Concealed Carry with a Glock: What Nobody Tells You First

Most concealed carry advice is written for people who have already decided to carry and are shopping for gear. This one starts earlier, with what carrying is actually like day to day, because that’s the part I wish someone had told me. I’ve carried for many years, and most of what I know came from getting it wrong first.

The Legal Reality

Carrying a concealed firearm is a serious legal responsibility. The rules on where you can carry, whether you have to tell police, and when force is legally justified vary by state and sometimes by city.

Before you carry:

• Read your state’s concealed carry statutes, not someone’s summary of them
• Know which places are off limits (schools, federal buildings, courthouses, polling places, businesses with posted prohibitions)
• Find out whether your state has a duty to inform. Some require you to tell police you’re carrying during any stop, others don’t
• Understand your state’s use-of-force law, including what counts as a reasonable belief that deadly force is justified

I’m not a lawyer and this isn’t legal advice. If anything is unclear, talk to one. The cost of carrying illegally or using force improperly is severe.

What Carrying Actually Feels Like

When I started, I carried a small pocket pistol on my hip at about the 4 o’clock position. My biggest worry by far was printing, the outline of the gun showing through your clothes.

So I turned it into a game. Everywhere I went, I tried to spot other people who were carrying. It was really hard. Even with friends I knew were carrying, I couldn’t pick it out, and in some cases they were sure they were printing and I still couldn’t see it. That told me something useful: most people aren’t looking, and even when you are looking on purpose, it’s hard to see. I still worried about it anyway, because knowing that and believing it are different things.

The bigger lesson was about touching it. Early on, I was constantly checking the gun, adjusting it, tapping it. If you do that, people notice, and it’s the thing that gives you away more than any outline does. My wife could tell. She’d ask, “are you carrying?”

The goal is to get used to it being there until it’s just part of your regular outfit, like a phone or a wallet. Now she can’t tell by looking at me. If she wants to know, she has to pat me down to check. I took that as the best sign I had that I was actually concealed.

Comfort: What Worked and What Didn’t

I went looking for comfort early, and a lot of what I tried was hit and miss. Padded holsters sounded right and didn’t do much for me.

What changed it was a Tier 1 holster. That surprised me, because they’re all Kydex, and I expected Kydex to be the uncomfortable choice. It isn’t. Tier 1 sells a wedge, or a wedge pack, so you can try different ones and find what works for your body. The wedge helped with both comfort and concealment, and it cut down on printing more than anything else I’d tried. If you’re comparing holsters, I wrote up what to look for in choosing a holster for your Glock.

Belt. I started with an extremely rigid belt. The stiffness was helping hold the gun in place and limit printing. Once I added the wedge to the holster, I could move to a belt with a little stretch in it, which is more comfortable, and the wedge took over the job the stiff belt had been doing.

Where I carry. Most days I carry appendix. If I know I’ll be doing a lot of sitting, or getting all the way down to the floor, I may switch back to 4 o’clock for that day. Appendix works well for me in general, but it’s not great for every situation, and it’s fine to change positions.

Clothes. A t-shirt just needs to be a size bigger for me, and that was never a problem. I like to have something like a hoodie over it, though it isn’t a requirement. Mostly it helps my own head, because I feel like I’m printing less.

At first I went looking for specific “concealment clothing.” Then I found a few tricks online and realized I could make carry work with the clothes I already wanted to wear, so I stopped shopping for special gear. My clothes don’t announce “hey, this guy is carrying,” and I’d rather keep it that way than rebuild my wardrobe.

The Training Gap

A permit is legal authorization. It is not a skill certification. The required course in most states, usually a few hours, doesn’t prepare you to draw and use a firearm under stress, in low light, with bystanders around.

When I started carrying, I looked for fundamentals training. I took some online courses, did a lot of dry practice on my own and with a friend, and then the two of us took an in-person 3-day course. We practiced as much as we could in advance, because we knew there was a skills test on the last day. We both scored very well.

The biggest change was how I shot afterward. Before the course, I only cared about hitting the target and getting close to the bullseye. After it, I understood how the height of the sights above the barrel changes where the bullet lands at different distances. I already had a decent stance and grip, but the course showed me that with the grip and stance I’d picked, my support hand had to be doing a lot of the work controlling the pistol. My range sessions looked completely different after that.

Malfunctions. A big part of the class was understanding malfunctions and clearing them. After the course, we started mixing dummy rounds into our range sessions so we’d have to clear stoppages for real. My dry practice now covers more than getting the gun out and shooting at a target. I run through malfunctions too. If you want a place to start, I have a post on the most common Glock malfunctions and how to clear them and a structured dry fire plan.

Break-in. I’d also say any new carry gun should get 500 to 1,000 rounds with almost no malfunctions before you trust it. Any malfunctions that do happen should come from the ammo, not the gun, and that means you have to understand the difference and recognize what each looks like. This is the rule I follow with every gun I own, including my Shadow Systems pistols. I compared those with the Glock 19 in Glock 19 vs Shadow Systems.

Force-on-force or scenario-based training is the next step beyond this. It’s valuable, and it changes how you think about defensive encounters. Skills also fade, so keep practicing.

The Ethical Weight

Choosing to be armed carries an obligation that the carry community sometimes undervalues.

You are accepting the possibility that you will use lethal force. Even when a shooting is legally justified, the aftermath, psychological, legal and social, is significant and long-lasting. That’s not an argument against carrying. It’s an argument for knowing what you’re accepting.

Knowing how to shoot is a small part of competent carry. Knowing when not to shoot, how to de-escalate, and how to remove yourself from a situation before force becomes necessary matter just as much, and they get less attention.

Where to Start

1. Get your permit and follow every legal requirement where you live
2. Buy a quality holster before you buy accessories, and try a wedge if comfort or printing is a problem
3. Carry consistently, and give yourself time to stop thinking about it. The gun at home doesn’t help you outside it
4. Take a real fundamentals course, then practice, including malfunction clearing
5. Learn the law in every state you carry in

Sources:

1. USCCA Concealed Carry Magazine, legal considerations
2. Massad Ayoob, Deadly Force: Understanding Your Right to Self Defense (2014)
3. State concealed carry statutes (varies by jurisdiction)