Better To Be Safe Than Sorry

Everyone wants to be safe in these turbulent times and you have the right to be safe whether you are at work, at home, or even out enjoying a night on the town. You definitely want to be safe if your work consists of risky situations like being a private investigator or even teaching in some schools nowadays. Throughout my military and law enforcement careers, I’ve had experience with different kinds of body armor, both concealed armor with civilian clothes as well as the heavy military armor worn when I was overseas in places like Turkey.

Legal Considerations

Federal law prohibits people convicted of violent crimes from possessing body armor, but local armor laws are relatively loose and vary widely from state to state. For instance, New York state, including New York City with its restrictive gun laws, allows civilians to wear bullet-resistant vests as long as they’re not committing a violent felony.

In contrast, Connecticut is probably the most restrictive state when it comes to bulletproof vests. It doesn’t allow convicted felons to wear them and Connecticut law forbids the online sale of body armor to civilians without a face-to-face transaction between the buyer and the seller. But for the most part civilians in most states are free to buy a bulletproof vest if they want one.

Types of Body Armor

I mentioned that I wore two types of body armor. If you plan to wear your vest under a jacket or shirt, you are going to need a thinner, lighter vest. If you plan to have one in your “Bug Out Bag” you might want a larger, bulkier vest like the ones issued by the military that you will wear over your clothes. Or you may have both. The choice is yours.

You have to balance the effect your chosen vest will have on your capabilities. What I mean is that the bulky offensive body armor is great in a combat zone because you’re probably going to get into a fight that involves higher caliber weapons and are therefore not trying to hide the fact that you’re wearing the vest. However, you, the average citizen will probably never have to wear this type of vest.

For typical situations and everyday wear, you probably only need the lighter, easier to conceal vest like the ones I wore under my suits as a federal agent. They were lighter, more comfortable, and hardly noticeable. That is what you likely want.

Be Realistic

If you buy the bulky vests, you’re never going to wear that shit in real life unless society completely collapses. If that was to happen, it’d be nice to have this type of vest, but what are you going to do in the meantime? Hopefully it will never get to the point where you’d need it.

Now let’s get back to a more likely scenario. You want to be protected but you don’t want to alert the bad guy to the fact that you are wearing a vest. Why not? Because if they know you’re wearing a vest, then they will just aim for your head. Also, if you happen to work in a dangerous profession where you have a higher-than-normal risk of getting shot but need to look like everyone else, you want the concealable vest. The same goes even if you just live a normal life but want to be safe going out to a movie, a concert (think about the Las Vegas attack), or even to the grocery store.

You are more likely to wear your lighter vest. The best vest in the world is useless if you don’t wear it. Concealed body armor, worn correctly, will provide you with a layer of protection that could save your life in situations much more likely to occur in your regular day.

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Size Matters

I learned as an agent that it is very important that you get the size correct too. If you don’t, a bullet could slip by an opening in your vest. Getting the size right is pretty simple, you just order it like a shirt. I have a double XL and it fits pretty well. The sides should just barely overlap.

If you have a beer belly, concealed body armor is very difficult to wear due to how it lies against your stomach and will tend to creep up higher on your chest. You have to do the best you can though, as an ill-fitting vest is still better than no vest at all.

Just like your concealed holster, you have to choose your clothing appropriately to keep your vest from showing. You also have to be aware of how you move so you don’t give your hidden protection away.

I was once on a plane and the stewardess came up to me and whispered that someone had reported to her I was wearing a gun. While I was putting my bag into an overhead bin, my jacket rose up and revealed the weapon. I was still an agent at the time and the stewardess already knew I was carrying. I did appreciate the fact that the passenger reported it though.

Conceal Your Armor

When you put your vest on I recommend you wear a t-shirt over it and an over-shirt on top of that. You may also want to wear a t-shirt under it, but unless it’s fairly cool out, you’ll get pretty hot with all that on. If you plan to wear concealed armor every day, I suggest you get an extra vest because they get pretty funky if you don’t wash them regularly.

Before you go out with your vest on, check yourself in a mirror, moving around in different ways to see what movements cause your armor to be exposed. While you are at it, you should look at how moving affects your ability to hide weapons and your armor so you can recognize if someone else is wearing something concealed. They can be easily picked out if you know what to look for.

Pick armor that rides higher on your back if you are going to wear a concealed weapon in the back. One other thing I would like to address is how wearing armor can impact hand-to-hand combat. You must not rely on your vest alone. Wearing one is not guaranteed to save your life. You should also have some self-defense skills. You must be vigilant, alert, aggressive, fast, calm, and shrewd and you should practice your self-defense moves with the vest on.

Armor Strengths

There are also many different types of ballistic vests and they are designed to repel projectiles of different strengths or ballistic impacts. Vest are categorized in five different levels set by the National Institute of Justice to suit the types of ammunition available in the market today.

You have to determine which will work best for your situation. Every person is exposed to different degrees of threats. It really just depends on the amount of protection you want, but remember, the more you have, the less concealable it will be. Also, your body type and clothing play a major factor in your overall ability to conceal it.

Wrapping Up

To summarize this chart, here is how they work for concealability:

• Level II-A and Level II vests are the easiest to conceal and can usually be worn under a loose shirt. This is what I wore over my suits. The trade off is that you lose some level of protection.
• Level III-A vests may require you to pull out your sweaters and jackets to conceal effectively (which might make you stand out in the middle of Summer).
• Level III and Level IV vests are usually worn over clothes, but if you’re really up for a challenge you can try concealing them under a large jacket.

Remember, no one can ever predict when the inevitable could happen, so be safe at all times and wear your protective vest every day if you choose to use one.

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