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The Teacher’s Guide To Concealed Carry, Part Two.

The Teacher’s Guide To Concealed Carry, Part Two.

What Gun To Carry, And How To Carry It

Quite frankly, the firearms training industry would like to pretend that the “business casual” work clothes that most teachers wear doesn’t really exist. The vast majority of “how to carry concealed” guides out there start off with how to cover your pistol with an untucked t-shirt, light jacket or flowery Hawaiian shirt.

Try wearing that to the next faculty meeting.

To make matters worse, if you’re a teacher, you are constantly surrounded by dozens of prying eyes, and those eyes are connected to mouths which aren’t afraid to ask embarrassing questions, questions like “Teacher, what is that bulge under your shirt? Are you carrying a gun?” And top it all off, the gun industry as a whole is only now starting to realize that women in the workplace (and women in general) tend to dress differently than men, which means what works for me will probably not work for my wife.

An armed teacher, therefore, has precious little information about the reality of carrying a gun in a classroom environment. We’ve been so busy debating about if teachers should carry a gun, we forgot to talk about how teachers should carry a gun.

So let’s talk about it.

Commit to Carrying All Day Long, Every Day Of The Week
If an emergency rises, there will not be firearms scattered about your school like so so many fire extinguishers. If you need to defend a life, it will be at righthisverysecond, with what you have on you right now. Therefore, storing away your gun in a lockbox in your classroom is probably not a good idea.

Purse carry, or some other form of off-body carry, is also not a good idea for teachers for two reasons: Your gun is not going to be on you if you need it, and let’s face it, kids get into everything: Do you really want them getting into where you store a pistol? Carry it on your person instead, where you know where it is at all times.

Carry Something You Can Shoot Well
If your state offers training, take it, and take it with the gun you’re planning on carrying in your classroom. I see many students in firearms training class train with tricked-out über-blasters that let them excel in class, but aren’t the guns they carry every day.

What works well for business casual concealed carry? Almost anything, really. I carried concealed in business casual clothes for over ten years, and I found that carrying a small, compact .380ACP pistol in the pocket of my pants worked well for me. However, I trained and practiced with that gun, and learned its strengths and weaknesses. Which brings me to my last point…

Carry With Confidence
Finding a pistol to carry with you every day isn’t a “one and done” proposition: It’s going to take some experimentation and practice to figure out which balance of firepower and concealability is going to be right for you. However, as an added bonus, that process of trying out new gear and pushing yourself to your limits will make you a better shooter as well.

Win-win.

A gun, however, is only part of the equation of staying safe inside the classroom, and we’ll talk about that later this week.

Part Three: How To Be Ready For (Almost) Anything