Think of concealment as a spectrum. On one end you've got open carry, and on the other end
you've got a gun inside a body cavity that's only detectable on x-ray. Your risk matrix is
going to determine where you need to be on that spectrum. When you open carry, your gun is clearly
visible. If you throw a shirt over it it may be covered kinda but it's still like clearly a gun.
The next step on the spectrum is called printing, which is where the outline of
your gun shows through your clothes, and it doesn't necessarily look like an entire gun,
but it might look like kind of an odd corner or like a line where there shouldn't be one.
Something that interrupts a curve printing makes it obvious that you're carrying something,
and then other context cues make it look like a gun. I would also include the less obvious visual
clues like clothing that doesn't flow or drape correctly or pants that kind of sag funny or hang
down on one side like you've got something heavy in your pocket. After printing we've
got what Jon Hauptman calls "telling". Telling is when your gun isn't necessarily visible but there
are other indicators that you're carrying a gun and these are often social cues like the way you
dress or the way you present yourself. So you're wearing like a Smith Wesson t-shirt for example
or if you dress like an off-duty cop these are the cues that prime people to think "gun" when
they notice something out of the ordinary on you. We're going to talk a little bit more about
interpretation and perception in part three so don't skip ahead too much, but the next level on
the concealment spectrum is what I would consider visually concealed and that's when your gun is not
detectable at all by sight and it would require a physical pat down to discover that you are armed.
So this is where most of us want to be in a health care setting and it's generally where you're going
to find the best balance of concealment and access speed. While there are things you can do to make
your gun harder to discover on a pat-down most of those things are going to slow down your draw to
an unacceptable degree, but again that choice depends on your risk matrix from part one.
So decide where you need to be on the concealment spectrum and commit to putting in enough effort to
get there. This concealment stuff is not easy, it takes a lot of research a lot of education a lot
of experience and a lot of experimentation to get good at it that's why this isn't a
product review. You can't just like buy your way into good concealment, there isn't any magic
holster that you can just slap on and make your gun disappear. It's not all about the gear,
concealment is work and it takes knowledge, it takes education, and commitment. So let's
get to some of the practical stuff to make a gun conceal well on your body. You need to know where
you want the gun to be and how to get it to stay there, which I know sounds like deceptively simple
but it's really all there is to it. Where do you need the gun to be, how do you get it to
stay there. These two things are going to be the foundation of good concealment. We're using the
PHLster Enigma for demonstrations because it allows us to put the gun basically wherever we
want it and make a wide range of adjustments to achieve good concealment on different body types.
You can use whatever holster you want and as long as it's safe, and it has the correct
concealment features to keep the gun where you need it, I say more power to you that's awesome,
but for the purposes of this video we're just demonstrating with the Enigma.
We're going to go over some tips for finding the best spot to conceal on your body but keep
in mind that finding your ideal carry position includes always making sure you can practice
safe draw and safe reholster techniques and that's something you gotta work out with your instructor.
This is a concealment video only not a shooting video so plan on investing your own time into
training with a good instructor who can show you safe draw and safe reholster techniques from
whatever carry position you choose, and don't be lax about that because when you're dealing
with guns, mistakes mean people can die. So definitely get as much training as you can afford.
For best concealment we're going to focus on appendix carry and here's why:
even if the gun is well concealed while you're standing, because of the way the body articulates
and the way the clothing pulls over the body, a gun carried anywhere behind you or even to your
side is going to print. In a healthcare setting you're pretty likely to be bending reaching
sitting moving your body throughout the day. Since our goal is to avoid detection the carry positions
behind the hip are just subpar so we're really not going to spend any time on them. If you've
already decided that appendix carry isn't for you that's totally okay some of these tips are still
going to be useful for other carry positions too. There are three keys to appendix carry concealment
for most people. One is getting the gun in your sweet spot, two is getting enough grip rotation,
and three is getting enough grip tuck. We're gonna pick a spot somewhere on the front of the body.
Your natural landscape is gonna have peaks and valleys and you want to keep the gun away from
the peaks and nestle it into the valleys where you can use your clothing drape to hide it better.
Small differences in ride height and centering can actually make a big difference in your concealment
so as you go along and you're working on finding your ideal spot make your changes in small
increments. The first step is to determine where you can place your gun without restricting your
range of motion. Finding the correct ride height is really important for appendix carry comfort.
If you go too low your gun's going to poke you in the leg, if you go too high it's going to poke you
in the ribs, although generally speaking too high isn't really as much of a problem because the gun
can kind of move around your ribs a bit. To find the boundaries of where you can place your gun
take your unloaded gun in the holster and hold it against your body if you're physically able,
go ahead and sit stand and do a deep squat to check your range of motion.
You'll notice that where you position your gun around your center line affects how low you can
go without hitting that boundary. If I place my gun here I can only go this slow before it hits my
thigh but if I place my gun more towards my center line I can go much lower while still maintaining a
full range of motion. Experiment with this to find out your window of opportunity for gun placement.
Once you have an idea of your boundaries the next step is to find the sweet spot within those
boundaries where you can get the best possible concealment, start by looking down. Whether your
stomach is flat or round doesn't really matter all human bodies have a variety of complex curves
and what you want to do is try to find a spot that's a little flatter than the curves around it
this is going to help determine your centering try to keep your gun away from the tightest
curves because a flat object sticking out where there should be a curve is like super obvious.
Next take a look in a mirror, you want to find a spot with your ride height where the
gun is either in a valley or slightly below your equator avoid stacking the width of the
gun right on top of an existing peak. Instead try to tuck it into a valley as best you can.
Feel free to try a few different positions as you experiment here and see what works best for you.
Depending on body type many people have a sweet spot low end towards their center line or higher
and towards their strong side. If you're very thin or if you're carrying a large gun you might
need to carry slightly across your center line to avoid your grip running off the edge of your
curve and printing. Once you've got an idea of where your ideal spots will be the next step
is to put your holster on and see how it conceals. We're going to use the poke check method to assess
your concealment and see what you need the gun to do to truly disappear into your ideal spot.
Don't worry just yet if the concealment isn't perfect
check out your concealment in the mirror and look for any obvious printing. If you see any obvious
corners press on them and see how you need the gun to move to make them disappear like this
poke and check that's going to show you what your holster needs to do to get the concealment you
want. For example if the end of your magazine is printing you might need a little more grip
rotation, when you poke it you can see that if you could just make that grip move in a little
bit your gun would be way better concealed. Or if the top of your slide is printing like this
if you could just make the top tuck in a little tighter your gun would be concealed.
The poke check method tells you what you need your holster to do. You need to choose a holster
that applies force to the gun to make it move in the direction you need it to go. Concealment is
basically a physics problem, in order to conceal well your holster needs to take pressure from your
belt and convert it into grip rotation, and grip tuck. That's how things like concealment wings and
wedges work. A concealment wing looks like this and it converts belt pressure to grip rotation.
A muzzle wedge looks something like this and it converts belt pressure to grip tuck by changing
the angle of the gun against your body. Now scrubs don't have belt loops and that's kind of a
dilemma. People always ask why things like belly bands ulticlips and fabric clips don't conceal
very well and the reason is that they don't apply enough force to the face of the gun to cause it
to tuck into the body so even if the holster has concealment features like wings or like wedges
they don't really do much good without that force. Generally speaking if the face of the holster is
soft or elastic it's probably not going to give you enough leverage to really interact with the
holster concealment features even though you might still get some small benefit from it. One thing to
watch out for, sometimes softer elastic holsters attempt to tuck the grip of the gun into the
body by completely covering it with fabric, which kinda sorta works but you lose access to the gun
and it's an unacceptable trade-off when there are better ways to accomplish the same thing.
The whole point of carrying a gun is so that you can use it in an emergency and if you can't get
to it quickly then you assume all of the risk of carrying a gun at work but you get less of the
benefit when you evaluate a holster's concealment features. Try to imagine the forces that actually
make them work. So how does the holster apply force, how does that force interact with the
concealment features, and what makes it stay where you put it. Try to kind of visualize that. Once
you've got your concealment the way you want it take a few minutes to record yourself standing,
walking, twisting, and bending. Look for any printing or any tells that you might have a gun.
Now's the time to work out any kinks in your concealment and make any adjustments you need.
What I like to do next is simulate the movements i'll actually be doing at work and then for
an extra challenge i'll do a little light exercise, like maybe some burpees or something
just to help really test things out. You'll find that it's really easy to get perfect concealment
when you're standing still for a photo but after a day of work stuff's going to move around, stuff's
going to shift as you move throughout the day and a little exercise now is going to kind of help you
sort out any adjustments you need to make ahead of time you really want to be totally confident
in your concealment before you actually try it at work. You don't want to be hitching your pants up
or constantly running to the bathroom to try to adjust things or check things out. So definitely
put it to the test at home first make sure everything is comfortable and stays concealed.
Up next we'll talk about some visual and social camouflage skills.