You need more than your one gun for life
Over the last couple of weeks I have found myself having to adapt to some unique environmental conditions. How often do you review your loadout to manage the wardrobe variety life can throw at you then realize maybe your go to gun is not good enough.
More Than One Gun Option
Most everyone has their “go to gun” system they rely on for the majority of the carry needs. There is nothing wrong with this setup. It has been researched, tested with countless hours of service and good results. Maybe over the years you might modify it here and there, but it remains largely unchanged. How often have you been faced with enviornment conditions where your go to gun just doesn’t work. Most of the time folks have failed to develop other options. They are a one go to gun type of person. Maybe, financially you have no other options. Or maybe you really haven’t given it consideration.
Not All Go To Guns Are The Same
Until it happens to you it might not be important enough. When it does, you either push a bad position because you know it violates the carry directives you developed. Or, you hastily put something together as a last minute solution. Something until that moment you didn’t give much thought. Solving these problems are not difficult. The handful of times you might need to dress in formal or business wear may not justify the investment or maybe it does. I’m reminded of a saying, “everything works, until it doesn’t.”
Don’t Make Excuses
There may be internal dialogue that will say, its only a couple of hours, it’s not that obvious, nobody really cares or I can make this work. When in truth you would avoid this thinking with your go to gun like the plague. Making do is not a strategy and downplaying the situation is only burying your head in the sand. Put some thought into at least a secondary system, a complete second system. To include a different firearm, holster and belt. You may even consider a backup system bringing your entire carry inventory to three go to guns. In the grand scheme of things this is not a bad idea.
Do The Work With Other Guns
Do the work to train and periodically field your secondary and backup system. If they are supposed to be good enough for those conditions, then get comfortable with them. This provides all sorts of insight that will only sharpen your edge with these additional carry systems in your inventory. While I wouldn’t necessary encourage you to enroll in a high intensity class with your backup gun, you can still rotate it into service and login some trigger time. While it makes sense to try and keep within the same family of guns even that may not cover all the bases.
The Same Guns, But Different
My primary and secondary are both striker fired firearms. The primary is a compact model and the secondary is a subcompact model. Both have their own holster and belt to complete the system. I will periodically run through my professional development with my subcompact to stay current. My backup gun is a 5-shot revolver and surprisingly I see a lot more carry time with this blaster. Mainly because of new roles I have discovered I can use the revolver in where it makes sense. For my backup I have the most variety when it comes to holsters, not just belt holsters, but ankle, pocket and even off body. This inventory allows me to tackle just about any enviornment condition I may find myself with a solid performance history for the added confidence.
Life comes at you pretty fast and sometimes you are either ready or you are not. When you have a well thought multi-level carry system there is just about nothing you cannot do where you can legally go with a gun.
