Early last year I embarked on something of an experiment: carrying my gun not on my belt, as I’ve done for more years than I can remember, but in my front pocket. Exclusively.

I’ve carried in a pocket holster from time to time, usually when wearing a suit, so I’m not at all unfamiliar with the concept. I’ve never done so as my default method, and I wanted to see what it was like. What kinds of problems would I encounter?

My constant companion was one of a pair of pretty much identical, save for color, S&W Airweight Cenennials: a blued Model 042 and the dull silver-gray 642. Both of these are stock guns, meaning that I’ve done nothing to either one. (No, really!) I tried several holsters, and found that most of them really weren’t terribly well thought out. I ended up using a cheap, cheesy, but serviceable Uncle Mike’s pocket holster for the vast majority of the time. I carried my spare ammunition in Bianchi Speedstrips.

Why did I do this? For some time now I’ve been talking about the concept of congruency: that students should train with the guns that they’ll actually be using to defend themselves, and further that instructors should be using the guns their students will be using. The problem, of course, is that people generally don’t do that, and as a result instructors allow themselves to believe that their students really do conceal full-sized Government Models in their workaday world — because that’s what they bring to class. It’s a delusional feedback loop.

In reality, most of the people I talk to who are carrying medium- to full-sized autoloaders in class sheepishly admit that during the week they tote a compact auto or a five-shot revolver in their front pocket, because that’s what they can easily get away with in their place of employment. As a fraternity, instructors are not doing a very good job of getting past this deception; I don’t think they really want to know. Classes are structured to artificially favor the larger autoloading pistols, because that’s what usually shows up on the belts of students. The students, for their part, feel compelled to “up gun” for the class so that they can perform well and save face. The loop intensifies.

What the instructor carries every day is irrelevant; it’s what the student carries that needs to be the primary consideration in curriculum design. I decided that I wasn’t living up to my own criticisms, and resolved to spend the majority of 2011 carrying not what I like to carry, but what an awful lot of people who look to me for advice and guidance are going to be carrying. (No, I didn’t make the “I carry a ‘J’ frame as a backup, so that counts” rationalization. This was to be my primary, and only, carry piece. Just like everyone else.)

Save for one instructor’s conference, where I used a Glock because a) I hadn’t had any serious autoloader trigger time in a couple of years and b) had no one to negatively influence, I carried and taught with those compact revolvers for the year.

I liked (actually loved) the ease with which I could dress around the gun. I liked that I could carry in sweatpants in the same place and manner of my street clothes. I liked that wether I wore a suit or work pants, my gun was in the same place all the time. I learned a lot about deploying the gun from that carry position, from the difficulty accessing it at speed to the occasional instances of the holster and gun coming out as a unit. I came away with some very specific ideas on how a pocket holster for a revolver should be made and marveled that almost none of the holster makers have figured this out yet. (Then again, it’s hard to find really well designed revolver belt holsters, a lament that I made in my book.)

Did I ever feel under gunned? No. I remain unconvinced that it’s necessary to carry a 51 rounds of ammunition just to survive a criminal attack, an idea that has great support amongst certain segments of the training industry. (I’m still looking for all those cases in which someone involved in a private sector defensive shooting incident was injured or killed because their gun didn’t contain enough bullets. Haven’t found any yet, though I keep asking people to forward them to me.)

At the end of the experiment, I’m finding it very difficult to return to my belt-mounted carry pieces. I’m actually happy about that, because I think I’ve now got a solid understanding of the limitations (and the freedoms) that my students experience. Suppositions have been replaced by evidence.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to decide between blue or plain aluminum for today.

-=[ Grant ]=-