From a choice of Carry to a Need to carry and what I will learn as I go through

[Snattlerake]

I really think when you open carry you have upped your personal color code awareness condition by a half. White is no weapon hear I am, victim here. Yellow is described as weapon concealed head up and aware of surroundings. Open carry should be orange but some have escalated it to hand on gun possible threat over there.
Orange to me should be awareness of people around you and around your gun space. You should maintain a personal space and extend it for your gun like a force field. Weapon retention was beaten into me. That article brings up a good point if you are with children. Someone snatches your child and demands your weapon. What do you do? Cap them? Are you that good of a shot under stress?
You say you cannot conceal anymore but what about a light shirt or fishing vest?

 

[steelfingers]

I really think when you open carry you have upped your personal color code awareness condition by a half. White is no weapon hear I am, victim here. Yellow is described as weapon concealed head up and aware of surroundings. Open carry should be orange but some have escalated it to hand on gun possible threat over there.
Orange to me should be awareness of people around you and around your gun space. You should maintain a personal space and extend it for your gun like a force field. Weapon retention was beaten into me. That article brings up a good point if you are with children. Someone snatches your child and demands your weapon. What do you do? Cap them? Are you that good of a shot under stress?
You say you cannot conceal anymore but what about a light shirt or fishing vest?

I agree. If you notice a pic of me, a lot of them will have me with a long sleeved shirt over a tshirt. I've got to get that un-tucked look going too. Both conceal well. Mostly I just committed to open carry till it becomes like second nature.

 

[Defcon Shooter]

I open carry at the range. I open carry in the Yellowstone back country. I do not open carry around things with opposable thumbs. Asking for trouble.

 

[bigred1]

Sometimes when a fella is getting ready to go out he just feels like saying f%$# all you crackheads and wears it owb. I do anyways and I feel much better.

 

[Defcon Shooter]

Sometimes when a fella is getting ready to go out he just feels like saying f%$# all you crackheads and wears it owb. I do anyways and I feel much better.

Why do you have some feeling of invulnerability when open carrying? I have over 100 hours of Personal Defense training that has cost over 10 thousand bucks. I leave the house armed and concealed with the knowledge I could be dead in ten seconds of leaving my home. people are easy to kill. The more you train the more you understand an edge is what makes the difference between survivor and victim. Giving up the element of surprise is a tactical disadvantage. I will never willingly do that. It's like folks who carry Glocks and say the never train for a malfunction.

 

[bigred1]

Why do you have some feeling of invulnerability when open carrying? I have over 100 hours of Personal Defense training that has cost over 10 thousand bucks. I leave the house armed and concealed with the knowledge I could be dead in ten seconds of leaving my home. people are easy to kill. The more you train the more you understand an edge is what makes the difference between survivor and victim. Giving up the element of surprise is a tactical disadvantage. I will never willingly do that. It's like folks who carry Glocks and say the never train for a malfunction.

That was just too easy. Gotcha.

 

[Defcon Shooter]

Last weekend the wife and I or as I refer to her shooter 2. We took our Youngest daughter and our son in law to the range. We started with remedial coverage of the 4 rules. Then stance, draw, loading, followed by school drills, failure drills. Then we setup two scenarios. First is we setup a hallway with our portable walls. This was configured to represent a fast food dining area and kitchen. Metal targets were set at 10 and 12 feet from the table. These were shot from coming out of a chair. Then you pie the entry engaged a shoot no shoot target. You continue and pie the kitchen shooting and no shooting appropriate targets. All shooters ran the scenario until they did it right. With targets being moved between runs.
A similar scenario was run next depicting a street robbery against a drawn gun. The shooters threw a wallet down then moved behind a BOB training dummy executing a surreptitious draw and engagement of the hostiles. The drills had to include proper verbalazation . Also dummy rounds were sometimes introduced to cause weapon malfunctions to test those skills. This drills were shot with frangible ammunition as some of the steel was at arms length. Around 450-500 rounds were fired by each shooter. The vast majority during school drills. We run weather permitting a session like this twice a month. Then once a year take a formal class at a training facility to try to learn new skills and tactics. One thing I have learned is surreptious weapon deployment is impossible if you are open carrying in daylight. Also if you think you are trained because you shoot twice a year at cans by the river you are way wrong. I'm trained and all it has shown me is how much more effort it takes to become competent in self defense. I hope to be able to continue to seek knowledge in the form as I know I have just scratched the surface of this discipline

 

[bigred1]

^^^^^^Thanks for sharing. Definitely food for thought .^^^^^^^

 

[steelfingers]

I open carry at the range. I open carry in the Yellowstone back country. I do not open carry around things with opposable thumbs. Asking for trouble.

Not asking, and previously I felt the same. Now, I have very few options to imminent threat. I hope seeing that I carrying a quality handgun will discourage any BS but if I have to protect myself or my wife, I can't physically. Nor could I retreat effectively other than making some space. I would not be one of the guys on tv showing some old guy with a hand cannon shooting up bingo parlor because he felt threatened. I also (as John Wayne said in one of his movies) not going to just lay there and bleed.
I'm in a place with less choices. Maybe I'll have more, but right now I'm still responsible for my wife and my well being.
This is just my view and means jack.

 

[DRC458]

This is just my view and means jack.

Actually, it means quite a lot, thank you!