Fourteen months

This guy is blogging about carrying a firearm for fourteen months.

It is now a about fourteen months since, after receiving my second death threat, I started carrying a firearm almost constantly. This experience has taught me a few truths, some merely amusing but others with larger implications.

It's a good read. He talks about some truths.

The major lesson: people are amazingly oblivious to what they don’t expect to see. When I carry using a belt holster (not my only method), I watch peoples’ eye movements and facial expressions for this pattern: eyes going to my right hip, momentary startlement or an increase in tension. This would mean the shirt I’m wearing flapped over the pistol butt has ridden up and it’s exposed. But, in fact, with only one exception that I’ll get to, I have never seen this. On the other hand, there have been occasions when I’ve noticed by touch that the weapon was exposed, or my wife has told me it’s showing, and nobody around me gives any sign of having noticed.

That's been my experience too. Once you're comfortable carrying, no one seems to notice, even when the gun is inadvertently exposed.

I've been carrying for so long now that my children don't remember ever NOT carrying a firearm. It's something that I do every day. My wife doesn't remember me NOT carrying a firearm. It doesn't make me any stronger, or weaker, or better, or smarter, it's just part-and-parcel of who I am and what I do. Many of my friends don't know I carry. Most of my acquaintances don't know or care, because it's never an issue. They never see the gun so it doesn't exist in their minds.

When you start carrying a firearm regularly, you'll feel ill-at-ease in certain situations because you know you're carrying and you'll feel slightly tense, as if you're waiting for someone to notice. When you become more comfortable with the unaccustomed weight and forget about it, you'll find that the rest of the world doesn't even realize that you're carrying.