Learning Presentation From Appendix Carry Position

There's a lot of people in our community that are looking at switching from a traditional carry, at the hip or behind the hip to a center line carry. Obviously popularly known as appendix carry. Now for the right-handed person that traditionally puts the grip right around where the appendix is for the left-handed person, it's gonna put it over here. And I like to call it center line carry. Anytime you're carrying a gun between the points of your hip, we refer to a center line carry. A lot of people have a lot of anxiety over appendix carry because obviously the firearm is going to be covering parts of your body when it's inside the waistband and it brings the muzzle area, if you were to have a negligent discharge, very close to areas that are gonna bleed out very quickly, if you do have that catastrophic failure. Obviously the femoral artery is gonna be right under the muzzle and if you aren't presenting properly that can be a serious safety issue. The fact is that if you are presenting properly from the appendix position, it's probably at least as safe if not safer as bringing the gun from behind your hip where most people will cross at least the outside of their leg or possibly their whole torso as they come around from a four or five o'clock position. Now a lot of people have overlooked this for many years and kind of avoided talking about it. But now that they're saying appendix carry might be dangerous I think it's important to admit that. Now when we have that firearm here inside the waistband obviously I'm not wearing a holster at this point but this is a gray training gun. At this point, people say, "Well how can I learn how to do this safely? This is kind of dangerous. It's kind of hinky, emotional issues here. Like how do I learn how to do this safely with my firearm out on the range in the middle of a class?" And the answer is let's think about how we originally learned. Most people don't start off deep cover, inside the waistband with a concealed sub-compact gun. They'll start out just like this with an outside the waistband holster with a full-sized gun. And that's actually the way we recommend that people do their training for their fundamental defensive shooting skill development and then they learn to apply that to inside the waistband and or smaller guns. Well, we're gonna do the same thing with appendix carry. We're gonna take our outside the waistband holster, we're gonna remove it, however that is, whether it's a belt slide or in this case we have our easy on, easy off with the rack holster. I'm gonna move my belt buckle out of the way and I'm gonna place this outside the waistband holster in basically the same place that it would be if I were using an appendix carry holster. Now, this keeps you from having to invest in any new holsters, keep you from having to put the gun inside the waistband. It keeps you from having to deal with a lot of the issues that people have when they say, "Well, I'm curious about it but I'm not sure it's gonna work for me." Well now for $0, we just move this holster to the front and we're gonna be able to practice our presentation from the holster very safely in a way that is congruent with how we would grip the gun to present it if it were inside the waistband in a traditional appendix carry holster. This is probably not the way anyone's ever gonna carry a gun. If you're ready for appendix carry, if you're ready for center line carry, you're probably gonna be inside the waistband. Very low-profile, highly concealable position, very easy to get to. But the mechanics of that presentation after you've recognized the need to shoot you're gonna reach down, you're gonna push your hips forward, you're gonna pull the gun straight up. Obviously the muzzle is already in front of your body. Continue to orient it towards the threat and then either stay in the ready position or drive out to the shooting position. Well, that's from outside the waistband. Let's look at how that would work from inside the waistband. I'll put the gun behind the holster. Same thing. I reach down, I get my grip, I come straight up when I push my hips forward that angles the muzzle in front of my body, I orient towards the threat, stay in the ready position or drive out to the shooting position. So by training outside the waistband I'm able to lower the risk factor significantly. I'm able to move more freely. I'm able to use a larger gun and I can get that practice I need to get so that I'm comfortable with center line carry. This is the procedure I recommend you follow especially if you don't have professional supervision. If you're not taking a class, you're just gonna go to the range and experiment a little bit. Take your outside of the waistband holster, put it to your center line and go ahead and get some good reps, live fire, ready to go, after warming up, after checking the process and of course, after reviewing the rest of our videos on appendix carry here at personaldefensenetwork.com.