I have been carrying concealed off and on for a couple of months now and after several holsters and clothing experiments, I am getting the hang of things. The only problem is that the gun I have centered on is the Kel-Tec P32. It is superbly small and light. Conceal-ability does not get better (especially for us "husky" folk), but the trade off is the .32 ACP round that it fires. It is better than nothing, but that is about all it has going for it.
The reality of this underpowered reality was driven home recently. I buy used electronics often and recently I had a very large woman try and sell me a very "hot" piece of merchandise. A couple of calls to the cops, and a quick investigation resulted in the police taking the merchandise and going over to her house to arrest her. At least that is what they said when they left my store.
In fact no arrest was made, and instead they let me know that they had "made contact" and were looking for a boyfriend who was the "actual" thief. They assured me that neither the woman nor the boyfriend would make contact with me, but if they did I should call 911. And that was that.
Needless to say, I had to decide wether to be armed or not the next day. Why? Frankly, this woman outweighed me easily by 150 lbs and who knows what her boyfriend was like. I figure, someone was going to jail and I was not sure if they wanted to upgrade from theft to aggravated assault before heading to lockup. I wanted all of my options available. At the same time, no one could know I was armed.
So, as I am getting prepped for work the next day, I had that drop in the gut feeling as I armed up. Looking at the puny .32 ACP rounds in the magazine and thinking of 400 lbs of charging woman, or 600+ lbs of charging woman and boyfriend, I had a very real crisis of confidence. Even with martial arts and minimal military training, there are limits to what I can do. The Kel-Tec was the only option realistically available to me, and off to work it went. But I resolved in that moment to try and find a more powerful carry piece for the future.
In all reality, the chances of trouble were miniscule. The thieves would have to be complete morons to come back to my shop, stand in front of my security cameras for a second time, and cause trouble. But I remember from my years as a Jail Chaplain just how stupid, and emotionally driven criminals can be.
The good news is that they have not shown up. Instead, 48 hours later the cops were again at my store collecting more stolen merchandise and this time actually arresting the teens who sold it to me no more than 5 minutes before (I am out $5 in cash on that deal). The thieves had been followed by the victims who shadowed them into my store while the cops were in route. Luckily, the victims were very calm and the thieves did not know who they were and so there was no scene.
I will say that I was much more calm in the situation knowing that all of my options, no matter how undergunned, were open to me. I was armed, and not with a stapler.
Now to decide between a Taurus and a Kahr...
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