Aesop has a post on drop-leg holsters with interesting remarks and also interesting comments to the post.
According to her blog, the above is a dumb holster idea.
“Basically, unless you’re wearing a plate carrier or LBV or something that interferes with a normal belt mount, you should probably leave the drop-legs to Hollywood space pirates and B&W cowboys.”
Oh really?
Point of order.
Look, I can give you eleventy times and places where a drop leg of any type is weapons-grade dumb (self-castration optional); BTDT and got the t-shirt. But I can also think of several situations where it’s pretty wizard-level. And let’s face it, not everyone is a Travis Haley gunslinger, nor trying to be one.
What about for someone who’s not trying to look tacticool at all, but maybe earning a living driving a truck all day, or a cabbie, an Uber/Lyft driver, or a pizza delivery guy?
(Not in NYFC or similar anti-gun locales, but in places where the Constitution still applies most days.)
[ … ]
Sit in a car, a delivery van, or a semi rig cab, and show me your IWB or appendix-carry draw, against, say, a robber or carjacker.With your seatbelts on (in observance of the law, natch), and maybe wearing a jacket, just to make it interesting for you. I’ll wait.
(We won’t even talk about where that IWB is digging into you all shift, or where your appendix carry muzzle is pointed, sitting in a vehicle seat. And to be sporting, we won’t stipulate that one might be a bit on the portly side.)
Now, sit in a car seat, same conditions, and tell me where your hand falls on your upper leg:
unless you’ve got gorilla-length arms (which you’d need to get to any ankle rig), that’d be right where this holster sits. Handy. Readily available. Not pointed at your junk.
Five stars.
Several things caught my interest in this. First, I just can’t stand a one-size fits all approach to anything, and it sounds like Aesop agrees.
The Travis Haley video at the link has Travis sporting a Kydex holster with retention. I hate Kydex, and I’m not an operator in SOC. I choose not to wear Kydex – just because that’s what I choose to do, and I choose to do what I want. I’m not interested in being tacticool.
I also hate appendix carry. I hate sticking a pistol barrel into my groin / lower stomach. It isn’t comfortable and I refuse to do it. I can carry at 3:00 (IWB), on my ankle, or OWB. I simply will not carry IWB appendix.
And I recently discussed how the 1911 fits my arthritic hands because of its narrow frame. Everyone’s physique, capabilities, and jobs are different. I can see sitting in a car or truck as a driver and needing something other than high waist carry (my seatbelt interferes frequently with me).
Similarly, Travis can make the suggestion to carry as high as possible with a drop-holster, and with the few I’ve worn I would agree, and he can make the suggestion to simply move gear around to facilitate that, but it’s not that simple.
My Marine son and I have talked about this before. He hates drop holsters. When clearing rooms and moving quickly through domiciles, the holster bangs on couches, flops around, and gets in the way of every movement. It might be nice to say “move gear,” but that involves leaving behind SAW ammunition drums, or some other essential gear he might have needed for 16 hours in Fallujah. We’re not talking about cops doing a ten minute job. We’re talking all day and into the night, house to house, room to room, sometimes nothing happens, sometimes gunfire is streaming through the doorway. Besides, the body armor he was issued wasn’t so amenable to wearing a drop holster high.
He also has an interesting view of the C-clamp or thumb-over-bore grip. Yea, it looks cool, and he’s used it, but if you think you’re going to use that grip for 16 hours in Fallujah, you’re mistaken. You can hold that for five minutes, and then you’re using another. That’s for short-term direct action ops, not long term urban combat.
So in his job he had to use a drop holster. He hated them. In other jobs, people might need them. I have no need of one, but open carry from time to time with a much higher holster, sometimes leather, sometimes Cordura. I never use Kydex because it’s a free country and I don’t have to.
In the gun community we need to recognize differences in sex, physique, comfort, need, job and simple differences of opinion concerning what people like.
