Holy Frijoles - Henry Big Boy 357 Magnum

I am certainly no expert. I do have some experience, though. Have been carrying concealed for about 14 years, and have tried a lot of different guns, holsters and methods.

Major point - Everyone is different. Some body types can hide things that others can't.

Other major point - The gun and holster HAVE to fit within your normal life, or you won't carry it. One can make some changes around the gun, but there are some that can't be made (e.g., expecting to wear a holster when you never wear shirts untucked and don't wear cover garments).

Other major point - A really good belt, specially designed for concealed carry, is critical. I like SImply Rugged's "Real Man" belt.

Final major point - The challenge for concealment is always the butt/grip of the gun. If one uses an IWB holster, the barrel length is almost irrelevant, at least until you get up to around 5 inch barrel or longer. I find that a Glock 23 is more likely to print than an S&W 629 with Spegel Boot Grips.

Weirdly, the biggest mistake I made initially was going too small for the gun (j-frame), and assuming that only the deepest concealment holster (Smart Carry) would be appropriate. Later, as I checked out good IWB holsters I realized I could carry a gun better suited to a bad scenario, and carry it more comfortably.

At the end of the day, I think the Glock 23 with an IWB is an outstanding choice. I'm carrying one in a Theis IWB holster (which, if you're considering IWB, I recommend very highly). The grip is a little blocky, but with an untucked patterned shirt, no printing is visible. I think you might find that the longer grip of the 22 might print a bit more, though.

Been thinking about Dev's point about the 357 Sig. I agree that it's an excellent caliber, maybe one of the best for semi autos right now. If I only shot factory ammo, I'm pretty sure I'd go 357 Sig.

But I handload, which allows me to shoot a heck of a lot more. The 9mm is a fine cartridge, and there are enough police shootings to prove that, at least with +P ammo. However, I personally can't tell any difference in recoil between a 9mm +p and a 40 S&W. Additionally, I can duplicate 40 S&W and 10mm factory ballistics through handloading, but can't do that with the 9mm +p (not without going way past published recipes). In the end, I'm more concerned about getting a lot of practice with my carry gun, firing a load that is the same as, or very close to, what I carry in it. And that's why, at least for semi-autos, I like 10mm when I can, 40 S&W when I can't.

Well...that...and the fact that Ted Nugent carries a 10mm. (Just kidding)

TJ - you make absolute sense in the suggestions you make. Particularly important is the belt, which is often forgotten. But a good gun belt is not cheap, and lasts a while. AND since I usually carry in my pocket, I don't need one - yet.

IWB or OWB is mostly a question of what kind of clothes you wear and how loose you want them. I tend to like a bit more fitted so IWB just takes up too much space. Plus I like the ability to unclip the holster and leave the belt etc as it is.

Carry guns.

First and foremost you have to HAVE a gun. If you only have one, then that's your carry. If you practice a lot with that one gun, you are probably deadly, and woe to the fool who broaches you.

The next step in my book is having a gun you can shoot well. It doesn't have to FEEL good; you have to SHOOT it well. Original P-line Sigs are a great example. I always felt the original grips were kind of like holding a bed post. But, Lordy, could those guns SHOOT! Now that Sig has invented the E2 grips, I have them on all 4 of my Sigs. They make the guns feel like totally new guns - and they STILL shoot.

As some of you may know, I am an ER doc. I work in busy ED's, so we see a lot of trauma, with our share of GSW's. I can tell you honestly that my experience is that handgun calibres just don't make that much of a difference. The hollow point bullets primary purpose is to not exit the patient. The fact it spreads helps its effectiveness, but it ain't what it was originally intended for, nor the PRIMARY reason cops carry them.

If you want to damage someone seriously, you absolutely, positively, unquestionably, with no exceptions, need a rifle. It is not for nothing that the military carries rifles. Note that it is the officers that carry pistols. Those are meant as a kind of last resort. We have taken up handguns as some kind of holy grail, but in truth, all they are is handy. They beat a sharp stick in the eye. But while the military may find the larger bleeding hole of a larger calibre more useful in injuring an opposition soldier, in our situations they make little or no difference. Poll the trauma surgeons and you find that none of them are particularly impressed with handguns. When we hear a GSW is coming, if it comes over the radio that it's a handgun, we all relax as it is unlikely to be bad. Something like 5 of 6 or 6 of 7 shooting victims survive. That's a lot of survival.

I completely understand shot placement and agree on its value. Still, I can tell you for a fact that a perp was shot here in Evansville with a .45 through the heart. He ran a block before he dropped dead. RAN! So don't consider anyone nearly dead when you shoot them with a pistol. Doesn't matter the calibre.

Calibres.

Let me once again reinterate - no particular calibre makes for a man-stopper. You want to drop a guy/gal, shoot them in the head. IF you can place that shot, then whatever calibre you are shooting is the one to shoot.

Next idea. You don't shoot until you think they are dead, you shoot until they think they are dead. So the guy running with the hole in his heart, if he stays, you keep shooting. And shooting. And reloading and shooting. And when he quits, you can quit. But not before.

THAT is the biggest value in the .357 Sig. It has that shock effect that makes a perp stop - at least momentarily. He may take up, but for a bit he stops. Look at some of the footage of other handgun hits - people often DON'T stop. They may die, but not until "later" and in the mean while, YOU may be dead. My cop friend had a cousin, also cop, who was off duty in a bar. A guy down the length of the bar draws a knife and rushes him. He draws and empties his revolver - all solid hits. The guy gets to him, stabs him in the heart and he dies. Perp lived. IL trooper in a holded up crazy situation - guy comes out the back with only the turkey trooper, who empties his Model 39, reloads and empties again (at the time the ISP did not ALLOW troopers to carry an extra magazine - because it broke the line of their appearance. This guy had an "illegal" extra mag in his pocket.). It is ONLY the LAST shot - fired into the perp's head, that stops him. Most of the rest were solid hits.

Shooting is shooting. You can actually learn a lot about yourself and your ability to shoot with a .22 You don't need to bang away with expensive centerfire stuff to practice. Dry fire is HUGELY effective - and costs nada. Do it every night, or almost every night. If you sit before the TV, dry fire. Watch the front sight and make sure it doesn't more as you press the trigger. Hold the trigger, pull the slide a bit to reset the hammer and trigger, then release to the reset and press again.

Taking that all as true (and I wouldn't lie to you guys), then with all the cheap 9mm ammo for target practice, it seems reasonable that one would carry a 9, since you can practice a lot for cheap. You can reload it, too. And it IS easier to handle the recoil.

.357 Sig

The original aim of Sig in this calibre was to recreate the famour Mag without all the length and fuss. So they made a bottle neck cartridge. My experience is that bottlenecks are more potent than straight walled cases. Yes, you can get a honking BIG straight wall, but size for size, bottle neck will beat straight walled. Look at rifles. ?Find any modern rifles that are straight-walled. Must be a reason.

That said, you can practice with .40's, which will SHOOT similarly, if not affect the perp similarly. .40's are inherently less accurate than a lot of other calibres, including 9's and .357 Sig. But they are easy to reload, and all you need to do is swap a barrel. Everything else is identical - spring, mag, slide, etc.

I found a bunch of frangible .357 Sig on GunBroker a way back and bought a couple K for <$300 each. Makes for great practice ammo. And I have Lawman 125 to carry. And barrels in .40 for each of my .357 Sig's (or actually the other way around, but who's counting), so I can shoot the cheap stuff when I want to reload.

There are lots of ways to skin a cat, TJ.

Been carrying only about 8-9 years. I used to carry a g27 exclusively for about 4 years.  I could shoot it very well and liked the balance of size and capacity it offered.  Then, I think I might have broken my right hand middle finger middle knuckle playing sports--which made the g27 miserable to shoot.  I switched over to my g19 which didn't jar that finger nearly as much.  It took about a year and a half before my finger felt healed.  Now that I am used to the g19, I just keep carrying that.  At times, during the summer, and when I don't feel like carrying a gun on my hip, I just toss a j-frame smith or ruger lcp into a pocket holster and call it good.  As much as I liked that little .40 glock, I feel like I can easily put more shots on target a lot faster with the slightly larger framed 9mm.  I hope that if I am ever in a scenario where I need it, I will be able to shoot better than this guy:



I am glad, however, that the cop DID miss all but one of his shots since the guy was innocent.

I have to tell you. Every time you guys talk about G-this or G-that, I have to go look up the model. I know the 17 & 19, but after that I am lost. I believe the 20 is a 10mm, and the 30 is a small .45 ACP, but I wouldn't swear by it.

One last thought on bullets.

Bullets were mostly soft lead for many, many years. They were quite effective in what they did, pistol or rifle. Indeed, ONE of the major reasons for the Hague convention was that the soft lead bullets caused a great deal of damage.

SO technically if you wanted THE most badass defensive bullet, you would take a soft lead one. I suspect were you to go to court you would have to have some OTHER reason you were shooting such a bullet, as the court would not like to hear "I wanted to do the MOST damage I could."

Devereaux wrote:I have to tell you. Every time you guys talk about G-this or G-that, I have to go look up the model. I know the 17 & 19, but after that I am lost. I believe the 20 is a 10mm, and the 30 is a small .45 ACP, but I wouldn't swear by it.

Truth be told, Dev, even Glock fanbois can't keep Glock's Teutonicly stupid numbering schema straight. So... the G22 is a .40? And the G40 was going to be a .22? -- until Gaston had another stroke - or wife - or both... I can't remember which.  We've all got this site: http://us.glock.com/products/all bookmarked. It has all most of the many Glock models and variants on one chart.

Hmmm... I may have to look at .357SIG again.

Has anyone actually reloaded .357 sig yet, or anybody you know?

Not me. I have enough trouble with bottle neck rifle cartridges as it is. Still working through that learning curve.

Going back to the original topic de-rail, I was reminded yet again over the weekend of another advantage of revolvers for CCW. Was getting ready to go out on Saturday, wearing just a normal polo shirt, and strapped on a Glock 23. (Ok Dev, this is Glock's compact, but not sub-compact, 40 S&W. 4.01 inch barrel, tenifer finish, weighs 23.65 oz unloaded, magazine holds 13 rounds, "safe-action" trigger. Hope this assists.)

Checked in the mirror before leaving and saw that the right angle of the magazine was printing horribly through the light color, no patterned shirt. There was no question what it was, to anyone who would've been looking.

Put on the S&W 65 with that nice round butt grip and I couldn't even MAKE it print, no matter how hard I tried. There's something about certain revolver grips that make them dern near "un-printable".

I may very well just stay with my wheelguns for CCW and call it all good.

Oh, and back to the original topic, shot the Henry again this weekend. I am smitten. Love love love this rifle.

Thank you for the description, TJ.

I don't think wheelies are bad; they just aren't GOOD. There are better choices. My retired CPD friend is a long time carrier of a 2" Smith snubbie. STILL thinks it's the easiest gun to carry. He carries a Shield and an extra mag.

Good is as good does, to paraphrase Forest Gump.

Revolvers certainly aren't for everyone. However, for some people, I think they might be the best choice.

In my personal situation, if I were to go semi auto only, I could probably (maybe) conceal a 9mm single stack pretty effectively, like a Shield or XDS, daily. Daily concealment for me means printing is not an option.

Or, I can conceal a Ruger GP100 with compact grips. The GP100 had a 4 inch barrel and I shoot it very easily with 125 grain jhp's, and do it often in IDPA.

As between those two categories, I would rather have the 357 mag if I find myself in a life threatening situation.

?How do you carry reloads without printing.

For reloads, I always carry a pair of speedloaders on the belt, just to the right of my belt buckle, in open top kydex carriers.

And usually, a j-frame in the left front pocket (provided that it doesn't show too much in the pants).

I guess I should clarify that it is rare for me to wear a tucked-in shirt. In my daily life, it is appropriate to wear a non-tucked shirt, as long as it's cut to be worn that way (squared bottom). When the temps cool down, I usually wear a light sweater.

So. Two guns plus two reloaders. ?How do you keep your pants up without suspenders. We had load-bearing suspenders in the service for just this reason.

?Oh, and don't the reloaders print.

Snug sturdy belt takes care of it.

The speedloaders being up front don't print at all. I am not trim enough for that to be an issue.

I've admired the Henry Lever Rifles from a distance for quite some time.  I got real excited when they produced a 45/70, but cringed when I saw the plastic front sight/ barrel band unit.  I had a Marlin 1894 in .357 as a kid, and that was a truly fantastic gun to have.  I'm a believer that .357 mag lever guns just hit some...magical combination for pure fun and utility.  Of course, I'm always glad to hear of a mans hard work that's gone above and beyond being well rewarded.

I spent about a year carrying my Freedom Arms 97 .45 Colt concealed.  I couldn't find any good holsters for the purpose, so...made my own pancake holster for it.  It was, and is the nicest carrying gun I'd owned in that set up.

I had several justifications in my mind for why the SA was a good gun to carry.  I'm sure I've forgotten most of them, but as I remember them....

in my home state it's a mixed bag, as far as what exactly you're gonna shoot with a defensive handgun.  Could be dealing with a straying meth monkey, could be an angry moose the neighborhood kids had been harassing all morning and you stumbled into...For those kind of scenarios, I was just very comfortable with a .45 Colt running slightly warm loads, but was physically more similar in size to a K frame Smith.  (36 oz)

This is a fairly subjective thing, but...though a SA revolver isn't the fastest shooting, or the quickest reloading, one thing it absolutely excels at for me is pointability.  When it comes to getting one or two shots off in the right place, in a hurry...I just can't find something better than SA revolvers in general.  

I justified the uber accurate FA by theorizing that I could have to shoot a wounded animal that's running back to the woods. (I carried the same gun hunting as I did in town)

I'd always heard the statistics that 90 something percent of armed citizen encounters end without a shot being fired.  I coupled that with the other statistic I'd heard that 90 something percent of encounters where shots ARE fired it's over within a couple.  Considering that I'm not living in a bad crime area at all, it seemed like a good enough carry choice.

Some of my thinking at the time had validity, other areas, I was just accepting,rejecting, and adjusting evidence and data to reach my desired conclusion that my FA was a great choice.

Nowadays, I've clearly gotten away from that.  I had an....incident.  I was awoken at 3 something AM to the sounds and the feel that All Hell had opened loose, and was coming for me and mine.  So...I jammed my hand in the gun drawer, immediately ripping off a fingernail while grabbing my gun (How come you never read about that kinda crap in the novels?!) grabbed that FA and a flashlight, and went out to see what the Hell was going on while my wife grabbed the shotgun and rounded up the kids.  So...outside by myself feeling like I was facing imminent doom with nothing but my five shot SA revolver....it occurred to me that I'd have traded that Freedom Arms and my truck for a Glock 17 with a single magazine.  The big, bad, holy crap incident was the ultimate trifecta of goofy crap happening.  I'll spare you the details, but it involved a VERY enthusiastic black bear on the porch, a loud conversation over 100 yards away, and a bad dream.

What that whole silly incident did for me though, was make me truly consider what if it HAD been more serious?  I just don't want to be thumbcocking anything while I'm in fear of my life.  I'm just not that good.  I was priviledged enough to watch Bob Munden perform a couple times, and even he ocassionally screwed up in an exhibition, so...I darn sure ain't immune.  I also have come to prefer that a protective weapon not have anything that can tangle up in presentation, such as...a big horkin' hammer.

My current regular carry pistols are vacillating between a Smith 625 Mountain Gun, a Glock 30 and a Ruger SP101.  As much as I enjoy the single actions, I don't think I'd go that way again if my intent is pure business.  Having said that, everyone has a different set of wants and needs, and I would never begrudge any man who chose differently.

Very interesting post, Not10. To be completely honest, when I do carry a single action revolver, the reasons are mostly nostalgic, and to the extent I can vocalize actual logical reasons why it's a good idea, those reasons are usually just justifications.

I always get over it and go back to something I can utilize quickly with one hand. Doesn't mean I won't do it again some time, though.

Personally, I think allowing personal tastes (including nostalgia) to creep a bit into gun choices isn't always a bad thing, as long as one doesn't get too carried away.

Alaska... I want to visit that crazy place someday.  It still boggles my mind how the "bonk in the night" could be a man or just as well might be a bear or moose.  Over here, we occasionally get deer that wander into my neighborhood, but the bears stay in the mountains. If there is a problem, it will most likely be a "two-legged problem."

Yes indeed. Alaska must surely be the last great frontier. Someday I will go see it for myself.

Here in TN, the four legged problems are usually coyotes, bobcats, maybe a raccoon now and then. Black bears are more of an along the eastern border.

I've been here in Alaska since 1991, My Junior year in High School. Moved here from Georgia.  I have a serious love/hate relationship with this state...typically consisting of love in the Summer and hate in the Winter....

If any of y'all ever make it up here, and wander into the Mat-Su valley area, you've got an open invitation for lunch or dinner with beverage of choice.    I'm also willing to try and help answer any questions y'all may have regarding a trip or move up here to the best of my ability.  I'm far from being any great Oracle of knowledge and wisdom, but I'm better than the reality shows even on my worst day.

TJ, I would be a lying dog if I didn't admit tastes and nostalgia affect my choices in a very strong way.  I don't figure it's a small coincidence that I can remember clearly the day my Father came home from work with a big, black Smith revolver chambered in .45 Colt.  He'd paid $225 for it from a North Georgia Police Department turn in and was mighty proud of that.  I remember how well that gun handled, even in my 12...maybe 14 year old hands.  My Father carried it everywhere and called it his "Old Mans Gun"  I think he was at the time about the same age I am now.  I figger it's beyond coincidence that my most beloved and prized, and most often carried handgun is a S&W 625 Mountain Gun in .45 Colt.  

One of my other prized possessions is a S&W 586 my Grandfather got off a South Carolina Hwy. Patrolman.  It was the last gun he and I ever shot together, and the first Magnum handgun I'd ever fired.  When he died, there was the typical melee of dirtbag kinfolk that came around with the moving trucks, fighting over cars, houses, and money, etc.  As close as I was to him, I got that 586, the knife he re-handled and carried through WW2, and the American Flag that was on his casket at the funeral.  There's no doubt in my mind that I came out farthest ahead on that deal.  In any case, I well understand and appreciate a bit of nostalgia.

Except for my Glock. No nostalgia  That darn thing just shoots so well, it makes me look twice as good as I actually am.

Amen to the nostalgia effect. I believe the fascination I have with revolvers and lever guns stems from all the old John Wayne, Bonanza, Magnificent Seven, etc... shows and reruns I used to watch growing up.

I have no emotional attachment to my glock--it is just a tool I use. I could sell it and get another one just like it with no problem.