As a young police officer, I adhered to the policy of being armed all the time. I don’t recall that our department required it, but they certainly encouraged it. The only trouble was, in our warm climate, I was generally dressed in Wranglers, a western shirt, and boots; finding a way to conceal an off-duty gun was challenging. Finally, I came upon the idea of rigging an in-the-pants holster so that it would fit into the top of one of my boots, under my starched Wranglers. My Smith & Wesson Model 60, with the bobbed hammer spur, hid away quite nicely.
All was well until one day I was off duty and hanging around on our town square. One of our police officers stopped and told me that they’d had a report of a drunk with a big knife scaring people on the square. The officer went one way, and I went another, intent on finding this joker before someone got hurt.
In my search, I walked around the corner on a side street and came nose to nose with the suspect. That gun in my boot, under those heavily starched Wranglers might as well have been in New York City; I would never have gotten to it in time to do any good. Fortunately, I was able to take hold of the fellow without either one of us getting hurt, and that’s the last time I ever carried a gun in the top of my boot. Obviously, I hadn’t thought the thing all the way through.
Other folks live in areas where their work or the general social attitude requires carrying their personal defense gun in deep concealment, ankle holsters being just one of the available techniques. While these various methods would be good concealment, they are a pretty slow location for getting the gun into action. You might be walking out onto a dimly lit street, or be in “that part of town,” or you just have one of those inklings that things are not right. That’s the time to bring your defense gun out of deep concealment and move it to someplace more accessible. You’re not expecting trouble, but you are thinking ahead in case trouble visits you.
In a similar vein, let’s think about winter weather. Most of us are so happy because we can now belt on a more substantial defense gun, but then we cover it with a vest and then button a winter coat over the vest. With all of those garments between you and your defense gun, it would almost take a court order to be able to get into action. So again, thinking ahead, we dump that little deep-concealment gun in an outside pocket of the winter coat and we’re good to go.
Just know that Murphy’s Law is alive and well. Think about your concealed-carry techniques with special attention to what could go wrong, then work out a way to fix the problem. Plan ahead, and maybe you won’t ever come nose to nose with trouble when your gun is way down there in your boot.
