How to Comfortably Carry Your Everyday Carry (EDC) Gear

The key to carrying emergency gear discreetly is to build an everyday carry loadout around equipment you can comfortably keep with you. Throughout your loadout, whether you have the gear when you need it is more important than its specific style or brand.

Uniformed law enforcement officers have a distinct advantage when it comes to carrying emergency gear: They only have to conceal a backup gun (and maybe a holdout gun) and a few handcuff keys. The rest of their equipment can be carried out in the open.

That’s the police, though. Private citizens need to be more discreet. So how can you comfortably carry your emergency lifesaving gear without looking like a narcotics cop about to storm a traphouse?

Start With Your Concealed Carry Gun

You’ll have to decide what type of firearm you want to carry and how to most easily and comfortably carry it. If you’ve already made these decisions, great. If not, we’ve got some excellent resources that can help you make as informed a decision as possible.

Explore Concealed Carry Positions →

Learn How to Choose Your First Gun →

Holsters 101 →

How Should You Carry a Spare Magazine?

For the most part, thinner folks have an easier time with inside-the-waistband (IWB) magazine carry because they are less susceptible to the magazines poking into their bodies while seated. In fact, I know of several extremely wiry old dudes who carry a pistol in the appendix position and two magazines on the opposite side of the belt buckle, all IWB.

For others who have more around the middle, the most comfortable spot to carry a mag might be at about the 9 o’clock position. Some elect to sidestep the whole question of how much they will be poked by their mags and opt for carriers on the outside of their belts. There’s nothing wrong with either style as long as you can keep the magazine secured and concealed.

Revolver speedloaders and speed strips are usually carried outside the waistband, and though the speed strips are thin enough to carry IWB, most of the products available keep them on your beltline or in your pocket. Speedloaders are wide enough that they also usually ride outside of the beltline, though you can find carriers that route the belt through the speedloader rather than around it.

As with the firearm you’re carrying, whether you have a reload when you need one will be more important than how exactly you carry it. If you have to fire your pistol or revolver, you will need to reload it as soon as you can safely do so. If everything’s already gone so wrong that you had to discharge your sidearm, you’ll need to be prepared in case the rest of your day gets even worse.

Carry an EDC Flashlight You’ll Actually Use

Apart from your phone, wallet and keys, a flashlight is your most important piece of “EDC gear” because it is the item you will (hopefully) use more than any of the others. From navigating dark parking-lot stairwells to locating pet toys under the couch, a good flashlight is an essential companion.

The major concern I’ve encountered with waistband-mounted flashlight carry is accidental activation. Many of the flashlights Executive Editor Kevin Michalowski and I have assessed for Concealed Carry Magazine over the years were assessed as secondary lights while on duty as law enforcement officers. It was through this process that he and I learned some flashlights — especially those fitted with end-cap switches — can quickly become borderline fire hazards. (One of us may or may not have almost set his pants afire with an errant activated flashlight.)

A better solution might be to find a unit that can be carried in a pocket and that will not set you ablaze if it is accidentally activated. This is far easier to do today than it was even 10 years ago, as there are compact, USB-rechargeable units that are smaller than a roll of dimes and don’t run as hot as the CR123A-fed units of the past.

As for anyone who insists that every concealed carrier needs to pack a flashlight that’s large enough to be used as a baton and bright enough to look through the sides of Christmas presents, I would say this: once a flashlight gets much bigger than that aforementioned roll of dimes, the chances of most people actually carrying it every day plummet. And as with our firearm and our reload, whether you have a flashlight when you need one is more important than what specific kind of flashlight it is.

Choosing and Carrying a Knife

There are more options for knife carry than for pretty much any other piece of EDC equipment. How to carry your knife is going to depend on multiple factors: how and where you carry your sidearm, where other items are secured on your person, how you normally dress, you name it. However you decide to carry your knife, the two most important concerns are to ensure that you can always access it when needed and that it draws no more attention than necessary when you’re not using it.

As for using that knife for anything other than opening boxes, there are even more opinions on how to use a knife for self-defense than there are on how to use a pistol for self-defense. Whoever’s opinion you prefer, if you intend to rely on a knife as a force option, you’ll need to train on how to do so. I’m a big fan of Michael Janich’s Martial Blade Concepts, and if you’re a CCM subscriber, you can read years of his instruction through your USCCA App.

And as with every other piece of EDC kit discussed here, never forget that whether you have a knife when you need one is more important than what kind of knife it is. The little unit that actually rides around with you every day will always beat the combat knife that you left at home.

Don’t Forget Medical Gear in Your EDC

The Global War on Terror generated major advances in trauma care, and many GWOT vets are adamant: if you carry a gun, you need to be carrying a tourniquet and wound-packing gauze. You can source a belt-mounted kit that won’t be much larger than a deck of cards, but this is the piece of EDC gear that I most often see relegated to the backpack, purse or vehicle. You should undoubtedly have a blowout kit that lives in your range bag, but figuring out a way to carry a TQ and some packing gauze on your person is definitely worth pursuing too.

How to Carry Pepper Spray for Everyday Defense

Pepper spray can be an excellent force option, but there are three major ways carriers botch this one.

First, people screw up by carrying their “hot sauce” on a keychain or loose in the bottom of a purse, both of which almost always result in the user not being able to deploy it conveniently. Second, a lot of people who buy and carry pepper spray never train with it — as in, literally never even once. And third, many users refuse to believe that if they deploy pepper spray, they’re going to get some of it right along with whoever or whatever they sprayed it at.

As for the first issue, there are plenty of ways to effectively carry your pepper spray. There are Kydex belt carriers, special systems for keeping it attached to your hand while running, and even a seatbelt-mounted system. Whatever you do, don’t just keep it on a wad of keys or in the bottom of a handbag. It needs to be by itself so as to make it easy to use, and you need to be able to get your hand on it at a moment’s notice.

As for the second, you need to buy either a second can of pepper spray or an inert trainer can in order to understand how it works. Find a remote area where people or pets won’t get in trouble with the aftermath and then practice spraying that pepper. See what kind of range you’ve got and how many shots your can contains. Don’t let the first time you use your pepper spray be during an emergency.

As for the third, well … there really isn’t a way around this one. If you have respiratory issues, you absolutely should not use pepper spray.

Do You Need Tactical Pants?

Modern “tactical” pants (sometimes referred to as “BDU,” “cargo” or “fatigue” pants) are the backbone of some concealed carriers’ wardrobes. Everyone claims their pants are the best value for the money, but styles vary.

One big difference is whether the thigh pockets have narrow vertical pockets inside of them. This allows you to carry a flashlight and a multi-tool in one pocket without them clanking against each other.

Some pants take this even further, installing additional wider pockets behind the tall, slender ones. A few pairs of BDU pants that I wore as part of my deputy uniform contained not only the light/knife pouches but also broader pockets behind them that allowed for wide, flat items like compress bandages, tourniquets and notepads.

Some of the less-tactical-looking units feature pockets concealed within the outside seams of the legs. Though handy and very effective at concealing the fact that there’s a pocket hiding on your thigh, the zipper pulls can be small enough that they become difficult to manipulate while under stress.

As for what are referred to as “external magazine pockets” on many tactical trouser designs, most of them are specifically designed for law enforcement officers responding to immediate crises. They’re not designed for all-day carry of a Glock 19 reload; they’re designed for a cop who needs somewhere to stash the AR mag that his patrol sergeant just tossed to him from the window of a moving squad car. Though these pockets can be useful for other personal gear, they can be a pretty conspicuous place to drop something the size of a candy bar that weighs more than a can of Coke.

All of this leads most concealed carriers to forego specialty pants and just carry what they can in the pants that they already enjoy wearing. If you don’t want to wear BDU pants, don’t. Between a good, stable belt and maybe a jacket or a vest (or a belt pack, depending on whether they’re making another comeback when you read this), you should be able to carry the basics of emergency mitigation.

Carry On: Build an EDC Loadout You’ll Actually Carry

Your EDC loadout will forever be a work in progress. Gear wears out, new technologies emerge and personal tastes evolve, as do ranges of motion and other potential physical limitations. The best way to keep atop it all is to occasionally ask yourself: “Is this piece of gear doing exactly what I want it to do?” If not, it might be time to head to the gun shop or your favorite corner of the internet to do a little shopping.

Because you may have detected a theme through all of this: whether you have emergency gear with you when you need it will be more important than what specific style or brand of emergency gear it is. If you buy quality stuff that you’ll actually carry, the rest should work itself out.