30 days to Conceal Carry.

Okay, campers. Listen up. I’ve been yakking for some time now about conceal carry. Wrote a whole series here on TTAG about how to pick the perfect gun for concealment whilst carrying. (I left one thing out…how to PAY for the bloody thing.) Well, now I have the opportunity to do a little proof-of-concept on my ideas without having to pay first/regret later. (I love my job!)

You see, after weighing all the options, I’d narrowed my personal choice down to a specific make/model. And I’m happy to report that the very gun I’ve had my eye on (read: “drooling over in every gun shop in a 500 mile radius”) has been shipped to me for testing. So I’ve been thinking about how best to cover this particular experience, and I’ve hit on an idea that I think will be a test, not only for the weapon, but also for the entire topic of concealed carry. And, oddly enough, I have a card-carrying, left-wingnut, eco-Nazi to thank for it.

Don’t know if you watch a lot of TV, but there’s a guy out there who took his 15 minutes of fame and expanded it into a series. Fella by the name of Morgan Spurlock. He created a documentary, where he ate at McDonalds for 30 days to “prove” that their menu is unhealthy. Crap, I could eat at a salad bar for thirty days and do the same thing. I mean, aside from the grandstanding, what did he prove? Oh, yeah, that Andy Warhol was a pessimist – turns out, in the future, any Yahoo get his own TV series, if the concept hits all the right notes on the Politically-Correct-O-Meter™. Yep. They gave him a show, where he subjected others to being dropped into a situation that went against their personal grain, and documented it for – you guessed it – 30 days.

So, I’m going to riff off this guy’s idea. I’m going to carry my “dream pistol” for 30 days, everywhere I can legally carry it. (No, I’m not gonna sleep with it on me. Thanks for asking.) I will report back here, weekly (and hopefully not weakly) as to my experiences with the gun and conceal carry. I’ll talk about how it differs from the gun I first bought, thinking “I will ignore what everyone is telling me about getting a lighter, smaller gun, and buy a full-sized 1911.” and how that gun proved (quickly) to be way too bloody heavy and large to carry on a daily basis. I’ll cover my choice in holsters, and the daily mechanics of dealing with having a gun on my hip, having to stow it if I go into a place where I’m not able to carry, et cetera.

For those of you who are curious as to what, exactly, I’ll be carrying…stay tuned. This should get interesting.