Big Training or Big Trouble… What are you bringing?
What are the essentials, the equipment that will allow you to efficiently complete a period of personal training or guided instruction with a pistol or rifle? What are the most critical pieces you need with you in a more prolonged high threat situation?
Also, this might very well be the first time you have had absolute autonomy of your own personal equipment. You’re building your kit. Not your unit’s or department’s, yours.
Think about it. If this is for your job it will be with job related equipment. Gear will (or should) be issued and used in standard operating layouts based on SOPs. This does two things, allows you to use the daily setup in an active training environment and identify weaknesses in that gear layout so they can be corrected. If you aren’t verifying and testing equipment layout vs SOP you’re risking a lot. Please don’t, test how your gear performs.
But back to talking about your personal gear? What do you need to bring to get the most out of your range drills for a handgun or carbine? What do you need to be able to throw onto your person, very short notice, in order to increase your ability and survivability?
Enter – Copias by Raven Concealment Systems
The cornucopia is the Horn of Plenty. The copia magazine carrier… will carry a magazine so you have plenty of rounds. One for rifle, one for pistol. Or two and one, one and two, whatever layout you need to carry spares and reload your firearm on training or situational demand.
Why do you need this?
You are practicing efficiently manipulating your firearm or you’ve just shot an entire magazine in a fight. Reload. That needs to be with you, on your body, and useable how you stand at that moment. You could have 10 magazines you grabbed in a ‘go bag’ but if not one of them are usable they’re just dead weight, or weight helping make you dead.
The reasons having gear like this matters and how it matters will have direct relation to the specific skill and drill you are doing, the common denominator will be having enough ammo to make it worth the time. Having one or two magazines on body smoothes out your time and equipment efficiency with less time jamming rounds into a single magazine. Less down time, more time on the gun. Better range spend.
The same applies to these critical pieces helping you survive a gunfight. You have what is ready. More convenient ready equipment equates to a higher on demand/short notice situational readiness.
Why not more?
You don’t need to load yourself down with magazines and ammo, its fatiguing, time consuming, and thus counterproductive. It’s also highly unrealistic in any scenario outside of active military/paramilitary/police active shooter site response operations. This is the short situation grab. The space between a concealed carry pistol solving the problem and full on patrolling in armor with a team.
Example – Everything for my home defense gun is on my home defense gun. Rifle, sight, light, D60, and sling so that I grab one thing in the middle of the night. Any piece of equipment beyond that is an equation of available time vs. the benefit of grabbing more equipment.
This is where the Copia’s come in handy. Fitting to the body, allowing more ammo to comfortably come with you means more reps or more convenient ammo on hand in a time is life situation. More reps better engrains the skill development. More ammo allows more chances to solve the life threatening situation which prompted grabbing the gun. Less pieces, lower cost, easier to grab, all lend themselves to the convenience factor which ups the odds of you bringing it.
Never discount what people pay for convenience. Look at fast food. Use our tendencies to our advantage when it comes to emergency prep.
The “Light” Loadout.
The light loadout concept is twofold, one is operationally based, the second and by far most important for us is convenience based.
It consists of a pistol magazine carrier, rifle magazine carrier, a TQ or small trauma kit, a holster, and the slung rifle. These pieces, on body, enable solving just about any kinetic problem that could arise or has arisen. You have a primary and secondary reload, a method to treat critical injury, and methods to safely stow/carry your firearms. This covers your essentials in a training or active environment.
A proper layout of a plate carrier is equipment intensive, expensive, and heavy. Putting a good useable system on your belt involves far fewer pieces and covers most of the pieces you need for training or active use. Setting up a full ready belt is much more cost effective and has a lower price of acquisition than a proper plate carrier.
The Copia (Copias? Copii?) make this even easier by going on just about any run of the mill belt from Duluth, Kohl’s, wherever. It means your full belt rig can be tossed conveniently in any bag and put on in about a minute. Holster, med bag, mags, all with the old Mk1 belt loop attachment. Training or real world, you have plenty of equipment at your disposal and readily accessible.
The Convenient Loadout
Convenient. That convenience factor cannot be overstated. Transporting large and heavy gear sucks, you end up leaving it behind, the risk isn’t worth the daily grind. The light loadout means you don’t leave it behind. Convenience of carry equals more likely to be carried.
Two Copia’s, a TQ/Med pack, and my holster (already being worn) can go in any everyday bag I use. Backpack, laptop bag, you name it. Those pieces can go onto any belt I wear. This equates to me carrying a useable two layer system instead of any number of theoretical ‘better’ systems that are too much hassle to bother with.
In closing, thank you RCS, for indulging not only my need for a gear quality solution but circumventing my, and humanity’s, slothful tendencies.
