Posted: 12/10/2013 9:30:47 AM EDT
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We see questions on here all the time like "What gun should I get for my wife/girlfriend?" Lots of 'hardware' discussion. However, I haven't seen much (some, but not much) focused discussion related to concealed carry with a partner, family member, or group. Some 'software' discussion.
I'm hoping to start some focused discussion around how your situation changes when both you and your partner have a concealed weapon. For example, my girlfriend has expressed an interest in getting her carry permit. We go to the range at least once a month together and she is familiar on a basic level with all my weapon systems. We frequently talk scenarios but haven't worked out yet how to get the best practice (how you train together would be a great topic for this thread!) I also happen to own more mags that I can effectively carry concealed, so we've talked about loading a few for her to keep in her bag in case either of us needed the extra heat. How do you train with your partners? Do you have overlapping gear? Safety considerations? Tactical considerations? Do you have a routine you go through together? We all love a good yarn, so any experiences you have had with your partner related to carry and defense are appreciated! |
Mine just knows how to operate my guns just incase I'm incapacitated and she needs to get to it. She has a CC, but still hasn't found a good way to carry in her wardrobe, and won't sacrifice fashion for safety. 
Oh well. Halfway there. I just need to find a good holster for her |
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I've been happy just getting the GF to go shoot a pistol now and then. She's actually not a bad shot, but not someone who will probably ever conceal carry.
However, I have a (PPK/S in .380 ACP) that she shoots well, and I'll carry that as a back up in a pocket holster. Carrying it in a pocket holster makes it easy to hand off to her safely if we're ever in a situation where things could get interesting. It would allow for some extra fire power in a multiple bad guy scenario, allow each of us to cover the disengagement/tactical withdrawal of the other to get out of a bad situation and gives her a means of self defense if I go down. |
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Quoted:
Mine just knows how to operate my guns just incase I'm incapacitated and she needs to get to it. She has a CC, but still hasn't found a good way to carry in her wardrobe, and won't sacrifice fashion for safety.
Oh well. Halfway there. I just need to find a good holster for her Mine won't for the same reason. Annoys me to no end. She does at least keep one in the glovebox. |
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Wife carries in her purse, still trying to get her to carry on her person, just have not found a holster she likes. I CC a G23, hers is a 38 wheel gun. I bought her a G19 but she has not trained enough that I feel she is competent enough that she can handle malfunctions under pressure. I want to get her in a training class.
We have discussed what to do if something goes down, she gathers the kids and gets behind cover, she covers them while one of them calls 911, or gets gone with them if she can, or backs me up if she can not get gone safely, or the situation calls for it. I am under no illusion that you can plan for these type things, and it will never go down like you see it in your head, but having some type of plan is better than not. I would love to take some training courses together, after she has at least the first one by herself. My plan is to, at some point both carry Glocks so we would be able to interchange mags, if necessary. Either get her comfortable and competent with the 40, or both move to a 9mm. Still working on her situational awareness, that is a work in progress, especially driving, trying to get her to drive strategically is like pulling teeth, ya know, leaving room at traffic lights to escape, staying out of center lanes, the basics. I have been trying to get to a CC laws class together also, Lighthorse has one in my area, but conflicting schedules has not allowed that to happen yet ether. It's early, need to get off to work, hope what I have wrote is not too garbled, too many thoughts, not enough coffee. Great subject. |
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I've carried for years, and my wife started a couple years ago. When I started carrying we sat down and had a very frank conversation about what her "role" in a bad situation would be. Things she shouldn't say like "just shoot them already!" to draw attention to me/herself, etc. Now that she carries herself, we've spent a lot of time talking about "what if" situations. About every week or so one of us will pose a "shoot/no shoot" question to the other and we'll discuss it.
One of the things we had heard about, but have never had to utilize, is a code phrase to let the other know you're about to draw. One day I hope that we can find a gun we each like equally as well, so we have the same mags/caliber. |
| After several years of carrying and even teaching classes for 2 years (of which she attended several) but never pushing her, my wife decided on her own that she wanted to get her carry permit, make the accommodations to carry a pistol and get her own gun, a Shield in 9mm. She got the email this week that her permit is ready. I'm so proud. |
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I've carried for years, and my wife started a couple years ago. When I started carrying we sat down and had a very frank conversation about what her "role" in a bad situation would be. Things she shouldn't say like "just shoot them already!" to draw attention to me/herself, etc. Now that she carries herself, we've spent a lot of time talking about "what if" situations. About every week or so one of us will pose a "shoot/no shoot" question to the other and we'll discuss it. One of the things we had heard about, but have never had to utilize, is a code phrase to let the other know you're about to draw. One day I hope that we can find a gun we each like equally as well, so we have the same mags/caliber. "Look out!" seems like a good code word to me 
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Quoted:
I've carried for years, and my wife started a couple years ago. When I started carrying we sat down and had a very frank conversation about what her "role" in a bad situation would be. Things she shouldn't say like "just shoot them already!" to draw attention to me/herself, etc. Now that she carries herself, we've spent a lot of time talking about "what if" situations. About every week or so one of us will pose a "shoot/no shoot" question to the other and we'll discuss it. One of the things we had heard about, but have never had to utilize, is a code phrase to let the other know you're about to draw. One day I hope that we can find a gun we each like equally as well, so we have the same mags/caliber. Wife carries in purse. I like the idea of a code word as well as the shoot/no shoot scenarios. I think I will take that as an item to start doing. We practice quite a bit. I would also like for her to carry on her person. It is not a fashion thing, just have not found the right holster she likes. Some of it may be that you have to get use to carrying on your person. |
We don't train... she just recently got her CWP and pistol... and finally got her pistol back from being recalled... she doesn't like the holster she's got so I ordered her a new one and I'm waiting for it to come probably this week. She wants to carry on body and is willing to an extent to sacrifice fashion for safety. 
She's right handed. I'm left handed. When we walk together, she keeps her purse on her left side... and my left hand is holding her right hand... it's just more comroftable for me that way. I know I should probably have her on my right side so I'm free to draw if necessary... and she'll be able to draw without interference as well from her right side. We probably need to start talking tactics, what if scenarios, and reviewing CWP laws... and I'd like for us to both take a pistol class or two or three... |
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One of the things we had heard about, but have never had to utilize, is a code phrase to let the other know you're about to draw. With that in mind two things come to mind: 1) If you have time to communicate a code word, it could be argued you had time to do something other than shoot. More to the point it suggests there was in fact not an imminent threat present when you decided to shoot (i.e you spoke a code word and then drew your pistol) as you were not shooting but instead premeditating the shooting. That little distinction can be a major problem in a self defense shoot, and what will bring it up is one of you mentioning a "code word" was used. 2) The other side of this is that It's also a potentially bad tactic in a self defense shoot. To quote Tuco: "When you have to shoot, shoot, don't talk." In essence, if the situation is grave enough to draw and shoot, you need to be drawing and shooting, not speaking a code word indicating you are drawing and shooting before you draw and shoot. |
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It took a long time to get my wife into guns and training and carrying. I'm talking, we've been together for 13 years, and she's only been into shooting for roughly 5 of them. And only really really into it all for 4. She was not anti gun, or even anti-shooting, she just wasn't raised around guns or people that did shoot recreationally. What really tipped her over the edge was when I started going to classes at DARC (semi-local to me) and bringing back just a wealth of info and experiences and drills and what not. Since then we have done both a carbine and pistol class together, and she's been part of a beta testing program for some women's pistol classes. She has fired probably 15K rounds out of her rifle and pistol in the past 2 years.
One of the things we did first was ditch her abusive .380 Sig and get her a real pistol she could manipulate and control under rapid fire. If you guys are giving your wives little 380s and snub 38s, you're making a potentially fatal mistake, as far as future interest in shooting goes. The fact of the matter is those little pistols recoil worse than a 9mm, if not .40, and I've met very few women of any size or stature that can work the slide of any 380 out there reliably and/or under pressure. I carry M&Ps, so we got her a full size M&P to train with. It worked out well because she is one hell of a shooter with an M&P. That turned into both of us carrying some flavor of M&P, including Shields if we can't conceal anything bigger and thus having backup mags for each other. We feel that the compatibility thing is vastly underplayed in real life. I've been halfway through a shoothouse in force-on-force sim training and ran out of ammo/mags. I was using one brand of pistol while the rest of my small unit was using another. Its not a good feeling. I don't want my wife or I to have the same feeling in a mall or a parking lot when shit is still going down. We don't usually go out loaded for bear, but we do usually have at least 1 mag apiece extra. The OP mentioned having his g/f carry spare mags even when she's not packing. I fully support this idea. If somebody is worth shooting in real life, then it is worth shooting them until they are no longer a threat. And if you're carrying a compact or a single stack, ammo is already limited. If your Domestic 06 (D6) is hesitant to carry in real life, carry spare mags, etc then there is no shortage of terrorist attacks, murders, kidnappings, rapes, etc to use as examples. For God sakes don't force the issue at all though. Find a situation that is VERY similar to something that could happen to her and bring it up. If you have kids, bring the safety of the kids into it. Liberals have been using "its for the children" against us for decades. Don't be afraid of the enemy's weapon. Another thing you HAVE to do is train together, including dry firing. Both of the DARC pistol courses included some 2 person drills, where you are in some basic everyday scenarios and a threat is presented that you have to react to. Dont just walk up to the line and say "ok, pretend we just drew down on Achmed and now lets both drill him 3 times each". You have to have a basic plan for who is doing what, or who is going where, and work those out on the flat range. You also need to work out what to do if one of you is armed and the other isn't, or if somebody has to dive for an ankle holster or dig through a purse vs just drawing off a belt line. Talk about it, work out a plan, practice practice practice. And dry fire the drills before hand until D6 is 115% comfortable with it. Make sure you talk about concealment vs cover and point out the difference when you're in public. Dont crouch behind a planter in the food court and make pew pew noises. Just discretely point out something and say "remember we talked about cover? that is excellent cover if something happened right here". If you have a chance to sit down and talk, ask her some questions on the topic. Get her brain thinking about it too. Somebody else talked about code words which is also an excellent thing to use, but maybe not in the way people think. For a straight up walking down the street/mall/parking lot ambush gun fight, "GUN" is a really good one, as it leaves no doubt. "Threat" could mean a lot of things and anything less specific than that you're just asking for trouble. If you are planning on being verbal before you draw down, which is something to train for, that's when actual code words come in handy. I have a very specific thing I do before I'm about to draw from concealment which is to get my hands up about mid chest in the surrender/passive stance. That gets inside the bad guys head thinking I'm submissive, when I'm really setting up to draw and fire which I've done several thousand times before. And my D6 knows to watch for it. What you can do then is rather forcefully interject that word into your sentence and then go to town. "hey guys we don't want any trouble, times are hard blah blah blah ALLONSY" bang bang bang. Again. This needs to be short, sweet and specific. Dont use something you can't think of and don't say something you're going to use everyday. Get both of you used to hearing that word and think to yourselves "Shit is about to go down" and react. If you can find someone doing force-on-force training with Sim pistols ABSOLUTELY GET BOTH OF YOU INTO THAT CLASS. As often as possible. Actually getting shot at is a big eye opener for where you're at with your ability to react. Dont forget beyond anything else to not push the D6. Women don't work the same way men do and sometimes, especially in relationships, that can be overlooked. Get her interested at her own speed, get her to train at her own speed, and get her brain working itself at her own speed. The results could astonish you. |
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get training, and not just with gun hanlding, but medical, F-on-F, etc
shoot, move, communicate utilizing the old wyatt protocol (Fight, assess, scan, top off, take cover, treat woundes, talk (to cops, each other, etc) as necessary take force on force...cant emphasize this enough drills: individual drills, basics like weapons handling, moving to cover, etc; together: communication is key, as well as movement and the other individual drills |