CCW - carrying concealed firearms

I was a bit skeptical of this idea, but I actually bought a Smith & Wesson 632 UC. Now I think the author of this blog post and video is right.

I carry it loaded with 32 h&r mag. This has noticeably lighter recoil than a 38 special in such a small gun, but it's very manageable. More importantly, ballistics are comparable to a 38 special out of a snubby. At the range, the gun is actually fun to shoot when I load it with 32 Smith & Wesson longs. I also tried some 32 shorts in it, and recoil is like a 22: Virtually non-existent. 32 short is pretty hard to find, though, and the only brand that I found was Magtech. Unfortunately, Magtech has a reputation for having a high number of dud primers, which has been my experience.

The 32 longs have very light recoil in any case, so I've just been sticking with those at the range. I have also watched the price for all .32s drop noticeably in the past couple of months. It isn't cheap, but it's cheaper to shoot then a number of other calibers that were popular 25 years ago.

Finally, I picked up a couple of HKS speed loaders from Midway USA. They were less than 10 bucks each, and although it isn't nearly as fast as reloading a semi-auto, it is doable in two or three seconds. A speed strip takes more like 10 seconds for me. More to the point, a speed loader in this caliber doesn't make a ridiculously large bulge in my pocket.

Do you carry AIWB? Why or why not?

These are the two that I carry most often. Both are Smith & Wessons. I am still trying to get used to the optical sight on the Shield Plus, so I usually have the 632 UC on.

I carry AIWB at around 1:00 for either of them. I find it comfortable for all day, though the revolver is a bit more comfortable.

Holsters are a Philster "City Special" (for the revolver), and a Harry's Holsters "Shorty" for the 9mm. I replaced the grip on the 632 with an Altamont wood grip - the one it came with did not fit my hand well at all. The Shield Plus is wearing a Hogue grip sleeve because it also didn't fit my hand well. I have very large hands (more long than wide), so most good CCW guns need something to improve the grip for me.

There are other CCW forums on Lemmy, but none on discuss.online, which is a US-based Lemmy instance. Since the US has the most permissive concealed-carry laws for the largest number of people, it seemed like a better instance for a group like this than lemmy.world, which is hosted in the EU AFAIK.

I would really like this group to avoid politics-based argument. I'm happy to add links in the sidebar to groups that encourage this, though - please just contact me to add one. I don't want to be too specific about that that means, but if it gets too noisy or rude I'll ask people to take it to a more appropriate forum.

I'm a regular reader of the /r/CCW forum on reddit (liked in the sidebar). I created this one because:

• I think we need a backup, in case Reddit shuts it down for any reason
• Lemmy is a better experience, without a bunch of ads always in your face
• There already were a couple of CCW groups on other instances, but nothing on the largest US-based instance (which is this one), so I know there is some interest in the subject here

I'll get things going with a couple of other posts shortly, and pimp this group in the appropriate places on Lemmy. I'm not sure about promoting it on reddit (I suspect that Reddit polices any Lemmy links) - I'll ask the /r/CCW mods what they're comfortable with, if anythting.