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doublepush wrote: I always wondered what I would do if I were on the stage playing an instrument instead of geeking out in the sound booth. I guess not much would be different.

I do play an instrument on stage, and sing, and I am on a pair of gigantic HD screens half of the time and a couple dozen 42" LCD monitors all over the building and I have never been made even by people who know I have a CHL.

That includes bending down to adjust pedals and effects, crawling around to chase down errant cables, etc. The biggest thing is that my wireless pack on my guitar strap tends to bump the butt of the gun. But I have a wireless IEM receiver clipped to my belt on the other side. I guess folks figure I have stuff clipped to my belt so no biggie. But anyway, out of 5,000-6,000 congregation members and a hundred or so staff members nobody has ever mentioned or noticed that I am carrying as far as I can tell.

I do have suspicions about the guy on the security team who always wears a fanny pack, though.

Most of the time I am at church, I am on a stage/platform. Actually this means that if there were any "crazed gunman" scenario, I would likely be in the line of fire because of my position. The stage in our main sanctuary is over 4 feet high, and the floor is polished concrete. This is not a good scenario for shooting at someone on the floor without hitting a bystander either directly or with a ricochet.

Little matter for me anyway, since during these services there will be at least 10 more armed CHL holders in the room who are in a much better tactical position than me. I am not carrying there because I expect a crazed gunman. I think that is possible but pretty unlikely. But we have had some nutty people there and I do think that particularly not when church is going on, property crime is fairly likely. There is a lot of expensive stuff in that building. Computers, sound equipment, my own equipment, plus a lot of expensive cars in the parking lot.

Church is one of the few places I go frequently where I am allowed to carry. I figure in my church congregation, during any one service of adults we probably have 10-20 people carrying, about half of which I know about for a fact.

Since I got my CHL I have been carrying at church every week. However I am in a rather large church and I sure as heck hope that nobody ever has to fire a gun in defense of self or others during a church service because the probability that bystanders are going to get hit is nearly 100%.

The "crazed gunman" scenario that has played out in other churches around the country is probably as likely at my church as it would be at any other church in America. If someone walks in shooting, I am pretty sure that they will quickly get shot, and I would bet the investigation afterward would end up with the police taking a dozen different guns in for ballistic testing and they wouldn't even know who all shot the BG until after pulling slugs from the body and checking them against confiscated gun calibers. However there are no clean shots to be had in a room with 1500-2000 people in it.