Carrying in comfort...

I hear an awful lot about how it's impossible to sit down while carrying a pistol in the appendix position, or to drive while carrying anywhere inside the waistband. This is never not amusing to me because I haven’t taken a roadtrip without wearing a pistol in an IWB holster since Saddam Hussein still had a house to call his own.

This trip to and from TacCon was no exception. Last Wednesday evening I drove the Zed Drei from Indianapolis to the exurbs of Cincinnati, which is a short hop of only a little over two hours, and then Thursday morning John Johnston and I departed for Dallas in his Honda Passport. That’s an interstate slog about fifteen hours long. Then we repeated it in the other direction on Monday.

I was carrying the pistol and holster I’m carrying every day and everywhere this year: the FN 509 Compact MRD with a Trijicon SRO optic and Streamlight TLR-7 light in a Henry Holsters Spark light-bearing rig, strong-side at about the 3:30 position. I was carrying that because I believe that rather than having an array of guns and holsters for special instances, it’s best to find a gun you run well and a holster you can wear in comfort, and use that same combination of gun and holster as much as possible. I don’t have a "Sunday gun" or a "roadtrip holster"; I just have my carry gun and my carry holster, and I carry them.

Meanwhile, John has just spent every bit of thirty hours driving halfway across the country and back with a Glock 45, complete with optic, WML, comp, and a spare 24-round magazine, in a Dark Star Gear Rigel attached to the PHLster light-bearing Enigma AIWB rig. Better than that, he was wearing yoga pants on the way out and sweat pants on the return voyage. 

The Enigma really is something all future-y, like from science fiction, since it divorces the ride height of your AIWB pistol from the waistband height of your pants, which is the single biggest comfort issue with appendix carry.

Visible in this picture: John Johnston
Not visible in this picture: comp'ed G45, Holosun 507, Surefire X300, spare 24-rd magazine

The above photo was, according to my iPhone, snapped somewhere just this side of Texarkana on the return trip, by which point we'd already been on the road several hours.

The Enigma is no barrier to adequate performance on the draw, either, as John's performance in the match proved. In the main match he placed eighth overall in a competitive field that included shooters like Gabe White and Scott "Jedi" Jedlinski, and in the 16-shooter man-on-man finals, he made it into the second round before getting eliminated by the dude who would wind up finishing second. And John was in basketball shorts.

JJRG in the process of winning the first bout