Appendix Concealed Carry Holster for Different Body Types

There's a lot of questions that come up about appendix carry. Some of them come up about safety, but a lot of them come up about comfort when people are seated in cars, for example or if you spend a lot of time seated during the day and other questions come up about the concealability or the carry ability, the practical feasibility of carrying depending on your body size. I hear a lot of people say, well, large people, overweight people people with large bellies can't carry appendix. I hear also a lot of people on the other side of the spectrum say, well, skinny people or scrawny peoples, people with small bellies or small waists can't carry in the appendix position. The fact is I'm probably on the scrawnier side and I've been carrying appendix for a long time. Now it's true that I used to only use it as a deep concealment option with very small pistols or even J frame revolvers. But what I tend to do now more often than not is carry this four-inch XDS with a eight round capacity. It's seven plus one, and it is a subcompact grip. It's not a full size grip. It's not a full length gun but I carry it in an incredibly comfortable holster. I carry it in the crossbreed appendix carry holster that is very, very comfortable when I'm in that seated position or when I'm standing or moving around. So it's do spend a lot of time in the car sitting and driving extended distances especially during tourist season. And I'll sometimes wear this gun 14, 16 hours in a row with the vast majority of that being seated. And quite often, especially when I'm here on my home range in Florida, I'm only wearing a t-shirt or light clothing, and I still manage to conceal it. Now this particular holster doesn't really do anything to cheat the concealment or the carry ability of appendix carry firearms. And that's why I prefer to carry a gun with a smaller grip. And the fact is that whether it's a button up that's untucked, a t-shirt that's untucked or certainly any kind of layered look where I have two or three layers of clothing, very, very easy for me to conceal right up in front of my body. But let's talk about some of the other guns that you might want to carry. And let's talk about some of the other ways that a scrawny person or a skinny person might be able to take advantage of this center line carry option without it being really obvious that they're carrying a gun. Well, first of all, if you take the belt buckle and with this particular pair of pants this loop keeps me from moving this over but this belt buckles relatively flat. If you had a larger belt buckle or something that protruded something that was thicker or wider in terms of coming out in front of your body the position of the gun can push that out in front. So what you want to do is make sure that you have this slid over to the side. Now, for those of you who were in the military it kind of bothers us when our gig line's off but we're going to go ahead and make that gig line go away. Cause remember we're untucked anyway so that we don't have that issue. So that's one way that you can narrow the protrusion. If you're a little bit thinner when it comes to the appendix carry. Now some people of course, don't wear a belt especially the ladies wear the yoga pants or whatever. If you're not wearing a belt then that's not going to be an issue for you. Let's take a look at something like this, now this is a 10 plus one length grip. This is a much larger, wider full-sized grip you can see it extends beyond my hand. The only way that I'm going to be able to carry this type of firearm in here is to use a holster that really does sort of cheat the grip back against my body. And what I'm going to do here is just really quickly get this back on and we'll take a look and see what's going on here. And I will compare what happens with these two different holsters. Now with this type of a holster, this is a holster that what I call a wing, it's got a little wing sitting out here to the strong side underneath the grip area of the gun that pushes the grip back into your body. So I'm going to go ahead and snap this up. You get the full effect here. All right, we get that set up and I'm gonna put this back over, over top. Now with this particular setup I've got my belt buckle moved over a little bit and I can set my shirt up and now go on about my day with that full-sized grip tucked in. Now I promise you this is not as comfortable as the crossbreed but it makes this full-size grip gun much more concealable. So what's happening is that little wing is putting pressure from the inside of the belt back against my body. So it's pushing the gun back in and it's tucking this long grip. And if, if I go back to my other holster with this size grip and I'll just very quickly switch these out sort of administratively, put this gun back in there and now you can see that this grip is pushing out this way it's not tucked in. And what that means is that I'm going to have this printing happening right out in front of my body. That's going to poke out and it's gonna be very hard to cover that up. Now, anybody looking closely probably could tell that I was carrying the other gun in this holster anyway but just in general, this is going to stand out to somebody especially if I turn, if I move, if I reach up on a shelf for something that printing is going to be really really obvious. So that's why this size grip for me would require some type of a holster that tucks that grip in. The other thing that you can do and you see this a lot Spencer keepers was the first guy that I saw doing this. You can put some kind of an attachment here that puts a foam wedge. I even seen people use some like a shoe heel inserts orthopedic shoe, heel inserts they put around the front of the holster down here down by the muzzle. And what that does is not just tuck the grip in but it tucks the entire gun in. So that wedge down here will push the gun back into the body this way. But again, that's less comfortable for me. And I think that's part of the problem is that if you have a gun that you can conceal when you're taking that Instagram picture, when you're out on the range, especially if you're wearing extra layers or kind of dressing around it, well then you might be able to carry something, you know completely full-sized double stack, a little a red dot-site on top, right? This appendix carry solution here just simply would never work for me. Not only would it never work for me because of the size of the grip, because this holster doesn't actually do anything to make it easier to conceal it but it's also not going to be comfortable at all, right. This is not gonna be comfortable, even standing let alone sitting. So sometimes I see people put those pictures up on Instagram and they've got full-sized double stack gun, you know compensator on the inhibitors of the lights, lasers extra magazine, all this stuff up here. And from the side, you know if you saw those people out and especially if they're on the skinnier side, I can't imagine that they actually look like they're concealed, right? I think it would probably looks like they have some kind of a poucher papoose up here. It's a, it's a very awkward way to carry. Now for the ladies, if you have a situation where your shirt's going to drape if you're up here, well endowed in this situation and you got a shirt that's draping over that area and it's covering anything up ,great. But for the guys, if you're trying to carry everything here under a t-shirt especially in this kind of Florida hot weather probably not going to work. So that's not a solution that I recommend. Other people have proposed, you know, Hey, check it out, the thing that prints is the grip. So maybe a folded gun is the answer, so you think about it. You've got a folded gun. You're going to have some kind of a modified draw stroke where you're coming up and you're pushing this gun into its deployed configuration. Well, there's no way that I could carry this gun obviously with a 21 plus round magazine. But if the gun were folded I could carry in the appendix position. But obviously this is not something at the industry or the community has adopted yet. At the end of the day you've got to be comfortable when you carry and all carry is a compromise. So personally I, as a skinny guy like to carry a subcompact gun. I still get the benefit of that four inch relatively full-sized slide and barrel with this configuration, I've got a very comfortable holster and I'm able to conceal it even with just a t-shirt in this warm weather, don't let your body type keep you from exploring or even entertaining the idea of center line or appendix carry because with the right holster and the right gun, it can be done safely, comfortably and in a very concealed way.