Teamless wrote:Thanks for all of the replies, much as I had expected, its just a time thing.
But most of all, I have to give it up for TAM
, he is so blunt, pointed and much the same demeanor that I carry in my life, I like your response the best!
The Annoyed Man wrote:Strap it on. Wear it. Forget about it.
Thanks for the props, but I can't claim credit for that one. I actually learned it here, just like everyone else.
This is as good a place as any to bring a couple of things up which are related...
First, when you first start to go out in public while packing, you're going to suddenly feel like
everyone is staring at you and knows you have a gun; and you're going to get positively light-headed the first time you are around a cop while carrying. There is a point at which one's paranoia actually becomes suspicious behavior in itself, and it
will draw unwanted attention. The best antidote is to calm down about it.
The best way to do this is to remind yourself that: A) you have a 2nd Amendment
right to keep and bear arms, and by choosing to carry a gun, you are positively affirming that right, which makes you a good citizen; and B) you are committing no crime because the great state of Texas, in its wisdom, has seen fit to affirm your right to carry a gun in a concealed manner, making you a
trusted citizen. (Whether or not the state should have any say one way or the other in whether you can be trusted with carrying a concealed gun is a separate issue. But for purposes of CHL, they do, which makes you good to go.)
The first few days you carry, you will likely feel exhilarated, as if you are "getting away with it." But that feeling will wear off soon enough, and pretty soon, you may not feel fully dressed if you leave home without your pistol.
Secondly, don't worry about "printing." Printing is not a crime.
Intentional failure to conceal is a crime, and a zealous prosecutor (search for handog's thread on the matter of being falsely accused and arrested for an alleged intentional failure to conceal) might jack you up if your gun actually
shows and the cops get involved. But, and here's another one I cannot claim any credit for, "concealed" means "concealed." The vast majority of people are not even noticing what you're wearing, let alone if there appears to be something underneath it. They're just not that observant. They are operating in
condition white most of the time — unlike most CHLers who operate in (or at least
should be operating in)
condition yellow most of the time. But even if someone notices that you have some object on your belt which is printing against your shirt a little bit, there is no way on God's green earth for that person to know if it is a gun, a PDA, a pair of glasses in a case, or any one of a number of other possibilities. If it were an arrestable offense, the jails would be full of people who got picked up because their crackberry printed against their shirt.
There are things you can do to mitigate printing, both by choosing the right fit of clothes, and also choosing shirts with darker colors and patterns on them — hence all the Hawaiian shirts you see on CHLers. These days, I just assume that anybody I see with a Hawaiian shirt is probably armed, and I probably have as good a chance of being right as being wrong about it. But the bottom line is, don't worry about it too much. I have made my clothing choices, and I stick to those kinds of choices, and it
works. And if you think you have to worry about printing in the Walmart parking lot, try being
on stage in front of hundreds of people every week like I do! You learn to stop worrying about printing in a big hurry that way.
