Now that cold weather is upon us, pocket carry in an overcoat pocket has some advantages. Pocket carry has both upsides and downsides.
Upsides
- It’s far easier to access a gun in a coat pocket than to undo the coat and draw a holstered pistol. This is especially true when you’re seated in a vehicle with a seat belt on.
- You can put your hand on your gun as soon as you perceive trouble or even walk around with your hand on your gun in general.
- A draw from the pocket, starting with hand on gun, is faster for most people than drawing from a concealed holster.
Downsides
- Pocket carry usually requires a smaller and more compact handgun.
- A separate pocket holster is advisable.
- You may be wearing gloves.
- If you come in from outside and have to hang up your coat in an unsecured area, you’ll need to do something with the pocket pistol to secure it.
- The pocket draw is a little different than drawing from a belt holster.
- Said smaller and more compact handgun will probably become your primary tool in an incident.
Most people don’t practice as much with their smaller guns as they do larger ones. Pocketable pistols are usually both ego challenging and uncomfortable to shoot. Nonetheless, some familiarization is a good idea.
The CCW Practical Exercise from Switzerland is short and uncomplicated familiarization drill. The Swiss are a very practical people.
All shooting is done wearing a concealment garment with a holstered weapon.
- 2 shots at 7 meters in 4 seconds. 3 times.
- 2 shots at 5 meters in 3.5 seconds. 3 times
- 2 shots at 3 meters in 3.0 seconds. 3 times.
18 rounds total. 14 hits required to pass. The hit area (dark area) of their target is roughly equivalent to the IDPA -1 zone. Hits on the silhouette outside the hit area don’t count. They penalize 1 hit for any impacts outside the silhouette.
If you decide to pocket carry, it’s worth doing at least a short tuneup with your pocket pistol. A dry practice session for your draw is a must. A short live fire session to get the lint out of your gun and be sure it works is also in order.
tacticalprofessor 
IF you carry a ‘Pocket Gun’ and may fire it from inside the pocket, consider, a semi-auto will not properly cycle inside a pocket, so a revolver gives more options. And, any gun fired from inside a pocket will likely set fire to the cloth. I personally like ‘contact’ with an adversary that requires being shot. So, after making contact shots, I would slip out of my now burning jacket and wrap it around my adversary to keep him warm in the cold weather. Of course, I recommend keeping the gun before discarding the burning jacket. Any accomplices seeing the above behavior by their intended victim, will likely decide to go somewhere else… right away.
My main problem with the coat pocket gun is when the coat is unzipped. The gun side is much heavier, sags on that side, flops around and bangs on things. Since many of us have a coat open much of the time it takes the concealed out of concealed carry.