How My Concealed Carry Set Up Has Evolved Over Time

hey guys welcome back to my channel this week's video is about my evolution of concealed carry over the last year and a half or so i've carried in three very very different setups and two different guns and i wanted to kind of take you guys through that process and explain why i changed my setup each time what i gained and what i lost from each change and just kind of walk you through my mindset changes with each of those setup changes i think that this is a really important topic to discuss because many of us don't get it right on the first try and it's a good thing for us to change our mindset and grow in our concealed carry journey and in the gear that we carry so without further ado let me take you through my evolution of concealed carry so this was my very first concealed carry setup i carried in this and only this for the first three months of concealed carry and i learned a couple lessons from that and there is definitely reasons why i moved on to my second concealed carry setup and i'm gonna just go ahead and explain to you the things that i discovered were dangerous about this holster and reasons why i moved on from this holster and stopped carrying it all together here you can see that when i go to draw i can actually remove the holster in this demonstration i'm doing so intentionally yes but i stopped carrying the sticky partially because i noticed it's happening during dry fire practice another issue i noticed with this holster at the time was that the only way for me to safely holster was to do so off body which requires me to use two hands assuming i may not always have the luxury of two hands i saw this as problematic here i'm showing you how easy it is for me to weasel my finger into the holster and engage the trigger this is a video i made for an entirely separate purpose but i thought it could be useful here it shows how doing dynamic movement at all can easily remove the holster from my pants can you see how much it shifted so it came up it came up higher out of my pants so it just falls out after kind of explaining some of the issues that i had with the sticky holster and reasons why i don't use it and honestly don't believe that it is a safe holster to use for carrying firearms at all i would also really like to mention that i do like the company themselves i think that their customer service is amazing and i think they're really kind people and i really respect that and appreciate that in a company so i want to make sure that that's set here i respect them as people and appreciate them the material is useful i just don't think that it's okay to use it as a holster i also like to mention that when i was carrying the sticky holster i didn't have a very good mindset as to why i was carrying a firearm i started carrying and started wanting to carry because we had a mass shooting in the city that we had just moved to and i realized that i wanted to be able to protect myself with lethal force and i you know got my concealed carry license and started carrying in the sticky holster and my mindset was just not there i i thought that now that i'm carrying a firearm i'm safe and i thought for some reason it was almost like a rabbit foot it was like a good luck charm just having it on me made me feel like i was never going to have trouble befall me like i felt like i was now safe just solely because i had it and i didn't think through the actual process of what a self-defense encounter would look like you know if i could actually draw quickly enough or anything really logistical at all and when i started dry firing and working on just small amounts of training with it i realized its flaws and i also realized the flaws in my thinking and that's what ultimately led me to my next concealed carry setup which was the tier one axis slim so this was my second concealed carry setup i added something i added a kydex holster and i started carrying a spare magazine so initially for the first three months i was only carrying my firearm and when i moved on to this holster i started carrying the spare magazine and this was a little bit of a mindset change as well as just this was the holster that was recommended to me and it was just the first kedex holster that i had any experience with and it seemed to work really well for me there were a couple variations over i think it was about a year eight months that i was carrying in this setup and there were a couple variations of this so i didn't ever really carry it with these actual clips that's just what's on there right now um but i carried in ulti clips starting out um because i didn't want to have to wear a belt and then i started really enjoying the security of a belt so that's when i bought my blue alpha hybrid edc belt and i started using the clips that actually just come with the holster and then i bought uh discrete carry concept clips that were the actual 1.5 that fit on the belt and that's what i carried in for a good while i was carrying in the blue alpha hybrid adc belt with the 1.5 the mod 4 1.5 universal discrete carry concept clips i spent a lot of time with my tier 1 concealed setup it felt like it worked really well for me and it was a far cry from my sticky holster situation and i was getting to experience a more quality holster i enjoyed being able to holster one-handed i was able to get a lot more training in with this holster because it just allows you to safely train more so than a sticky holster would so i was able to actually get into training and start working on my skills more with this setup so after about eight months to a year of carrying i realized that i wanted a different firearm i wanted something a little bit bigger i was really interested in getting a red dot and i started on my journey for looking for a new concealed carry gun and i tried out a number of different guns i tried out the hellcat i tried out the sig p365 the xl i tried the glock 43 the glock 48 the glock 43x and i wound up with the glock 48 after trying all of those i'll do a separate video on that and kind of talk to you guys why i chose what i chose but i wound up with the glock 48 mos and i threw a holosun 507k on there and the first thing that i learned was that my favorite holster company at the time tier one concealed was not making a holster for the mos model of my firearm so i had to look elsewhere and try something else and in my head at the time it was i'm gonna venture out elsewhere and try other holster companies solely because i have to and i will eventually return back to tier one concealed i'd also like to add that towards the end of my time carrying in the tier 1 axis slim with my glock 42 i also started carrying palm pepper spray fairly regularly and i started toying with the idea of carrying a tourniquet not medical necessarily just tourniquet and it wasn't really something that i was terribly consistent with and it was more just like for convenience sake anytime it was convenient for me to throw a pepper spray in my pocket and a tourniquet in my pocket i would but it wasn't something that i was making an active effort to do every single day so once i decided to get my glock 48 and went through that process finally got my hands on one and got my holosun 507k in a lot of different things were happening at that same time so i got that firearm in i realized that i wasn't going to be able to buy a holster from tier 1 concealed which is what i had been using for the last year-ish and at that same time sarah hopman she offered me a spot in a class that she wasn't able to attend and she essentially gave me her spot and the instructor was okay with that and that was john johnston i got to take his test in standards class in december so i brought my new firearm and he actually provided a holster for me and that was the hitchhiker from darkstar gear income my new concealed carry setup that's what i that's how i started carrying in the hitchhiker was i didn't have the option to get a tier 1 concealed and that instructor who is now i consider a friend um offered me that holster for free and that was just incredibly generous of him and you know looking back on that it's been months now and i just i still love this setup so much even after trying other holsters i really really like my hitchhiker so as i started carrying in this new holster and working with a red dot and working with this new firearm having taken that class and made friends with that instructor i was able to kind of work through a lot of what where my mindset was at with some things so when i started carrying in this setup i added some things and i took something away when i started carrying this setup i added a chest seal i added a tourniquet every single day and um filster actually sent me one of their pew medical kits so i carry some gauze with me as well as some gloves and pressure bandage so when i started carrying the setup i added a good amount of medical to my carry and i actually got rid of my spare magazine and i know this is something that is going to ruffle some feathers the fact that i don't carry a stair magazine it just it oh it really bothers some people really quickly i just want to mention what i feel like i gained going from this style of holster to just the single holster style um i've kind of talked a little bit about a lot of the features that i like specifically in my dark star hitchhiker holster um in other videos but mainly here i'm just talking about going from this design to a single holster design especially with the larger firearm i noticed this the most where i had less mobility with this because this is a wider base on such a small frame like myself um it it just takes up so much of my mid section that when i go to move and do things this entire big old piece of kydex is trying to move with me instead of just this one piece moving with my body so you can kind of see as far as that goes how it makes sense that i would have more mobility with something that's just smaller and separate the other thing that you know i felt like i gained is obviously i went to a mod light instead of a spare magazine and this holster only allows me to carry a spare magazine so when i was trying to fit this much kydex in my front section i couldn't actually carry my mod light um and that wasn't working for me because that was a tool that i wanted to prioritize carrying and it doesn't fit in my pocket but just as a whole i felt like i gained a lot going to a smaller rig just because i had the ability to carry a different tool with me such as my flashlight instead of a magazine and i felt like i had a lot more mobility and of course i can't use this kind of holster with the enigma so going to that separate style holster allowed me to easily transition into using the enigma every day so i no longer carry a spare magazine and in its place i actually carry a modlite okw this serves a much different purpose this does not serve the same purpose as a spare magazine would and i want to be clear i respect those who carry spare magazines and i understand the reason why they do so at the end of the day i've replaced my spare magazine with a tool that is about the exact same size and it sits in that same spot i've carried this for about two months now and i've used it at least a dozen times and no i've not used it in self-defense but i've used it preventatively so the the way that i use this most regularly is when i'm out at night whether i'm at the grocery store or i like to go to a coffee shop and work i'll be leaving the coffee shop and i walk into a dark parking lot that's right off the highway about 10 minutes from the mexican border and i like to shine my light in my vehicle and check my canopy like check behind my canopy check inside my vehicle from about 20-25 feet away so i'm not even approaching my vehicle i'm just making sure there's absolutely nothing no one underneath it around it on the other side of it inside of it i found that that's a very useful tool um and obviously i don't i i've not prevented an attack yet um and i hope i never do but that's the point of it it's preventative um and it can be used in other scenarios that's not something i'm an expert on and i absolutely intend on taking a class um and learning how to use this even while i'm shooting um and in other scenarios where it might be useful that's not something that i have extensive knowledge in yet um but i want to and i intend to if you have made it this far into the video congratulations you are a trooper so we have arrived on my current everyday carry setup like i said i'm carrying medical with me in my purse and i am carrying my glock 48 with my holosun 507k and a striker control device in my enigma i also have these ameriglo sights on here they just came with the gun and i fully intend on switching out this rear sight it pokes the heckin out of me so that's that's going away soon but this is my everyday carry right now along with the medical my mod light and pepper spray and i kind of explained to you why this is what i'm carrying right now i really really love carrying in the enigma and you see my other videos of me carrying the enigma and you can kind of see why it just allows me to conceal and conceal really well and easily especially with this larger gun when i first started carrying with this i struggled with concealment at first and i wondered if i had chosen too big of a firearm for concealed carry especially for my frame and the enigma let me overcome that and i got to kind of customize it to fit me and i'm not saying that i put this thing on and it immediately worked for me it took some customization and some working with it but now it has just become such an awesome easy throw on it's uh definitely a plug-in play for me now these days so i love carrying in my enigma i do wear a belt from time to time and i'll throw that on with another hitchhiker holster that i have with pull.loops or my discrete carry concept clips thank you guys for watching today's video i know it was a little bit of a different kind of topic and there were some things that i had to cover that you may or may not have enjoyed listening to but i appreciate that you did listen through it and got to the end i've had a couple people mention in the comments that my videos can feel like you're sitting in my living room and having this conversation with me and i love that i hope that it still feels that way i feel like today was one of those like hard talks especially depending on where you're at in your concealed carry journey and what opinions you hold um so again i appreciate you listening all the way to the end and watching my videos and supporting my page if you feel like doing that some more please go ahead and hit the like button and the share button and all of the buttons i always struggle with the outro stuff just if you want to support me do the things have a great rest of your week guys i'll see you next week [Music] you

Channel: Armed and Styled

Views: 9,848

Rating: 4.9640102 out of 5

Keywords: sticky holster, EDC, tier 1 concealed, axis slim holster, axis elite holster, sidecar holster, Glock 48 vs 43, Holoson, CHPWS, Discreet Carry Concept Clips, Mod 4 1.5 DCC, Shield Arms Mags, Enigma, PHLster Enigma, PHLster

Id: o2eOJCFCQRg

Length: 15min 36sec (936 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 02 2021