Defensive Shooting From a Pocket or Pocket Holster

One of the advantages of operating in a cold-weather environment, or any environment where it’s natural for you to be wearing a jacket and keeping your hands in your pockets, is it gives you the opportunity to be ready to use force to defend yourself.

Concealed Carry Pocket Holsters

Continuing our series of concealed carry tips, we discuss using concealed carry pocket holsters. You can place a J-frame or other pistol with a long, heavy double-action trigger pull in an exterior pocket and you can be in a ready position. Then all you need to do is orient the pistol — through the pocket — in the direction of the threat. You don’t have to draw the pistol out of the pocket. It may be difficult to orient the pistol toward the high-center chest from a pocket that lies at or below your waist, but you can point it at a vital target on the body.

When under threat, you can easily move from a natural standing position into an orientation position inside the pocket and shoot through the pocket. This is not a preferred shooting situation and not feasible if you need to shoot at extension at something beyond two arms’ reach. But in an extreme close quarters ambush, when you are caught off-guard, it is possible to place combat accurate shots from this position.

Range Demonstration

Next we demonstrate shooting with concealed carry pocket holsters and firing the pistol through a jacket pocket. This is a skill you need to learn during defensive firearms training and then practice.

Because this is an extreme close quarters shooting situation, we offer some tips for your at-home practice. Make sure you set up the target at an appropriate human height, that the target is completely pass-through, you have a safe backstop and a spotter.