How to select a QUALITY concealed carry holster for safety, comfort and security.
Do you have a drawer of holsters? I do. Well, it’s not fair to say I have “A” drawer of holsters, cause it’s actually several boxes.
Yup, I’ve made mistakes along the way and I have the crappy holsters to prove it.
The good news is, I’ve stopped buying crap holsters. You can too. Maybe you are here soon enough to not even start… Read on and avoid death by 1,000 holsters.
How to select a holster for CCW that will allow you to carry safely, comfortably and securely.
A holster has a lot of duties and the unfortunate truth is they don’t all play well together. In fact, often when a holster does one thing well, it makes it difficult to do other things to the level that a holster needs to for it to be considered a quality holster.
This guide will give you some ideas of what makes some holsters better than others and the responsibilities that you have in selecting a quality holster.
Friday 15 – How to select a Quality CCW Holster.
If you are unsure of safe gun handling and the rules for safe gun handling seek professional instruction.
Safety Note:
When shopping for and testing a new holster safety needs to be a primary consideration. Your concerns about safety don’t stop there. When you are learning to use and testing the holster you need to consider the consequences if the holster fails. Make sure that any time you are testing a holster you do so with an UNLOADED firearm.
Firearm safety is your responsibility!
Gun safety is a serious topic. If you have any questions of your ability to handle firearms safely, you need to seek professional instruction. If you wish to review the concepts and principles of safe gun handling, you can consult this practical guide to gun safety.
Remember, gun safety is your responsibility.
Think R-A-G-T-O-P to help you decide…
R – Retention
A – Application
G – Gun Fit
T – Trigger
O – Open Mouth
P – Position
Finding a quality holster can be a difficult task for many different reasons. For starters, mots people don’t understand what to look for in a quality holster. If you are in that camp, don’t feel too bad about it. Many holster manufacturers thing a goos holster is just a much that holds a gun. A holster is much more than that.
Most folks learn about holster quality by trial and error. They start out buying a holster they think will fit the bill only to find out it is lacking in some way so it gets replaced. Unfortunately, the replacement is rarely better than the original and if it is, it’s just a little bit better. This makes for a waste of time and money.
More importantly, it can be a safety issue. When a holster isn’t a quality holster, or when a quality holster is matched with the wrong gun, problems can arise. Often, those problems can be safety issues.
A quality holster helps you to carry your handgun safely, comfortably and securely.
What does RAG TOP really mean?
Does your concealed carry handgun stay in the holster when it is supposed to?
Your holster needs to hold onto your gun until you intentionally take it out. The retention needs to work even if you find yourself and your holster turned upside down. Your gun needs to stay in your holster until you take it out. Period. When you intentionally draw your gun, you should be able to do so with one hand and with a minimal amount of effort. You can see how retention, if it isn’t done well can cause problems when you want, or more importantly, need to draw your gun.
For general range use and concealed carry retention should be achieved with friction and you should avoid buttons, snaps and levers that need to be manipulated before the gun can come out of the holster.
For duty carry and open carry retention should be achieved with a device that is deactivated naturally when the gun is drawn but is difficult to actuate by others. Retention devices that are deactivated when gripping the gun seem to work well with the human body. I recommend avoiding retention devices that are deactivated with the trigger finger.
Are you using the right holster for the job?
Your holster needs to fit the purpose that you will use it for. A holster for competition is probably not suited for duty or concealed carry. A duty holster wouldn’t be appropriate for concealed carry. Think about what your goal is and select a holster built for that purpose.
You can see that we already began discussing application when we talked about a holster’s retention. Duty holsters have a significantly different application from concealed carry holsters and as a result there are different considerations in what makes for a quality holster. Take some time to think about the purpose of your holster and then choose accordingly.
Is your holster made specifically to fit your concealed carry handgun?
Your holster should fit your gun specifically. Holsters that are designed to fit 72 different guns rarely fit any of them well and have a hard time performing the duties of a quality holster. You may find that a holster fits 2 or three different models of gun. That may be acceptable if the holster does all of its jobs well.
I have recently discovered one exception to the “if it fits 72 different guns it sucks rule.” That exception is the holsters manufactured by Stealth Operator. Fancy name, fancy holster. The Stealth Operator is a molded holster that seems to do a pretty good job fitting a whole bunch of guns. I don;t recommend this holster for most folks, however, if you are an instructor and need to help lots of students that bring lots of crummy holsters to class, or if you aren’t sure what gun you are going to be using at the range next week, you might want to give the Stealth Operator Holster a look. You can find the Stealth Operator Holster and mag pouches here.
Does your holster COMPLETELY cover the trigger guard on your handgun?
This is super important, so if you are drifting off a bit, get your attention back here.
A quality holster needs to completely cover the trigger guard area of the gun. Both the front and the back. In addition, there should be no part of the holster that could inadvertently enter the trigger guard while the gun is being drawn or re-holstered. If the trigger area of the gun is not completely covered or if holster parts could enter the trigger guard, the holster is unsafe and should not be use.
Do you see why covering the trigger guard of the gun and making sure no holster parts can get inside the trigger guard is important? Yes, that is correct, the trigger fires the gun. If the trigger guard isn’t completely covered the gun could be accidentally fired either by placing the finger into the trigger guard too early or by allowing some other object to enter the trigger guard and press the trigger.
Poorly designed holsters actually have holster parts that can flop into the trigger guard. Not good. I always keep my knife sharp to hack off those offending holster bits before someone gets hurt.
Does the top of your holster stay open even after you have drawn your gun?
Look for a holster that has an open mouth even when the holster is worn without the gun inserted. Being able to holster one handed can be a big advantage and a holster with an open mouth makes this much easier. In addition, a holster with an open mouth makes it much easier to re-holster without pointing the gun at yourself.
Is your holster designed to conceal your handgun in the position you want to carry it?
Different holsters are designed to be carried on different parts of the body or in different positions on the waist. Don’t try and adapt a holster designed for carry behind the hip to the appendix position, etc.
Your holster also needs to retain its position. Make sure that the holster won’t slide excessively on your belt and will maintain its position relative to your body. Belt loops that match the belt size help greatly with this.
Clearly you can see that holsters have an important job that goes well beyond being a pouch to hold your gun. When you consider the vast number of combinations that exist when we consider the many models of handguns, different materials, inside the waistband and outside the waistband, different cary positions on the belt, it is no wonder that manufacturers try to cut corners and make one size fits many holsters.
I understand why they do it. I also understand that it doesn’t work. I hope you too get it and take the time to find a quality holster that will carry your handgun safely, comfortably and securely.
Guns, Holsters, and Gear is a site run by my good friend Richard Johnson. He has invested a tremendous amount of effort in building a resource for customers to find a holster that works for them. You can look at holster related posts on GHG by clicking here.
Here is a link to an Amazon search for holsters. Not all of the holsters on Amazon meet the RAG TOP requirements, so shop carefully.
Show transcript begins here
The clock is running and this is Friday 15. My name is Paul Carlson and I am so glad that you are here with me today. In this Friday 15 episode of the Safety Solutions Academy podcast we’re going to take a fast-paced and direct look at why it is important for you to make sure that you select a quality holster maybe more importantly we’re going to talk about how it is that you can actually go about figuring out if a holster is a good choice or not. Is that holster going to be safe, is it going to fit, is it going to work for your application. Again thank you so much for joining me on the Safety Solutions Academy podcast for another Friday 15 now let’s get right into it.
Selecting a quality holster is one of the most difficult tasks that someone that’s interested in concealed carry especially can get into. It’s not all that much easier if you’re selecting a holster just for general range use or a holster for duty use. It’s a challenging aspect and the reason why it’s so challenging is the number of options that are out there. It makes it difficult to sort everything out. If you think about the idea that there are you know innumerable numbers of handguns that are out there.
Let’s say that there are 150 different types of handguns, different models. We have three or four different positions that people like to carry on the waist, well we’ve got 500 holsters right there. We’ve got inside the waistband and outside the waistband. Well let’s take that up and that gets us to say 1000 holsters. We’ve got right handed and left handed that’s 2000 holsters. If a store wanted to carry one of every holster they’d have to have 2000 different holsters just to have one holster to fit each set of circumstances.
That doesn’t take into the fact that there’s all different kinds of manufacturers out there as well. So the tendency has been, well we’ll just throw together a holster that works for a bunch different guns and we’ll just make it a pouch that carries a gun around and everything will be fine. Unfortunately a holster is way more than that. So my goal today is to give you a guide that’s going to give you some ideas on what it is you can do to figure out what makes some holsters better than others and what your responsibilities are, what your goals are when you are trying to select a quality holster.
Now before we get too far in here, I want to take a moment to talk about safety. Folks, when you are shopping for, when you’re testing a new holster, when you’re checking it out to make sure that it’s going to work for you, you need to be considering gun safety. It’s not just picking out a holster but it’s also what you do with it after you get it. When you are testing a new holster make sure that you do so with an unloaded firearm. Make sure that you follow firearm safety rules, verify that that gun is unloaded. Remove ammunition from the area to avoid the possibility of a gun being accidentally loaded and if you’re in doubt of the safety of a holster and firearm combination I suggest that you do not use that holster.
Remember firearm safety is your responsibly and you are the person that will have to bear the consequences of a firearms accident. When you are testing a new holster make sure you keep firearms safety in mind.
Now let’s take a look at what it is that makes for a quality holster. You know holsters have a lot of different attributes to them and it makes it very difficult to figure out what holster you need for what purpose. And most folks will learn about holster quality by trial and error. You start out by purchasing that cheap holster that the person behind the counter recommends. It fits the bill in some ways but not others and so you look for another holster. You look for one that fits the role of what the first holster was lacking. While the problem is holster number two might do better than holster number one in some areas but worse in others.
It’s a trial by fire; think about that it actually could be trial by fire right? It’s a trial and error process that is a waste of time and money and unfortunately it can be a safety issue as well. So folks when you look for a holster you need to look for a quality holster. Now I’ve kind of broken down a quality holster into some terms that I think are pretty understandable. You know we want our holster to carry our hand gun safely and comfortably and securely. Those are our goals, safety so that no one is injured, comfortably so that we carry our gun, and securely so that we have our gun when we need it.
I look at this little pneumonic device for quality holsters that I call ragtop R-A-G-T-O-P ragtop. Ragtop stands for retention application gun fit trigger guard open mouth and position. If we can find a holster that meets our requirements for this pneumonic ragtop then we’ve got a holster that’s going to work for us.
Let’s start out with the R in ragtop, retention. You see your holster needs to hold onto your gun until you intentionally take that gun out. You have to have a holster that retains your gun even if you’re upside down, turn left, turn right, turn sideways. Your gun needs to stay in the holster where it belongs until you’re ready to take it out. Now see here’s the rub, your gun needs to be fairly easy to remove when it’s time to take that gun out and you can see how those are two conflicting attributes of retention. Hold onto the gun when I don’t want it to come out of the holster, make sure comes out really easily when I’m ready for it to come out because I take it out.
In general for concealed carry, friction is the tool that’s used for retention and I think that we should avoid in most situations for concealed carry having buttons and levers that we have to think about deactivating and manipulating so we can take our gun out of the holster. Those buttons snaps and levers they can get in the way and be something that actually keeps the gun in when we want it to come out so consider retention.
Now maybe you’re selecting a holster for duty carry or for open carry in that case we need to have some kind of an active retention device because our gun is going to be carried out in the open where others can see it. Part of the retention of concealed carry is the concealment itself; we want retention devices that tend to be deactivated when we grip the gun without thought or effort. We want to have retention devices that are going to automate the drawing process that we grab on to the gun, we automatically defeat those devices but they’re not easily defeated by other people.
And I’m going to recommend when we’re talking about active retention devices for an open carry holster or a duty holster I would avoid devices that are deactivated with the trigger finger. The trigger finger has one job and that’s to press the trigger. Let’s not use it to get the gun out of the holster. So retention in a concealed carry holster that is going to be friction, in a duty or open holster probably some active tool.
Let’s talk about application. The application of your holster needs to fit the purpose that you’re going to use it for. A competition holster probably isn’t good for duty or concealed carry. A duty holster probably isn’t going to work very well for concealed carry. It’s probably not going to be very fast in competition. Think about what your goal is and select a holster that is built for that purpose. So if you’re after a concealed carry holster, make sure you’re looking and shopping for a concealed carry holster, not duty holsters, not range holsters.
In ragtop we’ve got retention, application and then G is for gun fit. Your holster should fit your gun specifically. There are lots of holsters out there that are size one and fit medium frame revolvers, medium framed automatics and they list 72 different guns on the back of the package that fits into the holster. The fact is that if your holster fits 72 guns it’s probably not going to fit any of them very well. This has relegated the holster to that pouch that simply holds the gun and we need more for that. How are you going to retain a holster through friction if it fit 72 different guns?
Most holsters that have a wide variety of guns that fit, well those don’t work very well. The only exception that I know of is a holster called the Stealth operator. It’s got kind of a fancy name it’s a down low undercover holster obviously. This holster is really good at fitting a whole bunch of guns I don’t recommend it for most folks, however if your an instructor and you need holsters for students to come to class and have holsters that stink, this holster might work to fit a wide variety of students guns.
If you’re someone that isn’t really sure what gun is going to be your gun and you need a holster for several guns so you can do some testing on the range maybe the Stealth operator is a good holster for you. Gun fit is important, have a holster that fits your gun.
The trigger guard that’s the T in ragtop, we’ve got retention, we’ve got application, gun fit and the trigger guard. The trigger guard needs to be covered the front and the back fully covered from top to bottom. We don’t want anything we don’t want our finger or anything else to be able to enter the trigger guard and inadvertently press the trigger especially when the gun is in the holster that is a major safety issue. We need to make sure that the trigger is covered again front and back from top to bottom make sure the trigger guard is completely covered.
In ragtop we’ve got retention, application, gun fit, trigger and open mouth. We want to look for a holster that has a stiff top and the mouth of the holster remains open even when the gun is not inserted. Why is it that we want that open mouth? Because we want to be able to re-holster one-handed should we need to. We don’t want that left hand to number one be getting in the way and we don’t want to have to point the gun in awkward directions to try and wiggle the muzzle back in the holster.
Often times when students have to manipulate the gun in that way they end up pointing the gun at themselves. Pointing a loaded gun across your abdomen to try and get it back into a holster is probably a bad idea. I say probably in a very sarcastic manner, it’s definitely a bad idea and you shouldn’t do it. Your holster having an open mouth will help you to keep from doing that.
In ragtop again we’ve got retention, application, gun fit, trigger, open mouth and then position. We need to understand that position of the holster is important. Each holster tends to be designed to be worn on the belt or on the body in a specific position. If you try and manipulate a holster or modify a holster to fit into some other position you can run into some challenges. I suggest that if you carry an appendix make sure you get a holster for the appendix position. If you carry behind the hip make sure you get a holster that’s for caring behind the hip. If you carry on the seam of your pants at 3 o’clock get a holster that fits on the seam of your pants at 3 o’clock.
Position also deals with inside the waistband or outside the waistband. If you carry concealed it’s much easier to conceal a firearm if it’s inside the waistband. Make sure then you shop for a holster that is an inside the waistband holster. That makes it so that all you have to conceal is the grip of the gun as opposed to the whole barrel in the holster if that holster is outside of the waistband.
So folks, selecting a quality holster is a daunting task, there’s 7,642,000 holsters that are out there for each and every gun. Some of them are good some of them are not. The way that you can figure out if a holster might work for you, at least from a safety and a quality standpoint is to make sure you think of that pneumonic ragtop. Again that stands for retention, application, gun fit, trigger covered, open mouth and positioning.
If you think about ragtop you’re much less likely to waste money on a holster at least you have something that’s safe and functional. Holsters have an important job, take the time you need to take to make sure you make a safe and quality choice when it comes to a holster.
Now if you appreciated this Friday 15th talking about how to select a quality holster. If you gained some insight about the holsters that you own, maybe the holsters that you’ve owned and what’s been wrong with them and what it is you’re looking for in that next holster I’d like you to connect with me and with Safety Solutions Academy.
When you do, I’m going to go ahead and send you a link to resources that I talked about in today’s episode. Resources from past Friday 15th episodes and resources from future episodes are still to come and there is a whole bunch of them. We’ve got at this point in time 15 shows in the queue so you’ve got 15 more weeks of Friday 15’s coming and that is exciting news.
Now to connect with us it’s really simple obviously it’s going to benefit you when you do connect with us. All you need to do is send a text message, the message will contain the word Friday 15 all lowercase Friday and the numerals 1 5. And you’re going to text that to the number 33444. So text Friday 15 to the number 33444 and I’m going to send you a link where you can download your free resources on holsters, on medical emergency action plans, on a suggested medical gear, on why it is that we should be paying attention to the gear that we select on range safety. On the rules for safe gun handling the topics are many and the resources are many as well.
I want to tell you folks I sincerely appreciate you spending time with me with the Safety Solutions Academy podcast. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the fact that you take the time to download and subscribe and listen and leave reviews and leave ratings for the Safety Solutions Academy podcast. And just your time it’s probably your most valuable asset you have and you have made the choice to share some of that time with me and it is very appreciated.
Folks make sure you select a quality holster that’s going to keep you safe and get the job done of carrying your gun safely, comfortably and securely but most importantly get that holster out there with you, get some training. When you do make sure you keep it simple please stay safe and as always have a great day.
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