Choosing a Handgun Holster

Hey guys! Deryck Poole here. I'm one of your contributors here at PDN. I wanna talk to you guys today about selecting a holster. I see a lot of the questions that come in and one of the most common that comes in, especially from the new shooters out there is selecting a holster.

What's the best holster? Well, really selection of a holster is a pretty personal thing. And when I reply, I tell them you know what, you wanna find make sure that we meet four criteria when selecting a holster. I got a bunch of different holsters here laid out to go over the different aspects. So, let's look at it.

The first thing you wanna do when selecting a holster is you wanna make sure you select the holster that completely covers the trigger of the firearm, We don't want anything to be able to get in to that trigger guard area to discharge the firearm while it's holstered. The second thing we wanna look for is we wanna make sure that the holster that we're buying is designed for the gun that we own. We wanna make sure that when we're inserting the gun into the holster, we get a nice, good, positive retention. The holster should be made to fit your make and model of handgun. And it should allow you to get a full firing grip while the gun is still fully in the holster.

And that leads us in to that third one. That third one is we wanna make sure that the holster securely holds the firearm. We don't want the firearm to move around or have the potential of coming out of the holster while we're going through our day to day activities and carrying. And the fourth and final one is we wanna make sure that the holster retains the position on our body. So, at the beginning of the day if we're a strong side hip carrier we put that holster on we go out and do our daily activities.

We don't wanna spend half the day pulling the holster back around or readjusting. We want it to stay in place. So with those four criteria, let's look at some of the different holsters that are available. First, we have that all leather option, If you're looking into a leather holster that's what you prefer, make sure it's designed for the gun. If you can see, this is actual pocket holster for this 442 revolver right here, you have a clear gun, We're gonna close the cylinder and we're gonna insert it into the holster.

As you can see, there's an actual imprint of the gun. So when we put this in our pocket, if your pocket carrying, that is gonna securely hold the gun, our trigger is completely covered and it's gonna actually, the way it's designed it's gonna fit into our pocket and not allow this thing to move around while it's in the pocket. So leather is one option. So this is a leather holster for the pocket but you can also get leather for outside the waistband inside the waistband and so forth. Let's look at another one.

Here, we have an all Kydex option with a different type of clip. This is a Fabriclip. It's pretty new on the market. And if you'd check out another PDN video that we have out there from Wingman holsters covering how this actually works. But for this one, this is designed for our Glock 43, When I insert the gun into the holster you can hear that nice, positive click that it's gonna retain the gun in the holster.

That's what I'm talking about. You can see it's vacuum fitted so you can see the lines and the outlines of the gun. So, you know it's going to keep the gun retained and not move around. Next type, it's really popular. We have these hybrid options, the leather backed with the Kydex.

This is for the Springfield Model XD-S, When I insert it, get that nice positive retention. The body pressing into the back of the leather provides additional security on the gun, keeping the gun locked into place so that it's not gonna come out. As you can tell, this is another clipping portion. We have an Ulticlip here. Has a single clip, but when it goes down over the belt and locks into place that's gonna prevent the gun from moving around.

Some other types. Let's look at the outside of the waistband for the new shooter or the new concealed carrier. This is a pretty popular option when you head to the range and wanna train. This one has belt loops, belt loop attachments. When you put this on, this has a tendency to move maybe a little bit around, but when you set it, we wanna set the belt loop in between these loops, so that it has a distance it can't move too far on us.

But again, Kydex it's actually molded to fit a Glock. So when we insert this into our holster, nice lock into place. So these are just a few tips of what you need to look for when you're going out to find that first holster. I hope it helps. See out on the range, train safe.

Thanks a lot.