going to rise to the occasion, you’re going to fall to your lowest level of training.

If you shoot with people who know what they’re doing, great! Here’s hoping you’ll find a trainer who knows what to teach and how to teach it. 

Reason #2 for Firearms Training: Documentation, documentation, documentation.

Let’s say the absolute worst happens and you are forced to defend your life with a handgun, and the prosecutor finds reason to bring you into court and defend your actions in front of a jury. Two things are going to happen: You’re going to wish you had some legal protection to help cover court costs, and you’re going to want to show the court that yes, you were in fear for your life and no, you had no other option to use lethal force, and nothing proves that like documentation. You can SAY that’s you’re good shooter and have been around guns your entire life, but if you can enter documents into the record that SHOW you’ve been trained in safe gun handling, shoot/no shoot situations and civilian counter-ambush training, you’re way ahead of the game. This is also why you want to get a CCW permit even if you live in a “constitutional carry state like Arizona: The more you can show you’ve done you’re homework, the more likely the jury is to believe your side of the story is the right side of the story.

The bottom line is, if you’re a newcomer to firearms want to learn how to safely shoot and enjoy your new gun or if you’ve grown up around firearms and shot your entire life, you will benefit in some way from getting good, solid training that fills in the gaps in your shooting skills. 

Well it’s 1,2,3 what are we training for?

Take a few moments and watch this video. 

Yes, that is an actual promotional video for a California-based “tactical” firearms training company, and yes, that is every bit as unsafe as it looks. To top things off, all that “training” they’re doing is pretty much useless. 

Why? Because those “drills” they’re doing aren’t really drills, they’re scenarios: Very, very, VERY dangerous (and stupid) “scenarios” and those people are risking their lives performing them for the camera. Don’t just walk away from a trainer who asks you to do something like that, RUN. 

Ok, now that that’s over with, let’s start by defining some terms so we can figure out what we need to learn in a firearms training class and how we’re going to learn it so we can avoid those people like the plague they are. We need to learn…

Skills: The ability, coming from one’s knowledge, practice, aptitude, etc., to do something well
This is the basic operations required to perform a task. This is what we actually want to perform on demand when needed, be it drawing from a holster, trigger press, reloading a gun, whatever. Everything in training should be based around this core foundation: If it’s something like, “Oh, cool, that looks like fun!”, (Like, say, hanging off a rappelling harness firing an AR-15 when you’re not a SWAT team member), it’s not training, it’s recreation. We’re going to improve our skills with…

Practice: Repeated performance or systematic exercise for the purpose of acquiring skill or proficiency
Simply put, practice improve skills. You do the same thing, over and over again to get better at the skill you’re trying to develop. This is to firearms what kata is to the martial arts. For every firearms skill you want to develop, there’s a practice routine you can use to develop it. The one thing to remember is that practice is not about doing things FAST, it’s about doing things the CORRECT way every single time. We figure out how well we’re practicing skills with…

Drills: Strict, methodical, repetitive, or mechanical training, instruction, or exercise
Simply put, if you can compare your ability to do a consistent, predetermined practice routine against somebody else, it’s a drill. El Presidente, Tueller, Mozambique, USPSA Classifiers, they’re all drills because there’s only one way to do them and the results of any given shooter can be compared against their past results and anyone else who shoots that drill.
Now, most trainers I’ve seen with shy away from drills because they can have a dampening effect on a student’s desire to learn: If you get your @ss whipped by someone else in a class, it may hurt your desire to go back to that class. However, I think you won’t know how far you’ve come unless you know where you’ve been, which is why I’ve been using the same drills for almost three years now to track my progress, and it’s been encouraging to know that yes, I am getting (slowly) better at this sort of thing. Stringing a bunch of drills together in a bunch of different ways is called…

Scenarios: An imagined or projected sequence of events, especially any of several detailed plans or possibilities
Here’s where the rubber meets the road. All those skills you developed with practice and kept track of with drills now come down to this: Can you deliver the shot when it’s needed under some kind of artificial stress? Simply put, a firearms training scenario is a series of drills strung together in a way that requires an element of problem-solving and critical thinking to complete correctly as quickly and accurately as possible. Scenarios like a shoot house, USPSA stage, IDPA match or a Figure Eight “drill” all require the shooter to put together different skills developed through practice while under some form of artificial stress, such as a timer or “realistic” training environment. 

So if you’re walking into a classroom for a firearms course and the instructor seems to be more interested in talking about about the high-speed, low-drag tactical operations you’re about to do in his class but can’t talk about what actual firearms skills you’ll be developing while doing so, you’re not enrolled in a training class, you’re enrolled in a armed forces fantasy camp. Next time, look for an instructor who can teach, not lead a team of wannabes. 

Talking Guns With Kate Krueger

I was on the Talking Guns with Kate Krueger show last Sunday, talking about, well, guns. 

Go figure. 

Have a listen now: 

The concealed carry post I talk about is right here, and my review of the Smith and Wesson Shield is over here.

Enjoy.

This is the reason why this website exists

Owning a gun is just the first step on a journey. Guns are not self-protection talismans that ward off evil-doers all by themselves: You have to have it handy when you need it and you need to be ready, willing and able to defend your life and your loved one’s lives, if, God forbid, the need to do so arises. I applaud Sherri Shepard for doing what thousands of other people have also done: In order to keep her family safe, she has chosen to purchase a defensive firearm and become her own first responder.

The alarm and it’s warning terrified Shepherd, her husband Lamar Sally and their son Jeffery, despite the police arrived seven minutes later to reassure the family it was simply a false alarm.

Nonetheless, the devout Christian who has taken a more conservative stance on a number of recent hot-button political issues to make The View’s roundtable, declared they were buying a gun.

‘I’m trying to calm Jeffrey down and all I had was this wicker basket,’ Sherri said. ‘I have nothing, a bat, nothing. We’re going to get a gun.’

And that’s what this website is about.

If you’re a first time gun-owner, we’ll help you get your gun out from its box underneath the bed (or wherever) and onto the range. At TeamGunBlogger, we’re not tactical ninja SWAT types and we’re not ex-special forces with years of experience in the sandbox. We’re people like you who have chosen to purchase a gun (If I’m honest, more than one…) for self-protection and enjoy the shooting sports. We’ve gone down the road you’re about to go down, and we’re here to help guide you where needed. 

Stick around, and let’s enjoy the journey together. 

Mini/Pocket 9mm Pistols for Concealed Carry

I’ve been a fan of mini 9mm pistols for concealed carry since I purchased a Sccy CPX-1 in 2007. My history with the Sccy has been a little chequered, (it’s gone back to the shop three times), so I carry a Smith and Wesson Shield now. Even with that history, I’m still a big proponent of the combination of size and firepower that a sub-subcompact 9mm brings to the table, and they have the added value of having roughly the same manual of arms as their bigger cousins, the 9mm service pistol. Which is good, because despite their popularity, these are not good guns for a beginning shooter: Their small size means they have more recoil and kick then bigger 9mm’s, and that small size also equates to a shorter sight radius, making longer shots a bit tougher.

Here’s a semi-complete roundup of all the mini/pocket 9mm’s out there, set up so you can quickly compare features such as price and weight against each other gun. Scroll to the left to see all the columns.

[table id=1 /]

(1) Assuming 0.441 ounces for each 124gr 9mm cartridge and .355 ounces for each .380 100gr cartridge
(2) Concealablity Index =
( 0.75(Length) x Height x 1.25(Width) x 1.5(Loaded Weight) )/100
(3) Firepower Index = ( Energy In ft/lbs x bullet weight in grains  x Capacity)/100. 124gr for 9mm’s, 95gr for .380.
(4) A full can of soda weighs about 13.76 ounces
* I couldn’t find a review for the AMT Backup in 9mm. If you know of one, leave it in the comments
IWB = Inside the Waistband holster. OWB = Outside the Waistband Holster.
SAO – Singe Action Only. DAO – Double Action Only. Striker – Striker fired. SA/DA  = You guessed it, both Single Action AND Double Action, depending on how you use it.
Long, boring description of what this means over here, but for now, just think SA = better, smoother trigger but needs a safety, DA/Striker = kinda sorta like a revolver. -ish. 

I added in other pistols like the the Glock 26, which we don’t often think as part of the “mini 9mm” group but is right in the middle of the pack when it comes to size, weight and firepower, and other guns like the Kel-Tec P3AT and the Glock 19 to compare the pocket 9mm’s to their smaller and larger siblings. And why the CZ P07? Because I like CZ’s, that’s why! (And it’s also an occasional carry gun for me as well). 

The Firepower/Concealability Indexes were just my way of quantifying how easy any particular gun is to carry and how much oomph it brings to the party. If you like the idea or think it should be tweaked a bit, let me know in the comments. 

And why weight in soda cans? Because I suck at judging weights, that’s why. In my mind, there’s not heavy, heavy and “lift with the legs, not with the back.” But a can of soda? I know how heavy that is. Imagine carrying around two full cans of soda on one side of your belt all day long (like a Glock 19), and you’ll know why pocket 9mm guns are so popular for concealed carry.

---

Kevin’s Note: My choice of all those is the Smith And Wesson Shield, although if CZ made something in this size, I’d probably buy that instead. I like the Shield for its combination of size, capacity, ergonomics and trigger: It’s not the smallest, thinnest, lightest or least expensive, but it covers all of those bases very well. 

Jaci’s Note: Once I made the decision to purchase a carry gun, I spent a few months handling and shooting several pocket/CCW style pistols. The LC9 impressed me with its slim form, light weight and long, but smooth trigger pull. During my search for a carry pistol, I was able to shoot the LC9 on a back up gun stage at a practical pistol match. It was so easy for me to operate, I was instantly sold. One of my favorite features of the LC9 is the extended magazine floorplate. I can get a solid grip on it with my right hand, which helps me shoot it more confidently and accurately.

« Previous Page — Next Page »