The Concealed Carry Skill: What Problems are we Solving?

Originally published 04 Aug 2026

Part I: Street Crime and Series Intro

We’re coming up on our inaugural Advanced Concealed Carry course, so I’d like to talk a bit about one of my favorite subject, combat as a multi-skill problem, from the perspective of the concealed carry guy or girl.  At least here in North Carolina the basic standards for licensure are pretty low.  You have to attend a course  providing eight hours of what could best be called legal instruction and handgun familiarization.  There is a marksmanship test, but standards are very low.  To be clear I am not advocating one way or the other on requirements for licensure versus constitutional carry, I’m just stating the current legal baseline training requirement.  Whether the state should mandate training is a different issue; but I think we could all agree that taken by itself, the NC Concealed carry course, no matter how well executed, is an inadequate level of training for someone who carries a gun every day and takes that responsibility seriously.  As a clarification I am not advocating that the state should increase its mandated requirements.  I am advocating that those who wish to be armed should seek out a higher level of proficiency.

This begs the question: what constitutes adequate training for the civilian who carries concealed?  A better question might be, “What problems does concealed carry seek to solve, and what skills are necessary to solve those problems?”  I’d say we have four basic problems.

·         Street crime

·         Civil unrest and riots (includes illegal checkpoints, flash-mobs, etc.)

·         Active shooter and terrorism scenarios

·         Defense of homes and businesses

While home defense is not strictly a concealed carry problem, I am covering it because a huge percentage of defensive firearms use happens at the residence of the firearm owner.  In my opinion this validates the instincts of most CCH holders, who typically consider home defense a major motivator towards firearms ownership.  In fact there is a large group of gun owners who are licensed to carry concealed but whose main priority is home defense, with actual concealed carry being only an occasional part of their daily routine.   Home defense and contingencies are their main priority.

For this article we’ll cover the problems of street crime. We'll cover civil unrest next, and active shooters, terrorism, and home defense after that.

When was the last time you had to draw you concealed carry piece and engage from inside of a vehicle? How about shooting through, under or around vehicles? What if you have to draw, shoot, then manipulate a steering wheel?

Street Crime

This includes mugging/armed robbery, car jacking, follow-home robberies or “jugging.” It also includes simple random violence motivated more by the violence itself than by property theft.  Gang initiations, the knockout game, and violence committed by the psychologically disturbed, and serial killings would fall under this.  We will cover mass shootings as their own category in the next article.

First, for street violence, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. In other words, the first-line solution to this problem is to reducing one’s target profile.  This includes:

·         Don’t be in stupid places at stupid times with stupid people

·         Recognize when something looks and feels wrong, and elect to no longer occupy that location, or seize the initiative to control the situation

·         Don’t look clueless, weak, and lost

·         Recognize pre-assault indicators

·         Have a verbal “play list” that can make potentially bad situations less so

While unavoidable street violence certainly exists (gang initiations and the knockout game come to mind),  I would argue that most of us can largely de-select ourselves as targets, even from some of these more random occurrences, with the above strategies.  That being said, in terms of kinetic solutions, I believe a training program should address the following.

·         Fundamentals of marksmanship and pistol presentation.  If you can’t get out of the holster and hit stuff, then you’re not going to do any of the tasks below efficiently either!

·         Less-than-lethal engagement and escalation of force. Just because you have hammer doesn’t mean everything is a nail.  There are a lot of sub-lethal incidents that are still violent, or potentially so.  How are we handling that?  We need escalation of force, dealing with unknown contacts, and a non-lethal skill set.

·         Combatives, weapons retention, and the dealing with weapons threats at extremely close quarters.  This ties into the escalation of force issue discussed in the last bullet point.  Also, a large percentage of street crime happens very close-up.  We need to understand reactionary gap and be able to deal with guns and knives at close quarters.  This means both protecting and deploying our own tools, and avoiding getting shot or stabbed when grappling, punches, elbows, knees, and headbutts are all in play.

·         Target discrimination.  Being able to make shoot/no-shoot calls at speed and under differing light conditions, or even while in physical contact, is a greatly under-trained and under-appreciated skill in the civilian world, and also plays into the escalation of force concept.

·         Getting off the X while engaging.  When faced with an attacker who is either charging with a non-firearm weapon, or attempting to draw a firearm, standing in one place and engaging in “quick draw” is a demonstrably bad idea.  There’s a better way.

"Getting off the X." This is a whole study in and of itself that is both under-taught and under-utilized in my opinion.

·         Fighting around vehicles.  Vehicles are a huge part of everyone’s daily life

·         Utilization of flashlights.  Bad stuff happens in the dark.

·         Emergency medical.  Self-explanatory.  Also, you are probably more likely to use basic trauma medical skills than any of the skills listed above.

In general I think the above list is a pretty good foundation for defensive handgun use.  When discussing further problem sets we will do so by discussing additional factors and additional skill emphasis.

Pistols, like any other inanimate object are tools. It's what you do with that tool that makes you a fighter, not your mere possession of it.

Conclusions

A commonality we can observe here is that firearms proficiency is mandatory, but that other less taught or often separately taught skills are also necessary.  If you carry a blade how do you integrate that with your firearms skills?  How do you transition from empty hand fighting to a draw should the situation escalate, or should you be unable to draw because of a threat inside arms reach better addressed with a blade?  How comfortable are you in low light?  How are your medical skills?  How often have you had to make shoot/no-shoot decisions?  How fast do you think you can process something like that?

These are in fact some highlights we want to hit in our advanced concealed carry course, but whether you choose to train with us, train with someone else, or learn on your own path, the time for training, learning, and self-assessment should be now, not some time in the future when you and your family are confronted by a mugger or a violent mob.   If you choose to exercise your second amendment rights then you should also choose to build multi-skill proficiency.

 Combat, by its nature, is an uncontrolled environment where it is completely possible to prevail through luck or die despite great skill.  However, most of the time those who are strong, courageous, and highly skilled prevail over those who are not.  So if you believe that carrying a firearm is advised because there is a risk of having to use it, then I would advise you to also reflect those attributes.  So be armed, be trained, and I’ll see you on the range!