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by The Annoyed Man
Mon May 27, 2013 10:11 am
Forum: New to CHL?
Topic: Question about conceal carry in car
Replies: 23
Views: 6926

Re: Question about conceal carry in car

My interest in this is that I am left handed, and drawing from on-body concealment inside the car is problematic. I'm a pretty big guy, driving an older Pathfinder. The center console is neither big enough nor easily accessible enough in an emergency to store a gun in there. With the gun on my left hip and that hip right up against the driver's door, I have to lean way away from the door toward the centerline of the car in order to access my pistol and draw it, and the drawing motion is clumsy and unnatural. I've thought of several alternatives that allow me to draw and shoot left-handed, but they are all compromises.

One possibility is to use the molded plastic door pocket at the bottom of my driver's side door. So long as the door is closed, the pistol is very well concealed, and I can reach it relatively easily. The two main problems are A) it isn't retained very securely, and B) what happens when I need to open the door? I can always reach down and move the gun from the door pocket to under the seat, but that particular "surreptitious" movement might not look good for me if I were being illuminated by a police spotlight by the side of the road after having been pulled over. OTH, if I leave it there, the minute I've opened the door I've unconcealed the gun. So in the end, that isn't really a practical alternative unless I am driving entirely on private land.

Another possibility is a shoulder holster on my right side. I have one of those, and it is a good way to carry in winter when you'd be likely to keep your jacket on anyway, but it also has problems inside the car—the primary one being that of avoiding sweeping your passenger during the draw stroke, and the secondary problem being that it isn't as practical in summer. Another problem is that the gun is then only accessible to my left hand for a draw stroke, and left-handed shooting is much more difficult against a threat approaching from the driver's side of the car.

I also have a Safepacker from The Wilderness (http://www.thewilderness.com/index.php? ... t=171&pg=1) which can be attached to my seatbelt at the buckle, providing another cross-body alternative which can be configured to right handed draw strokes, but it also has its own limitations, AND it's a little bit obvious......"concealed in plain sight" as it were.

All of these methods, and others suggested here, are compromises that require you to either leave the gun in the car when you leave the car, or to find a means of discreetly transferring the gun from your car-carry-solution to your on-body holster when you leave the car. Leaving the gun in the car, even hidden in the center console, is not an ideal solution. A good friend of mine recently had his USP .40 stolen that way........his brand new expensive truck invited a thief to check out the interior while my friend was inside a business.....gun stolen from the center console. If anybody thinks that locking your console is going to stop the thief that broke your door locks or smashed your window to get into the car, well.........

I remain interested, but not yet fully committed to any one way of off-body concealment inside the vehicle. Maybe there is no perfect answer.

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