[DigMe]

Check out this holster that I came across on an online gun auction:

http://pix.gunbroker.com/pixhost/2001-09-09/tmans2_1000586377_418_Concealer_II_Holster.jpg

I mean I know it's all about gun safety and whatnot but this just seems like an accident waiting to happen. Do any of you carry a holster similar to this for CCW?

brad cook

[Graystar]

I feel that thumb-break holsters are already an ND waiting to happen, so I don't think it's any worse having the trigger exposed.

[Old Fuff]

In this particular instance the trigger and trigger guard would be covered by the belt and/or the user's pants. That being the case, combined with the fact that the pistol is a double-action only model would make the holster resonably safe.

I carried double-action revolvers in both IWB and conventional holsters that exposed the trigger guard for many years with no problems, although I heard of prospective FBI agents plugging themselves during early training. Today covered trigger guards are considered advisable in most cases and mandatory with Glock's.

I would not hesitate to use the holster you pictured if it had a better belt retainer rather then a clip, but it would depend on what kind of a handgun was being carried. That said, I can think of a lot of better products/designs now on the market.

[C.R.Sam]

Agree with Old Fuff...
Not all that unsafe in that application.
But....
I have better.

Sam

[DigMe]

In this particular instance the trigger and trigger guard would be covered by the belt and/or the user's pants.

Good point.

brad cook

[Mikul]

I can't see the advantage to it. I have seen holsters with the trigger exposed for people who needed a gun fast and felt that waiting until the gun was drawn would hinder them. Of course, no one who felt that need would have a thumb-break holster, and certainly wouldn't be carrying IWB.

[Futo Inu]

It's pointless and unnecessarily unsafe. A holster should always cover BOTH sides of the trigger guard. As far as the belt/pants covering, yeah, but the same can be said of Mexican carry. Stupid and is an ND waiting to happen (during the draw, mind you).

[Sarge]

Guess somebody forgot to tell Bill Jordan.....

[Futo Inu]

"Guess somebody forgot to tell Bill Jordan"

How so?

[Old Fuff]

Bill was a Border Patrol Inspector that designed a duty holster that featured among other things a fully-exposed trigger guard. Using this rig he could draw and fire so quickly that someone else holding a cocked-but unloaded revolver couldn't react in time to simply pull the trigger before Bill got his shot off. He could also hit a candy wafer or (sometimes) an aspirin tablet at distances around six feet.

Over the past fifty-plus years I've used many different kinds of holsters. Some covered the triggur guard and some didn't. I never had an "unexpected" discharge, although I am aware of others that did.

However it should be noted that after a gun is drawn about two inches the previously covered trigger is exposed and one can get their finger on it in time to shoot themselves. The reason people don't has more too do with training and practice then a particular holster's design.

The more sensible reason to cover the trigger guard is to prevent someone else - or something else - from touching the trigger while the gun is holstered.

[Futo Inu]

So a holster that makes for a quick draw by a skilled pistolero also makes it a safe holster? Then I suppose an IPSC holster is safe for carry too? The question is not how fast is it - the question is, is it an ND waiting to happen? The answer is yes, because 99.98% of the people out there don't handle guns as safely as a master / expert like Bill Jordan. :rolleyes: But I guess I should have said "a CARRY holster should always cover both sides of the trigger guard."

[Old Fuff]

Bill's holster (I'm being a little informal, but he was a friend of mine). Well anyway, Bill's holster was adopted and used by the U.S. Border Patrol and many smaller agencies and police departments for many years. It was, in all respects a "service holster." Apparently there wasn't any problem because if there was its use would have been discontinued. In fact it was both used, and very popular, until the switch to automatic pistols came along. For the record, the holster it replaced in the Border Patrol was of a similar design, but had a covered trigger guard.

And yes, those old-time Border Patrolmen knew their way around handguns. I never heard of a self-inflected injury caused by pulling the trigger during the draw.

Many FBI agents carried S&W or Colt revolvers in holsters that exposed the trigger guard. I have heard of trainees shooting themselves with a too-fast trigger finger, but this wasn't the case with field agents. I am not aware of any regulation or order that prohibited or discouraged the use of such holsters during the "revolver years," starting in the mid-1930's.

Covered trigger guards became "in" about the same time some went to carrying single-action pistols in Condition One (cocked & locked) and obviously in that situation it made some sense. Glock pistols should NEVER be carried in a holster of any kind that doesn't cover the trigger guard.

[C.R.Sam]

Primary safety...
Brain.

Sam

[Sarge]

Good post on the Jordan holster. Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth we got issued miserable, soft, cheap holsters for our wheelguns. They're probably about 90% of the reason ol' Bill came up with something better. These miserable things often got relegated to the 'situational training' block of the police academy, where fit young recruits got handed a cast aluminum duplicate of a Model 64 S&W to carry on their daily 'beat', while the old salts acted as bad guys and tested whether they had been paying attention to Jim Lindell. Lindell taught handgun rentention, survival, pain, and several other subjects near and dear to the old school.

It was a common thing for the newbies to go on a "training call" and get 'swarmed' by a bunch of cop/bad guys, who promptly latched onto you like a lamb in a pack of wolves, pulling each leg and arm in a different direction. Invariably the gun would get ripped sideways out of the holster, splitting it wide open. It was one of the first reasons I bought a Jordan holster- they wouldn't rip out, and they were damn fast. They worked so well that I still carried a 4" Model 29 in one of those holsters on my last uniform assignment, in 1995. We took a little different view of handgun retention in the early days, I reckon. Pretty damned hard to take a man's gun away when he's got it out and smokin' before you can get to it.

I envy you for your friendship with Mr. Jordan. Every time we lose one of these giants, their shoes stay empty for a long time.

Foto, before the age of the mediocre man, practically everbody in the gunslinging business strove to be a "skilled pistolero" and "a master / expert like Bill Jordan. " Some of us got pretty close, too. Our guns only held six or eight shots (1911) and, silly fools that we were, we thought it might be in our best interests to be able to hit precisely, and fast with the first couple of shots. Heck, they even made us shoot double action out to 50 yards (some ritual called "PPC" as I recall, and I don't remember it being a drug...) and then- why, they even had the gall to count the bulletholes in our targets and see if we were hitting it with every shot! In fact, that's how you got to BE an "expert", and then a "master". We didn't have the internet then, and you had to prove what you were made of instead of just blowing about it. It was a pretty good feeling to pin that little gold "NRA Expert" pin on below your badge- and everybody who saw it knew they didn't award them for hosing a target at 7 yards.

Another bit of trivia... if your score in any subject, particularly firearms, fell below 70%, you got booted out of the academy- which also just happened to be your paycheck. Strangely enough, they didn't seem much concerned about our self-esteem, and they didn't feel obligated to keep folks around who weren't pulling their load. So, it paid (quite literally) to do your best. This was in the days before university-sponsored certification mills, of course, so we were brainwashed into thinking we really had to learn this stuff to survive. We also had a lot of fun competing while we were learning.

Heck, it's a brand new world now, and I'm not knocking the new methods or equipment. A lot of it is better than what we had. Today, everybody's gun holds 10-14 shots and is about as accurate as a Daisy BB gun at 25 yards. You gotta move with the times, or you get left behind. But don't sell the old stuff short- Jordan wasn't the only good shot around. He just set the example for the rest of us.

Take care-

[Old Fuff]

Sarge:

To make a gross understatement, Bill was an interesting person to know. His knowledge of guns and gunfighting didn’t come from reading books. Prior to World War Two he’d been a Border Patrol Officer, and during the war he’d been a Marine. He joined as a recruit and rose to the rank of Major. In the process he was present at many if not most of the Pacific island campaigns. After the war he returned to the Border Patrol and remained until he retired.

While he did public relations demonstrations for the Border Patrol, and later for the NRA, he was not what is commonly thought of as a “trick shot.” He was in a number of “social shootings” along the Texas/Mexican border, and knew that an officer who was wearing a uniform was at a great disadvantage because a potential attacker could easily identify him, while that wouldn’t usually be true the other way around. Criminals it seems, don’t generally wear uniforms. He therefore trained himself, and later others, to be able to draw and *accurately* shoot with such speed that they could literally down an opponent that had a gun out, cocked and ready. That’s something many people couldn’t believe, but he often demonstrate it was fact.

Many companies made copies of his holster, but only three were ever authorized too do so and could use his name. Those companies were: S.D. Myers, Don Hume, and Steve Herrett. Steve was an unlikely candidate to make holsters, but Bill talked him into it when Herrett’s was “the” supplier of Jordan style grips. There were some special features in those holsters that most of the copy-makers overlooked, like the leather wedge that twisted the trigger guard out so that the revolver would face straight forward (as viewed from the front). I have one of Hume’s holsters that belonged to the late Col. Rex Applegate. Clearly, his preference in “fighting leather” says something.

[Sarge]

All interesting Fluff, and thanks for the reply.

Don Hume made all the Jordans I ever owned, as well as my River belts. I do recall seeing a few copies of Jordan's holster over the years, that looked to be made by second-rate outfits. I don't recall who made 'em now, as I never messed with the things. I always figured you could never go wrong with Hume, and his seconds looked better than a lot of 'firsts' that I had seen by some other makers.

I did buy a Hume/Jordan with the thumb-break one time, and it was downright un-natural after managing the standard strap for so many years. On most of my S&W revolvers you could rotate the snapped strap right up onto the sight, and push it off with a forefinger when the 'sky clouded up'.

When I started in the biz we worked all the time with the strap buttoned around the front of the holster, completely off the gun, and only 'snapped in' when we saw a tussle coming. That's a far cry from today's triple-decker, level-19 retention holsters. I also recall when the first "You can't get my gun and neither can I" holsters came out and got issued, as well as images of coppers tugging and jerking at their guns on the firing line during the first year they tried to qualify with them. I went to a 1911 for a long while after that because I always liked the old gun- and nobody had designed an idiot-proof holster for it yet!

These days I pack my Sig in a simple Fobus paddle that has had most of the paddle trimmed off, below the belt hooks. I 'spect by the time I quit wearing a belt with my britches I'll have little need for a sidearm anyhow.

Take care-

[Archie]

is the placement of the safety strap. It is underneath the grip. That is the wrong place, as if your hand is there, the strap won't let go. Additionally, if it's the brand I remember (don't remember the trade name) it isn't stitched together very well. And the clip doodad is mediocre.

As for the uncovered trigger guard, so what? Until about 1975, there weren't any real holsters with covered trigger guards, except for clamshells. The open trigger guard was used until at least 1983 by the Border Patrol, and other police departments. They are as safe as the person who uses it.

When the "safe" holsters started in the early '80s, they were real popular with administrators and liablilty lawyers who are unfamiliar with firearms and firearms handling.

I've carried a cocked and locked 1911 in Mexican carry mode for more miles than I care to remember. Never had a shot fired in my trousers yet.

Today's unpleasant fact of the day. Negligent discharges during the draw seem to happen with open trigger guard holsters.
Negligent discharges happen with closed trigger guard holsters on the return, while holstering. From what I've seen, they are more common.

[Sarge]

I didn't quite get the part about the strap being in the wrong place on the Jordan holster, but then I wore one so long that getting a gun out of it ws like scratching my nose- I just knew where everything was and could do it without any conscious thought whatsoever. All the Hume stuff I ever saw was superbly stitched, and stayed together for me despite hard use- and sometimes even a good soaking. I have to wonder if it wasn't another brand that you recall, but I do know that practically everybody cranks out a lemon once in awhile. I just never saw one from Hume.

I find it funny that a lot of people who will decry the old guns and methods as patently unsafe, will carry a pistol with the safety on the trigger and ignore the fact that there have probably already been more police ND's with those things than with all the DA revolvers ever issued. You don't have to do much searching to find news stories where various cities (D.C. comes immediately to mind) have shelled out big bucks settling lawsuits over this very thing.

Safety does, in fact, rest right between the ears. The 'emergency decision making engine' may be found there too- I have found that particular space gets pretty crowded and blurred when the balloon goes up. What I have seen over the years convinces me that the best answer is ingrained, intelligent motor skill responses that don't require much conscious thought. This leaves 'hard drive space' for the important business of deciding whether or not to shoot, making the shot(s) good if required, and taking evasive measures to avoid getting shot yourself.

As far as equipment goes, ANY gun or holster that don't put the former in your hand at the first sign of danger, ready to deliver fast, controlled fire with a powerful cartridge- ain't worth squat. The fact is that only so much of this equation is an equipment issue, and that the rest is training. The deciding factor in gunfights if often the participants willingness, and readiness, and ability to shoot the other fella spang on the breastbone under 'less than ideal' conditions. You can train a shooter up to a certain skill level, but you can't babysit them every day for the rest of their lives to make sure that stay sharp and ready to use what you've taught them. You also can't make sure they stay mentally prepared for a fight.

That part is up to each of us individually.

[Old Fuff]

Sarge:

Bill never approved of thumb-break safety straps because he believed the important thing was to get a correct grip - fast! This you couldn't do if your thumb was in the wrong place. He usually had the conventional safety strap around the front of the holster, or straight down the back of it. The only time he used the strap was in situations where he was in a crowd or some other place where a "grabber" might try something. Personally, I would have never tried to grab that man's gun.

He also kept a lawyer busy writing letters to holster makers who were turning out (usually cheap) copies of his holster. He couldn't stop them from making them, but he did prevent them from using his name. I have true Jordan holsters from all three approved makers. They are all good, but I think Hume's were the best.