Office Defense, Chapter 1: Staging a Defensive Firearm

Welcome to my fake office. We're gonna be talking about office defense situations and preparing to defend yourself from workplace violence or responding during a mass shooter attack or any kind of mass violence that happens in your workplace. The first thing we're gonna talk about is staging a defensive firearm. Uh, two caveats. First of all, if you carry a defensive firearm on your body and you're going to wear it all day long when you're in your workplace office environment, then you may.

Not need to worry about most of the information in this video. However, you might decide that you want to have an auxiliary defensive firearm mounted somewhere or staged somewhere in your office workplace. You might also be in a situation where you're going to have a communal firearm that is accessible for everyone who's trained and qualified and prepared to use it in a worst case scenario in the office, and that's where some of these tips might help you even though you personally carry a concealed weapon all the time. So let's talk about also the idea that you may not be staging a firearm at all because you can't have a firearm or you choose not to have a firearm in the workplace, in which case some of the other chapters in this series will definitely be of interest to you, especially the ones on improvised defensive tools. When it comes to the firearm, let's assume for a second that we're not talking about concealed carry because that's pretty simple.

however. Carry your gun. That's how you're gonna have your gun staged in the office in the workplace. The first thing I wanna talk about is a hard point. Now hard point is the term that we use when we talk about mounting a holster to a fixed object and it can be a hard point like a piece of furniture.

It could be a wall, it could be a closet, it could be, uh, maybe even inside of a vehicle we would talk about hard pointing. The number one concern that a lot of people have with hard pointing is that generally we're talking about having a separate holster, right? So maybe something like this separate holster that fits the handgun that I'm carrying right now and this is on a G code what's called an RTI hanger. There's an RTI module underneath of the desk here and uh sometimes it's easier to find than others, but once I get that holster secured in there and set that lock it in. When I come to work, if I don't want to wear my pistol all day long, but I'm going to be in my office, I don't wanna have to maybe draw while seated, which can be harder, right, and remove concealment garments, things like that.

If I did get attacked while I was in the chair, I might choose when I get into my office to remove the firearm from my holster and insert it into the holster that is hard pointed. To my desk now while I'm sitting here doing my work, I'm having a meeting I'm talking with someone, if there's an event where I need my firearm, I simply reach underneath and I have a good grip on the gun just like drawing from a regular holster. The trigger isn't exposed. It's not floating around in the desk drawer, something like that, even if I were to take my holster off at this point, right, it's gonna be a lot more comfortable to go through the day. Out that holster inside my waistband, I put this in my bag, put it in a closet, put it in a drawer, put it somewhere else.

If I were to put the gun in here and just put it in that drawer, remember that's an inconsistent access point. In other words, when I open that drawer, sometimes the gun might be canted this way, sometimes it's canted that way, sometimes the the staplers is on top of it, whatever, it's much better to have a dedicated holster spot. Let's say that you knew when you were getting dressed for work that you were going to use a hard point holster when you got to your office. Well, with the RTI hanger from G Code, I can have a belt slide holster that accepts the RTI holster, and maybe I have a jacket, maybe I have obviously you know outer wear sweater or something like that. So this is gonna be better concealed if I'm really gonna do this.

When I get to work, take off my jacket, and now I can unlock the RTI holster and not have to worry about actually unholstering the gun itself. I simply remove. From the RTI hanger module from that puck, I come down under here and again find that hard point and lock that in. Once I get that locked in, I now could remove that belt slide, but honestly it's pretty innocuous. It stays very flushed to the body, easy to conceal, and it gives me the opportunity every time I leave the office, I can very easily without unholstering the gun, bring the gun and the holster and put it back on my body if I'm gonna go to a meeting, use the restroom, go to lunch, and obviously when I leave at the end of the day.

Another option when it comes to staging a defensive firearm inside of the office is of course going to be to have a quick access safe now. I'm a big fan of quick access safes. This is a life pod from Voltech. Obviously this one's out in the open, right? And it's not secured to anything.

Well, first of all, this could be hidden also we're gonna talk about that in a second. This could also be hard pointed with a cable or it could even be attached or a lot of quick access safes obviously can be attached to furniture, so you could actually hard point the quick access safe, and this is gonna be an option because remember the the gun that's underneath the desk in that holster isn't really responsibly staged in terms of preventing. Unauthorized access, we generally say that hiding a gun isn't enough. Now if that's gonna be the communal firearm that everybody has access to, you know, you wanna make sure that you're preventing the unauthorized the visitor, the janitor, um, obviously an attacker in the space. So if you just have a gun in the corner and it's easily accessible, that's not gonna be something that can't easily be used against you, can't easily be stolen, things like that.

So I prefer the quick access safe, especially if you're gonna be leaving the office a lot, leaving the gun unattended. So obviously with quick access safe I can get into a situation very quickly and easily where I have the firearm ready for use. I can stage extra magazines in there. I can have the gun secured. I could also have the gun, um.

That's secured with a holster in there which is gonna make it very easy to put the holster on or I could stage a holster nearby so that if I needed to leave the office, are we gonna move? Are we going to be checking on a friend of mine or I gonna move to another barricade area? I can get to the gun, either have the holster in there or have a holster that's very easy to put on quickly like this paddle holster staged nearby. And then once again we talk about having that potentially hidden. Um, when it comes to staging a defensive tool, another option that you're gonna have, uh, in terms of like off body carry is going to be a bag or a backpack.

Obviously there's a lot of bags. This one's from Mission First Tactical, uh, designed with compartments specifically to have a holstered firearm in them, and this may be the most comfortable, most convenient way for you to have a firearm in the workplace because obviously you can show up to work carrying the bag, take the bag off, it's in. Office, um, you know there's a firearm in there. Maybe nobody else does. Once again we want to be really careful about the idea that just merely hiding a gun isn't preventing unauthorized access at the highest level or even I think the best practice level of responsibility.

So if you were to have the firearm in a bag in your office, you're gonna lock your office when you leave. Um, notice also that we do have a lock on this cabinet. So if I were to keep that Voltech quick access safe out in the open when I'm in the office, um, when I leave the office I could simply put it in here and take this key with me. So that is an added level of access prevention which is going to be really important whenever we talk about. Staging a defensive firearm in any public space, but particularly in an office where you're generally open, you're bringing people in and out, you're having meetings, um, and even coworkers who may not be trained with a firearm or familiar with firearms safety rules may have access to the box, hide the box, secure the box.