Alright, one of the biggest things our students ask us is which holster should I get?
People come to class and they have holsters that
are horrendous and we won't even let them use them because they are dangerous. Because they are not for their gun.
They picked it up at a gun show and it just looked cool and they did even know what they were buying.
So today Sang and I are going to talk about, what's the best holster for
concealed carry and why. We are going to demonstrate a variety of holsters. We are going talk about materials.
Pros and Cons for sure. Where to carry it on your body.
Sang's a appendix guy. I'm a four o'clock kinda guy. Part of it is like God gave us
different things in different places. I don't have anymore room up front to put a gun if you follow me.
So, let's get right to it. I'm gonna run my kydex holster. You can run it appendix
or at the 4 O'Clock. 4:30, 5 O'Clock. Whatever they want to call it.
Because it's inside the waistband it blends.
It won't print as much as outside the waist band.
We are going to do inside the waistband Kydex holster with a Glock 19.
Alright, so we have a kydex inside the waistband holster. What we like about these is they
are as sleek as possible. So you are taking up his little real estate insider pants
as possible. Simple retention control right here. Tighten the screw. Loosen the
screw. This clips over the belt. You can move this thing from the 4 o'clock
position to the appendix position or anywhere in between. Being Kydex it's
pretty much indestructible except for high-heat. Body sweat. Things like that
are not going to affect it. This is a failure point and most of these holsters.
This is the clip. This happens to be a very good one Sang choose to use on here.
Alright, so now I'm going to use the Serpa, Glock 19 outside the waistband at the 3 o'clock position.
As you see, it's not as concealable. It prints a lot more, then inside the waist band.
This is the famous Serpa from Blackhawk. This is your retention.
We are calling this type of holster, Level 2 Retention. In order to release a weapon from this
you need to place your finger onto the toggle. This actually puts your
finger right in the proper index point as the gun is removed from the holster.
You can get these with the pancake. You can get them with the belt loops. You can get on with
all different kinds of attachments. Very popular in law enforcement circles.
Safariland ALS, outside the waistband. With my lite jacket on I think it does a pretty good job of concealing.
Although if the jacket was to tighten up, or if I was to bend over
it might expose it. This has thumb retention. Glock 19, here we go.
Safariland ALS. We have a thumb catch that needs to be depressed. The firearm is secure until we depress that thumb lever.
It actually puts your thumb in a good position for a master grip
when the gun is drawn. This particular one has a mimic suede material on the inside which is nice.
The rest of the holster is manufactured from a very heavy ABS plastic, but I could be incorrect on that.
Now running a neoprene inside the waistband holster for a 38 Special.
Got this in the appendix position. So, with my jacket on it does a fairly good job of concealing.
Here's the problem.
How do I get it back in there. I'm not going to do it.
That's the problem with these things.
One of our scariest holsters.
This is just a simple neoprene cloth holster. Sorry Blackhawk, we know that you sell these.
The problem with these in order to get the gun in an out you have to physically be holding it.
If this thing is inside your waistband, it's clamped shut, so you're pointing a
loaded gun at your hand to get the gun in. We have cleared all these weapons before hand.
This is about as simple and cheap as it gets. I believe they belong in the garbage.
Now the opposite. I've got a Kydex, inside the waistband, for the same revolver.
Does a very good job in the appendix position.
And I can re-holster.
Kydex holster. This is from our friend at Vedder's, down in Florida. Wonderful people.
If you go on there website there is a discount. "CarryTrainer" is the code.
They will provide you a holster. I believe a 10% discount.
This has the same features as the other Kydex we talked about. Meaning its durability.
Retention screws here because this is a revolver. Vedder's has since change the belt clip
on this to a newer model made out of
another type of hard durable plastic. What we like about vs. that neoprene
though is it allows us a one hand holster. Which is imperative for concealed carry.
Now we're running a Kydex Speed Rig.
This can be used for IDPA USPSA competitions. Also has good retention so there's no
reason you could not use this in and outside the waist band capacity under a long
shirt, jacket like I'm doing here. Does a pretty good job. The nice thing about this
is it's very fast. And you can re-holster.
The pros and cons with this
The retention is held by two screws that you have to set on your own.
There's no retention device. There's no thumb. There's no ALS. There's no hood on it.
So it's really quick.
This is a competition style rig. This one is from Bladetech.
Very limited retention.
It can be set pretty tight. I've had this on where I can do jumping jacks and skip rope and it will hold.
This is a straight drop holster. Got the paddle you put inside your pants
so your not having to take your belt on and off.
This is actually a great holster for classes and such, but as you know we like to tell you to carry in train with the
same holster. Don't go to class or to shoot with holster and then carry another.
It doesn't make sense. These are a very nice tight fit.
If you have a sport coat on this baby gets up nice and tight.
Again, all of the benefits of plastic.
4 O'Clock carry
got good concealment here.
Re-holster
Beautiful leather inside the waistband holster. This is from my friends down at
Pure Kustom in Arizona. Good guys. Great holster. Not cheap
but you get what you pay for
very form fitting. Fits nicely. He has a system that he's able to keep the leather
very stiff. It's got a totally different feeling than Kydex. It wraps to your
body very nicely. The problem is over time these things absorb all kinds of
oils and sweat. It depends on your preference
Kydex has kinda taken over the world, but I'm still a bit old school and enjoy the leather.
Outside the waistband kydex holster. These pancake holsters, very popular these days
they're tight to the body. They allow good concealment. There is a lot of material
with these things though. So think about it before you buy one. They take up a lot of
real estate on the outside but they do allow for good conceal-ability. And a good draw stroke.
And of course because they are Kydex, they stay wide open for a good re-holster.
These things were hugely popular for a few years.
Everybody bending Kydex in the world started making these things
and we're not huge fans of them. This is a outside the waistband rig.
There's just so much extra material that we don't feel needs to be there.
You've got all this extra plastic on you versus what we were showing you with the inside
the waistband, but again, it depends on your mode of carry.
And then we got all kinds of hybrid holsters on the market. These were trying to fill a void,
between the leather guys and the Kydex guys and I personally don't see the need.
When we looked at the other inside the waistband holsters there's just a lot less material.
I tried to carry these. What I find is they're almost too close to your body where your not
able to get a good master grip. I'm sure the manufacturers of these and argue.
but you just have all of this material contacting your body versus those smaller inside
the waistband holsters that we showed you.
This is about as simplistic as it gets.
This is a outside the waistband holster. A friend of mine, a deputy. This is a holster that he carried for a long time.
About as minimal as you can possibly get. What don't I like about this?
The muzzles exposed. Your firearm can actually be pushed out of the holster.
See that? I just use my index finger and was able to push the gun out of the holster.
You have to be very cognizant of your weapon. If you sit down in a chair that
exposed muzzle can be pushed right out of the holster.
Also, your muzzle is exposed to dings and dirt.
If you hurt the crown of the barrel, you and really injure the gun and
affect its accuracy. Your sites exposed so that could get knocked out of alignment.
Depending on what you do though, if your in a suit all day long
and you're not doing a lot of sitting, this is a very minimal way to carry.
We've got one more
of these minimalistic outside the waistband leather holsters.
Again, in this one has a thumb strap on it. So you now have the issue solved of the exposed
muzzle pushing the gun out of the holster, but you still have the other
issues of the exposed muzzle getting smacked into things and such. You get
thumb break on here. So you have a little bit of retention to keep the gun locked in.
With a 1911
it's actually a level of safety because now your impeding the hammer from forward
movement with that thumb strap.
So we showed you the holsters on the range.
We showed you how we draw from them. The different body placements. There's others.
You've got shoulder rigs. You've got a ankle rigs. Both of those are going to be far more
experienced guys, wouldn't you think. Very specialty situations. Most of what you're
going to see is gonna be a waistband holster. Especially if you're new to this.
Don't start out shoving a holster in your ankle. Don't start out carrying
something your armpit or bra. We want you to learn how to work these things from a
good safe location where we're not pointing things behind you and all over the place
to get a holstered. We covered that you need to be able to re-holster, right?
Sang, what do we think about a situation where you had to deploy the weapon you
now need to reupholster. Why is it important?
You don't want to be using two hands to re-holster.
If you have a collapsible, for example some of these. They will collapse on you when they're in the pants.
You don't want to it's a dangerous thing. What about when the cops show up if you
can't put that gun back in a holster. Yeah. First, we don't do any speed re-holstering.
The last thing you want to do if the police show up is make quick movements.
And you want to be able to do it with one hand,
without making a lot of quick motions and hurting yourself.
Imagine if your holding a child in your hand and the gun in the other.
And you've got one of these holsters that
you need to be able to spread open. We want a holster that we can safely put
our pistol back in the holster. After this video shoot I noticed we've
got a bunch of these. A lot of these students that come to our
class and they realize that the holster that they bought is a piece of *#$&!
That is not usable usable for street use. So we thought we'd show you where we're going to put these.
And this is it right here. All of these are kinda just useless
Sorry to manufacturers. I think what they're doing is trying to fill a void for cheap
product that they know people don't know what they need and want to buy the stuff
and they're downright dangerous. And this is your life, or the life of your loved ones.
Don't skimp out. Don't. Even if you're talking fifty to a hundred bucks for a good holster.
You've already spent four five six seven hundred bucks on a gun.
Another fifty or a hundred bucks for quality holster is well worth it.
This is Mickey and Sang from CarryTrainer.com. Like our videos subscribe to them.
We really want you to forward design to your friends that care about the same
things we care about. We want to get this information in front of as many people
as possible, so we stop having people showing up on the range with crap like this.
stay safe ,train hard