Carrying a Handgun Without a Belt

Usually when you see people talking about carrying guns or teaching you firearms defensive skills, there are gonna be decked out. They're wearing range pants, heavy belts, maybe even camouflage and heavy duty kit and gear. The reality is that's not how most people dress, most of the time. Now, I try to wear normal pants maybe jeans, polo shirts, something like that, and we keep the logos and the professional image up. But this is much more likely how I'm going to be dressed, if I'm getting up in the morning to take the kids to school, or I'm just doing something around the house, especially out here in Colorado it's a little chilly, throw the pullover on, throw some sweatpants on, and I'm good to go. Maybe I'm going to the gym, maybe coming back from the gym, whatever it is. I'm not wearing a gun belt all the time, Now the idea that you should always wear a gun belt, if you're wearing a gun, well, that's an old cliche. It's something that you'll hear a lot of people talk about, and it's usually really good advice. It's grounded on the idea of old leather holsters and the idea that you're carrying a big, heavy gun. The fact is that there are better synthetic materials today for holsters and there's a lot of lightweight defensive guns that people carry. I personally am carrying right now, obviously without a belt, very securely in the version two of the crossbreed I.C.E combo belly band. Now this was a device that I helped obviously design. ICE's training company's name is on it. This is version two. And this one has the safety security strap, which goes over the codex holster piece, which gives you even more security with a heavier gun. I don't have to worry about the fact that I'm only wearing sweat pants. I don't have to worry about even doing the drawstring up tightly. I wouldn't want to rely on something like a shoelace, to keep my gun against my body anyway. The belly band itself is doing that for me. Now let's say that you're not into the belly band and you want to maybe use the same holster whether you're using a belt or not. And that's fine. If I undo the belly band here, I take the safety retention strap off, remove the holster from the band itself. We're just going to go ahead and leave that band in place for the purposes of this demonstration. That gun is clear. We'll put that back there as if it doesn't even exist. Go back to just my normal sweat pants, pullover T-shirt. And let's take a look at this crossbreed holster. Now this is the holster that I use almost every day. This is an appendix inside the waistband holster. But I've added instead, of the standard crossbreed clip, this ulticlip. Now the ulticlip is specifically designed, for times when you're not going to have a traditional belt or maybe you bought a holster that doesn't have a great clip in the first place. Again, we're going to take this firearm, it's already been cleared. I'm going to stick it into this holster. And now you're going to see that I can go into the waistband here, and actually attach the holster to the band. Now, in this case, I don't have the support of the belly band itself. I'm just attaching it to the waistband of the sweat pants. So the drawstring being engaged is certainly going to help. The main idea of this clip is, it's not like the kind of clip that's required to go around a belt to hold the holster secure. When I draw the gun, now the holster is going to stay behind because the ulticlip is attaching this to the sweat pants, even though I don't have a big belt on. But remember we still don't necessarily have the security for the firearm without the drawstring in place. But this could work really well with a traditional set of pants, maybe jeans, maybe just some work pants, some cargo pants that fit you snugly, and will hold the gun against your body, but you aren't wearing that big, heavy belt. So conventional wisdom, wear a good belt when you're carrying a gun, absolutely. It's great advice, but there are other options for times when you're wearing pants that won't accept a belt or for whatever reason you don't have that good heavy gun belt. And you still want to make sure that your firearm is securely attached to your person and ready when you need to draw it.