Let me explain my personal circumstances, vis-a-vis concealed handguns, one of which I carry virtually ALL the time when not at work, and not in bed or shower.
Here in the desert, it gets HOT for much of the year. I'm lucky to live in small-town America, where informality is a given....getting dressed up in Winnemucca NV can be as simple as putting on your CLEAN jeans, as opposed to the other ones. Easy summer peestol concealment is as simple as putting on a lightweight button-type shirt, worn unbuttoned, over a T-shirt (and gun), and works well both for blending-in with the population and for coping with the heat. Even in Reno, which is a resort destination, informality is the rule and few places are starchy enough to make me uncomfortable, when dressed as above.
Therefore, actual concealment isn't a problem. I have even carried a square-butt 4" N-frame .44 Maggie under an untucked open shirt as above, and never alerted the citizenry. Smaller guns are even sneakier. Holsters, however, are a problem for me, and I believe I've found a "hermaphrodite" solution to comfortable carry.
Like most handgunners, I have a large mish-mash collection of holsters lying around, some good, some bad, some in-between. Outside-the-waistband holsters tend to bulk up under cover garments and are definitely harder for me to hide. I prefer these for open carry. Inside-the-waistband holsters can be miserably uncomfortable, 'specially if you carry a leetle extra "meat" around the waist like I do. Also, one often needs to buy pants a size or so larger to encompass the added girth of the gun and holster.
SOOoooo....in a blinding flash of revelation, came my epiphany, as it were. Instead of wearing the IWB holster in the IWB position, why not wear it OUTSIDE the waistband, but INSIDE the belt???? This sandwiches the gun and holster between the pants and the belt. Such positioning accomplishes several very desireable things, at least for me.
-I can still wear my normal-size pants, maintaining my girlish svelte profile(!), and saving me the money otherwise needed for new britches in a larger size.
-Instead of the artillery being pressed against my tender sweaty hide by belt tension, the waistband of my pants actually insulates me from the gun and holster, and the gun and holster from me. This is FAR more comfortable than normal IWB wear, by orders of magnitude. It also minimizes problems from sweat reaching the gun. It's hot here, as I said, and hoo boy do I EVER "generate moisture".
-The holster mounts over my belt, usually a rather heavy pistol-belt, from the INSIDE as stated, and thus the gun is snugged very nicely into my body when the belt is properly adjusted. This naturally greatly aids concealment of the pistol. In addition, this method of wear avoids the tendency of an OWB rig to lever itself away from one's body due to the geometry of the weight of the gun and rigging. Either clip-on or threaded-on-the-belt holsters will work well with this wear method. Occasionally, a belt loop on the pants might have to be shifted, I suppose, depending on a particular set of conditions.
The single possible difficulty I've come up with would be in the case of a gun which is long enough to peek under the hem of the cover shirt. Since I have plenty of guns short enough to avoid this happenstance, I don't worry about it.
The general public is un-observant at best. One day, I walked through several local stores with a 6" N-frame .357 in an OPEN-carried holster on a separate gunbelt with cartridge carriers, and I didn't see a single soul even recognize the fact that I had the rather ostentatiously-oversize hawgleg with me!
I'm very pleased with the greatly-improved comfort deriving from this carry method. Since I've never seen this described in print before, I figured maybe a few of us here might be interested. It really works, and also requires nothing at all in the way of new equipment if one wants to give it a try.
It's also a grand feeling to able to plan HOW to legally carry my guns, instead of worrying that it's just not possible to do so within the law. (Former Canadian resident...I KNOW how bad it can be.)
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