I Was Wrongly Accused And Nearly Spent 2 Years In Prison Just For Carrying An IWB Holster Exposed

A licensed carrier spent 7 years convinced a little "printing" was harmless. Then a convenience-store robbery, a home break-in, and a felony charge proved him wrong. Here is what finally fixed it.

I'm a proud gun owner who never gave a damn if people noticed I was carrying.

I live in a state where open carry is illegal, but I also spend over half my time in Texas, where a man puts a gun on his hip like it's nothing. So I know both worlds.

I've carried every day since I got my license in March of 2019.

But after almost getting killed, almost getting cleaned out, and almost going to prison, I became hyper-aware of my gun showing through my clothes.

And this can happen to anybody. Even if you are doing everything right.

Here are 3 reasons why your concealed gun bulging through your shirt will ruin your life.

1. You Become The First Target.

It was a regular Tuesday, 4 in the afternoon, and I'd just picked up my kids.

On the way home we stopped at a convenience store to grab a few things.

About a minute after we walked in, 4 guys in hoodies came through the door with their faces covered.

One of them shot me in the arm, ripped the gun off my belt, took my wallet and my car keys, while the other 3 cleared out the counter and they all ran.

It was over in seconds. I was on the floor of a convenience store with my kids screaming and I did not understand what had just happened to me.

14 stitches at the hospital that night.

Here's the part my wife got out of the detectives a week later.

Those guys were already sitting in that lot planning to hit the store. They had been there 20 minutes before we pulled in.

The second they saw I was armed, I stopped being a customer.

I became the one problem in that building that had to be handled first.

So the moment they came through the door, they shot me.

I never knew I'd been made. I never felt my shirt move. And it nearly cost me my life in front of my kids.

2. It Makes Criminals Follow You Home.

This one isn't mine. It's my range buddy Gary, who without ever knowing it walked thieves right up to his own front door.

They took a shotgun, a Glock 17 with all his ammunition, and whatever else was worth carrying out. And they put a bullet in his dog.

The police explained the whole thing once they finally caught them.

Before they ever decided to break into Gary's house, they saw the outline of his firearm through his shirt while he loaded groceries into his truck in a parking lot.

They followed him home, sat on the house, and waited. When Gary pulled out to pick up his kids, they had it.

Somebody knew exactly what they were looking at — well enough to get in a car and follow a stranger across town on the strength of one bulge under a polo.

You don't get to decide whether your printing is obvious. The only person whose opinion counts is the one standing behind you in the parking lot, and he is not going to walk over and tell you.

Gary never knew he'd been made. He found out from a deputy, standing in his own kitchen, with his dog at the vet.

His wife is home most days. She only missed it because that afternoon she'd driven to the mall to buy an anniversary present.

The next one is going to sound stupid. It's also the one that nearly put me in a cell.

3. You Could End Up In Jail — Even Carrying Legally.

You already know there are people who lose their entire mind the second they see a gun. One of them got me charged with a felony that carried 2 years.

It was a Saturday afternoon and I'd taken my kid out for ice cream. We were standing in line when the cup of ice water I was holding slipped, and I crouched down to pick it up.

2 inches. My shirt came up 2 inches.

A middle-aged woman in oversized glasses standing behind us saw the grip of my gun. I never even noticed her.

As we were walking out, out of nowhere, she blasted pepper spray straight into my eyes — screaming at the top of her lungs that I had threatened her with my gun.

People panicked. My kid was crying. I couldn't see a thing.

And when the police pulled in, here's what they walked up on: an armed man standing half-blind in a parking lot, and a hysterical woman pointing at him screaming that he tried to attack her.

Guess which one of us that report gets written around.

I was never accused of doing anything with a gun.

Nobody said I drew it, touched it, pointed it, or said one word about it. There was no argument — I never even saw her face until she was screaming into mine.

The entire allegation was about what was supposedly going on inside my head: that when my shirt came up, I meant for her to see it. And there is no camera in that shop that films the inside of a man's head.

Here's the part that still gets me — I don't think she was lying. She walked in already certain about what a man with a gun under his shirt is, a piece of holster came up over a belt line, and her brain filled in the rest. There was nothing to argue with.

Between lawyer fees, court costs and 11 weeks of hell, that 2 inches of shirt nearly buried me. I could have sat in a prison cell for 2 years over it.

It got dropped. I'm telling you that up front, because I'm not here to frighten anybody — nothing actually happened to me. But I spent those 11 weeks believing I was going to lose my job, my license, my clean record, and the right to look my kids in the face.

And none of it stopped me from carrying. I love guns, I love exercising my rights, and most of all I refuse to be the sucker begging for his life when it goes down.

So I needed to find a better way to carry.

At first I started wearing bigger, thicker clothes over it. That concealed fine — and my draw turned into a joke.

I had to dig through a layer, fight the shirt, then drag the gun all the way out. In a real situation, that delay gets me killed.

On top of that I hated wearing them. For context, I'm on the bigger side — 5′10", 275 pounds.

Walking around in heavy layers all summer had me sweating like hell.

So I downsized my gun to a Bodyguard 2.0.

The grip still stuck out.

And moving off appendix never even crossed my mind.

Because carrying strong side or at 6 o'clock might as well be putting your gun on a red velvet pillow and presenting it to the nearest crackhead.

Remember, carrying on my hip is the exact reason those guys at the convenience store spotted my gun in the first place. And the second they walked in, they almost killed me.

So no sir. I'm never putting my gun behind me.

It can also be lifted right off you without you knowing, and there is nothing you can do about it — as you can see below.

Next I went to YouTube, where 12 different "tactical experts" handed me the same recycled advice I'd already burned 2 years on.

Better belt. Dress around the gun. Carry something smaller. Lose the weight.

I started to feel hopeless about it.

Then one day I was walking a firearms expo, and I met a guy named Mason.

He's been a CCW instructor for over 30 years and he's trained more than 4,000 people to carry concealed and carry safe.

So I figured maybe he could help me.

When I told him about my printing problem, the first thing he said was, let me see the holster.

He turned it over twice and handed it back.

"What? I paid $150 for that holster. It's supposed to be one of the most concealable rigs on the market," I told him.

"But it's not concealing right now, is it?"

I had nothing to say back to that.

Then he asked me a question that nobody in 7 years of doing this had ever asked me.

I said what you'd say. Somewhere around my belt.

"Then that's where your gun is."

And then he lifted the front of his own shirt.

There was nothing on his waistband. No clip. No holster. No belt loop pulled sideways. Nothing.

He was carrying, and I could not find it.

Then he showed me what he was actually wearing

It wasn't a holster at all.

It was a shirt.

A compression tee with 2 holster pockets sewn into it — one under each arm, identical on both sides, so it runs the same whether you're right or left handed.

The gun sits high on the rib cage. It never touches your belt line, for the simple reason that it isn't attached to your belt line.

And that's when the thing I'd been missing for 7 years finally landed on me.

Sit with that for one second.

Every cover garment in your closet — every t-shirt, polo, flannel, button-down — ends within about 4 inches of your belt line. That is not a coincidence. That's how shirts are cut.

So we take the one rigid object we're trying to hide and we bolt it directly onto the hem line. The one part of the outfit that moves independently of the body underneath it.

The part that lifts when you bend down for a shoelace. Rides when you sit. Catches on a seatbelt. Swings out when you load groceries.

And it doesn't matter which rig you bought. IWB, OWB, appendix, 3 o'clock, 5 o'clock, small of the back — every one of them hangs off the same waistband, under the same hem. Moving the holster around my body was never changing the mount point. It was just changing which side of it I got caught on.

It was never a gun-size problem. It was never a belt problem. And it sure as hell was never a discipline problem.

It's a hem-line problem.

So what part of a shirt never moves?

The middle of it.

Your rib cage sits in the center panel of every shirt you own. No hem. No waistband. No belt. No seam that lifts.

Bend forward and the fabric over your ribs stays exactly where it was. Sit down and it doesn't fold, because your ribs don't fold. That is their entire job.

Mason told me the shirt he wears is the 2TAC Shadow Carry Tee, and he sends his own students to it — specifically the ones built like me, the ones who keep buying holsters and keep coming back to class printing anyway.

It's compression fabric, so it holds the gun flat against you instead of letting it hang and swing.

It fits guns up to a Glock 19 — P365, Hellcat, Shield, G43, J-frames, G19 at the top end.

It's cut long enough to tuck. Which means a tucked dress shirt stops being a reason to leave the gun at home.

And it runs all the way to 5XL, because it flexes around your body instead of demanding your body cooperate with it.

After I heard all of it, I knew exactly what I was doing next.

I went to their site and ordered one standing right there in the aisle. Honestly the best purchase I've made for carrying.

I wear fitted t-shirts. It conceals under every one of them.

Every time I throw my shirt on it's like nothing is there. It just disappears into my clothes.

I can finally carry without wondering whether I've been made.

Without turning myself into the first man they deal with when 4 guys come through a door.

Without advertising to a parking lot what's worth stealing out of my house.

And without handing a stranger in a checkout line the power to decide what I meant.

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