Guns serve many functions in our lives. We use guns to protect our loved ones and ourselves. We use guns for sporting competition. We use guns to put food on the table. We use them for recreation because, for many of us, they are just plain fun to shoot. Many guns are just plain cool pieces of machinery, and it’s easy for us gadget-loving Americans to appreciate them. Unfortunately, there are occasions when the different uses and appeals of guns come into conflict with one another. The primary area in which I see this phenomenon is the “carry rotation.” Many armed citizens have a carry rotation of different handguns they carry on different days for little or no practical reason, but more based on which gun they like more on that given day. This is a suboptimal practice I recommend against. Let’s examine why and the limited exceptions.
Fun Gadget Versus Lifesaving Tool
When I ask people who use carry rotations why they carry a different gun every day, they typically respond that they just find it satisfying to carry a variety of cool guns and choose whichever one appeals to them on a given day. The problem with this approach is that it mixes two very distinct uses of handguns in way that reduces the efficacy of the more important one, which in this case is self-preservation. By choosing our lifesaving tool based on what is satisfying or fun on a given day, rather than by what tool is optimal to save our own lives or the lives of other innocents, we make the primary job more difficult. Our carry gun is a lifesaving tool, and we need to be able to technically perform with it, meaning shoot well under stress without needing to think about the steps of making the gun go bang and shooting quickly and accurately. We need all the mental bandwidth we can get to make prudent, legal, and ethical force decisions if we find ourselves violently attacked.
I am generally agnostic on what kind of gun one carries for self-protection, so long as it is reliable. With a high level of skill, I believe that a private citizen can adequately protect themselves with a full-size, compact or micro-compact semi-automatic or a revolver of similar sizes. Whatever handgun you choose, however, I recommend primarily practicing with and carrying that gun consistently. If you switch between different brands, makes, and models on a daily basis, this makes using whatever gun you happen to be carrying that day expertly while under stress considerably more difficult. If a citizen’s carry rotation consists of a 1911, a SIG Sauer P365, an HK VP9 with red dot sight and a Colt Python revolver (an actual “carry rotation” I once ran across), then the differences in grip angle, trigger press, sight picture, and manual of arms to shoot and reload each gun are very different. So different, in fact, that it would be impossible for any shooter to maintain a level of skill on all handguns simultaneously that was equal to the skill they could maintain if they simply picked one of those guns and practiced with and carried it consistently.
Just examining grip angle, any shooter who has switched to or from a Glock handgun has likely noticed issues with transitioning between Glocks and non-Glocks. With its unique 22 degree grip angle, a Glock handgun differs just enough from the more common 18 degree 1911-mimicking grip angle to cause issues with many people. When one switches to a Glock, there is an adjustment period as shooters typically present the gun and find themselves naturally pointing the muzzle high. Likewise, when Glock shooters switch to non-Glocks, they may find themselves needing to retrain their presentations to avoid pointing low. This same holds true for other semiautomatic pistols as well as revolvers, and if we’re switching back and forth between guns on a daily basis, it will inevitably affect our performance compared to just carrying one gun consistently.
I recently shot an acquaintance’s excellent Staccato 2011-pattern handgun and was impressed with it. However, I’ve been shooting a lot of double-action revolvers lately, and actually found the Staccato trigger hard to manage. I carried 1911s for the first decade of my adult life as a concealed carrier, and carried an old USGI 1911 in Iraq on a couple deployments, so I was no stranger to shooting a 1911, and shooting it pretty well. The problem is that my trigger finger had forgotten those crisp 1911 single-action triggers from long ago, and was expecting a long, smooth, heavier double action trigger press. I had to think very deliberately about the process of pressing the trigger to have much success. Were I switching back and forth between a single-action 1911-style trigger and a double-action revolver or semi-automatic on a daily basis, I would have this issue routinely. I could go on and get into details about the differences in your iron sights, or worse, switching between iron sight and red-dot guns in your carry rotation, but I suspect by now you get the point. So next let’s examine exceptions.
Exceptions to the Rule
There are times when we have to dress up for work or a social occasion, or dress down for the beach or hiking, where our normal carry gun just won’t work. So it does make sense, if it is within your means, to have a variety of carry guns for different types of attire. However, that variety is exclusively a variety of sizes. It is not a variety of makes, models, etc. By this I mean that if your everyday carry (EDC) gun is a Glock G19 or G17, then having a smaller gun for when you need to dress up or need more discreet concealment makes sense. However, it would be a very good idea for that smaller gun to be a Glock G26, Glock G48, or a Glock G43. If a Glock shooter happens to be going camping in an area where there are large predators and wants something more powerful, they’re more likely to perform well under stress if they have a Glock G20 chambered in 10mm than if they just grab a single-action revolver they haven’t practiced with nearly as much.
So if you EDC carry a 1911 and want something smaller (or larger) for carry in some contexts, I’d highly recommend it be a compact 1911 or 1911 longslide that changes as a little as possible of the mechanics of shooting and manipulating your gun under stress. If you’re a revolver shooter, then by all means switch your carry guns if you need to for concealment purposes or other context, but your stable of carry guns should probably be a K-frame or L-frame wheelgun, with an N-frame for backwoods work and a J-frame for when you need more concealment. If you like SIG Sauer pistols, then by all means carry a P320, but have a P365/XL/Macro variant for different situations rather than randomly carrying a Beretta compact or Taurus Judge with significantly different controls, trigger, etc.
Conclusion
I want guns to be fun, and enjoying guns as a fun hobby is awesome. We just can’t let our enjoyment of our guns impede the mission of our carry gun, which is to save our life in an emergency. Randomly carrying dramatically different kinds of guns based on our mood or instinctively daily preference might help us enjoy the hobby of being a “gun guy” or “gun gal,” but it makes it a lot harder to draw, shoot, and manipulate our carry gun under extreme duress when we’re trying to save our own lives and the lives of innocents. So by all means, collect and recreationally shoot as many different kinds of guns as your budget and desires allow. When it comes to your carry gun, however, pick one reliable carry gun and practice with it as if your life depended on it. One day it just might.
