Concealed Carry Corner: Best Skills To Build For Carrying Concealed

Welcome back to another edition of Concealed Carry Corner. Last week, we talked about shooting from retention and looked at the pros and cons of retention shooting. If you happened to miss that article, click the link here to check out that article. Lately, I have gotten a fairly decent amount of questions about what a semi-new shooter needs to build their skills from practice. Let’s take a closer look at some key factors to consider when trying to learn the best skills to build for carrying concealed.

Concealed Carry Corner @ TFB:

• Concealed Carry Corner: Is Retention Shooting A Good Idea?
• Concealed Carry Corner: Best Carry Spots For Daily Tasks
• Concealed Carry Corner: Carry Rules To Break
• Concealed Carry Corner: Best To Worst Carry Positions

The first and most important skill to build up is your basic fundamentals. Without having the fundamental foundation of shooting, it’ll be hard to proceed without being proficient with a firearm. Knowing how to properly align iron sights, trigger manipulation, grip, and recoil management along with stance are all vital to shooting consistently as well as accurately. Some concepts like trigger control and sight alignment may seem incredibly simple to some of you, but keep in mind that new shooters may be completely unaware of various concepts like trigger control and proper grip.

Learning how to shoot safely and accurately is the first step in becoming a skilled individual when carrying concealed. Almost all of the fundamentals can be practiced at home with dry fire practice. Dry firing is a huge benefit to new shooters and shouldn’t be ignored. Some skills that can be improved without live fire are trigger control, sight alignment, and proper grip. Recoil management is tricky and requires live fire but everything else can typically be done without firing a single shot.

Just like working on fundamentals, drawing from concealment can also be practiced from the comfort of your home. Doing 15 minutes of drawing from concealment a week can help develop muscle memory and make a shooter more confident in their ability to draw their firearm. I can’t tell you how many people have asked if they should go out first thing to the range and practice drawing from concealment which is the equivalent of running before you learn how to crawl. It’s important to do one thing at a time and progress off skills you have prior knowledge with.

Learning how to draw smoothly from a holster is the first step before building on that skill. Once there’s confidence in the draw with dry fire, then it’s time to hit the range draw from concealment and fire into a target. Some ranges don’t allow drawing from concealment but there are often public ranges or clubs around that allow people to work on drawing from concealment and moving while shooting. Drawing from concealment should be the second skill you work on after being confident with the fundamentals of pistol shooting.

Recently, I have started to take a page out of the competition book and bought simple hula hoops as a shooting area where you start in one hoop and run across the range to the next area of targets and cannot start shooting until you reach the hoop. These hoops are often a dollar at various stores and let you have a designated area to engage targets. This allows you not only to think about finding cover and getting away from the threat but also lets you practice how to run and reengage. It’s an unlikely situation but still proves important to work through it during training before doing it in the real world.

The final step when someone feels confident firing and moving is to include shooting from cover. These can be simple blue barrels that are at most ranges or even a piece of wood to show the beginning edge of a barrier. Being able to move around cover and shoot from uncomfortable positions is incredibly important. Depending on the situation, you may find yourself in a position less than ideal or something that’s not a standard shooting stance. Being able to navigate and be comfortable in awkward positions not only gives you more flexibility but also allows you to adapt and try to work through uncommon situations.

People will ask about what they need to work on when just starting out carrying concealed. They want to learn and become more proficient but don’t know where to start. I typically tell them these skills to work on most but what do you guys think? Is there something else that should be added? Do you think I’m missing something important? Let me know down in the comments below I’m curious what you guys would do to answer this question. If you have questions about carrying concealed or firearms in general, be sure to shoot me a message on Instagram @fridgeoperator. Stay safe out there and we will see you next week for another edition of Concealed Carry Corner.