Today’s Pro Tip is, learning how to manipulate your small pistol for appendix carry. Did you know that there are 13 million concealed carry holders in the U.S. today, according to Crime Research? Well, what we need to do is learn how to understand what small guns can do, how to manipulate them, and how to shoot them, but do it safely when using an appendix carry.

Whenever I have a deep concealment gun, I always worry about lint and dirt. So, I always make sure that I clean my gun probably once a month or once every six weeks, because I carry it every single day.

When loading my ammunition, I always want to make sure that I inspect the ammunition to make sure that the primer is seated properly, there’s no defect in the actual case itself, but I always want to inspect every single round before it goes in there.

If I look here, I can see that I have an upside down primer. It’s very important to inspect your ammunition. If that was going in the gun, in your first round, it could cost you your life.

Before we ever get shooting, we need to learn how to manipulate the slide properly. The springs in small guns can be very difficult to move back. With serrations on the back of the slide, what we want to do is grab them and pinch it, and what we want to do is push the gun forward by hanging on. That will allow you to properly load the gun correctly, and unload it.

When inserting a magazine into the gun, make sure you hear it seat or click. There are several ways we can do that, by pushing with the palm of our hand or, for a small pocket gun, to come over the top. This will be very important that you understand that the magazine is seated to be ready to fire. Let’s work on some failure drills.

What we’re demonstrating here is a malfunction. We shoot a round, move the slide to the rear, getting a bad round out, re-engaging the target, having another malfunction, re-engaging the target. We’re working on manipulation.

Now let’s talk about re-holstering your firearm and learning how to draw from deep concealment. It doesn’t matter what type of holster you’re using. You always want to make sure you watch your trigger finger, taking the gun out of the holster and placing it back into the holster.

This will be very important to practice this during dry fire, long before you ever get to the range. Let’s do some live fire drills.

The one Pro Tip here you can learn is always make sure your finger is outside of the trigger guard when holstering and re-holstering. Always exaggerate that when you’re dry firing or in live fire. With all the techniques we learned here, the most important one is safety. Always keep your finger out of the trigger. Whether you got a briefcase, you got a coat pocket, or you’re carrying the gun in the actual pocket itself. Make sure to check out some of BLACKHAWK! holsters, the ARC holsters and the new TechGrip. Hope you guys had fun. Stay safe. I’ll see you soon on the range.