A reminder, I’m not an attorney. None of this is legal advice. Simply passing along my framework, previous experience, and training.
By request… somewhat… this is more laying the groundwork for a future “to carry or not to carry” post that will get into some considerations for when you may have a serious problem if caught carrying in a non-permissive environment. Nobody wants to write that post. I don’t really either because it gets into some considerations to take when deciding to flat ignore the law for reasons. Some people will take that as permission or advocacy to ignore the law when it is not. Today I’m laying the groundwork by starting with some practicalities and considerations of carrying your weapon when it’s “not allowed” even if legal.
Non permissive carry is the idea of being in a location where if your weapon is discovered you’re going to have a problem. While it may be legal to be armed, the person confronting you may not care and may in a hostile manner insist on their way. This person may be an ill-informed police or security officer. Whether they are right or not doesn’t matter. It’s our responsibility to diffuse and deescalate the situation. Especially if you’ve ignored a sign or notice regardless of if that sign is lawful or carries weight of law. Best way to deal with this is have a very solid concealment game, avoid accidental discoveries of your weapon, and know the weapons laws as if you were a lawyer in your state. Ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure, because cures usually have side effects.
This has come to mind for me as Montana has passed what is in essence a no gun-free zones and permitless conceal carry law. There are now very few places in Montana where someone with a conceal carry permit cannot lawfully have their weapon, especially permit holders when concealed. However, one of the new law’s stipulations is that a private property owner may restrict the carry rights of someone on their property. This isn’t a crime if one ignores the property owner’s posted request and has a conceal carry permit, it just allows the property owner to ask you to leave or put your weapon somewhere off their premises. If there is a refusal to abide by the request of the property owner trespass not a weapons violation can be charged. This is an attempt to balance one person’s 2nd and 4th Amendment rights with another person’s 4th Amendment rights. Of course this is really only an issue if you’re caught carrying. The only time you should be caught carrying is when defending the lives of the people on the property by a felonious assault. In which case, they should be glad you ignored them. If not they’re idealistic, ungrateful, idiots. What we’ve been seeing is no firearms/weapons signs going up all over the state in places they were never considered as people panic there will be irresponsible people with guns everywhere. That was true before the law, and it’s the same after. All this law did was limit the ability of the government to charge you with a crime for having the tools to protect yourself. Also, I think there is a fear of liability that if there is no sign and a shooting occurs as if a sign would be a factor. Climate in this state though, I think having one of those signs opens one up to liability as the shooting occurred because the property owner made those inside vulnerable with no way to defend themselves, and the property provided no armed security of their own. The good decent people honored the request, the murderer did not and will not.
I treat everywhere outside of my house as a non-permissive carry zone. I would prefer to not have the conversation about my weapon as I assume anyone that would point it out is unfriendly. Many of the following are standard operating procedure as a result.
Very Solid Concealment Game When carrying a weapon you do not get to dress however you like and carry in whatever location you like. That T-shirt that shows off your workouts massively restricts what weapon you may carry and where. It may restrict carrying at all. You’re not carrying a G17 in a sidecar while wearing a shirt that’s one size too small. You must decide if you want to dress as you like or carry the weapon that you like. If you are of small stature you may not be able to carry certain weapons period. You must learn how to move to avoid printing. If you’re at 4:00 you must not bend at the waist ever. Your freedom will show. If you’re going to print, or find that acceptable, you might as well open carry and take all the negatives that come along. Button down shirts are pretty much cheater mode for carry if you wear the proper size. Plaid is popular for a reason as it hides the folds in your shirt that are actually the grip showing, darker colors accomplish this as well. A properly fitting and goldilocks stiff belt will draw the gun close to your body and flatten much more of the grip against you. This will prevent odd protruding bulges in your shirt that are obviously something hard. Good belt will prevent “tip out” where the heavy ammunition containing rear of the gun tries to flop forward out of your pants. Carrying the gun deeper in your pants will help as well. Balancing act though as you still need to get a solid grip on your weapon, carry too low and you’ll find your fingers will be blocked by your belt. You may not be able to have the best possible carry position for a lightning draw and be able to have super solid concealment. Yet another balancing act. I tend to sacrifice a bit on my draw, knowing I can train to overcome, in order to have a more concealed weapon. Good holsters help immensely. Not only are they more comfortable so you won’t have as much urge to adjust they do a much better job of flattening the weapon against your flesh. I think claws are important to the point of being nearly non optional. There are some cases where they cannot be used or don’t work well, such as beltless carry with an ulticlip in pants with a very flexible belt line. Generally though a claw should be used. I’m a huge fan of appendix carry and think it is easily the most concealable and most practical position to carry a firearm at this time. Fitness helps a ton. It increases your endurance at carrying a hunk of steel and alters the chest to waist ratio in a way favorable to hiding things on your belt line, especially at appendix. Where it doesn’t help is there’s a desire to show off that hard work in ways that make carry much much harder. All of this is directed at flattening out lines and making you as sleek as possible to prevent areas that your clothing will stretch or bunch revealing the outline of the weapon. Better if it can make it so it appears as if your belt line is only belt without things attached to it. If it does appear something is attached it should be as non-descript as possible as most people don’t immediately assume “gun”, though we defenders might. Learn to carry with smaller weapons as they are much more forgiving in the prevention of discovery. Yes, they are harder to fight effectively with. Truth is you’re much more likely to be discovered with your weapon than use it to defend your life. Set your priorities properly with this in mind. As you get better at carry you will become more adept at carrying so can move to larger weapons that are better and easier to fight with. You’ll also have more confidence in your carry such that your behavior and gait do not give away your tools. The more non-permissive of an environment the smaller of a weapon I’m going to carry and the more I’m going to maximize concealment. I may consider foregoing the firearm altogether and relying on other weapons or skills even though they are not as effective or preferred. Unfortunately I not only have to defend against violent actors but myself against a society that doesn’t recognize the difference between wolves, feral/stray dogs, and sheep dogs.
Avoid Accidental Discoveries of Your Weapon With a bit of recon, observation, and unfortunately humility you can avoid most discoveries of your weapon. Look for security. Most locations do not have metal detectors. Those are apparatuses designed to find RFID chips to prevent shoplifting and cause people to think they’re metal detectors. If there’s no security guy with a tray to take off metal objects, it’s not a metal detector. Do a search online about locations and their permissiveness to carry, particularly public places like museums, zoos, and parks. This can prevent a walk back to a car or hotel, or something far more inconvenient when discovery is nearly certain. Seems to me the number one way a weapon is accidentally discovered is someone bumping into you or an unexpected hug. Need to have some severe personal awareness and some kind of game to prevent people from just running up and grabbing on to you, and absolutely avoid unknown people bumping into you. This might involve being patient in order to absolutely maintain your personal space. It is of the highest priority that other people do not touch your weapon. The next way is shirt ride-up making the weapon visible. Key here is being subtle about pinning your shirt down, or pulling it back down. Do this too much and it will be obvious you’re trying to hide something under the garment. Final way is printing which is discussed above. One cannot be sloppy on these points. The average person seems to react to a firearm out in the world as if it is a hand grenade about to go off and kill them in particular. That the only reason you would have a weapon is you imminently intend to murder someone, probably them. It is extremely important that other people are not aware of the fact that you are armed right now.
Know the Law Know for a fact you’re lawful to carry when you do. Many of the places that say “no weapons” have no legal standing and rely on the fact that most people don’t know the law. The non-permissive place assumes, correctly, that people believe that sign is informing them of the law not that it is a request. Normally, unless being absolutely blatantly bad with carry there will be an assumption you’re an off duty police officer. This is a key reason that you should dress and behave well. But, this is your last ditch. If discovered and they make an issue of it they will go with that trespass route and ask you to leave. You need to comply with this, otherwise you are wrong, and while the arrest may be political and as if part of a protest. It is a lawful arrest and your court case goes the route of an arrest during a protest from the right. As in you will be convicted and suffer further consequences after jail time is served and fines paid. Even if you do comply, are fully inside the law and your rights, you may have to be humble and eat a wrongful arrest dealing with all the consequences of the process until you get your day in court, be willing to appeal it up as far as necessary until a fair reading of the law is had. This must be understood as a possibility when carrying in a non-permissive environment even one when you’re within the law. For the purposes of this write-up you need to absolutely know you are in the right and why, with statute and case law. You certainly can, calmly and respectfully, point out what the statute says and which one to the arresting officer. They may not care. You may get to nail the officer with an unlawful arrest/restraint charge as qualified immunity generally doesn’t apply to police being ignorant of the law, but that will happen months later. Likely they’ll get to revise charges after the fact so they aren’t in the wrong, completely, to avoid you having a valid complaint against the State. Getting into this category you’re playing the long game and are willing to eat the legal fees. Remember… we don’t argue with people because it generally makes things worse and we don’t get our way. Especially with the police.