VIDEO: guy shoots himself in leg with 1911 drawing from serpa holster

this is why i like to practice draw-n-shoot, and point shooting with an air pistol.

....if i have a ND, the worst i need is a band-aid, and not a hospital visit...

and well made air guns have almost the exact weight and ergonomics as the firearm they are copying.


sure, you dont get the recoil and such.......but with draw-n-shoot....its really the motion of drawing and pulling the trigger you are trying to get into muscle memory.

Looks like a case of jumping the gun (pun intended).

Unloaded pistol + SLOW draw until you're ready for...
Unloaded pistol + Faster draw until you're ready for...
Loaded pistol + SLOW draw A LOT until you're ready for...
Loaded pistol + little bit Faster draw

I'm surprised how well he took the round, especially after seeing it entered in his thigh and out near his knee, maybe shock.

Videos like this are great reminders to the rest of us that accidents still happen to the best of us.

sticking finger in trigger guard prematurely, and no doubt a hair trigger on the colt

When I draw, my finger is along side the frame with my Serpa holster and my fingers are long enough that even if it doesn't go into the trigger guard. All you do is just keep your finger straight and its not a problem.

and no doubt a hair trigger on the colt

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Kimber*

Tex noted quite appropriately that this issue was not with the holster and was a ND and that the fault is all with him. Great video. Nicely done, though there was one funny part that he probably didn't intend to be funny. At 2:57...

After the shot went off, my training took over. I called my parents to let them know what happened...

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LOL

Almost makes you think twice about the serpa holsters

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Not really. He states pretty clearly that this was a negligent discharge on his part and was not caused by the holster.

Glad he wasn't hurt worse, and that he had the huevos to post such an honest video about it.

Hope you recover fast and thanks for sharing.

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that's not me in the vid! lol

just found it on youtube and wanted to share it.

My advice to "Tex".

1. Forget all these plastic gadget holsters and get some good leather. If you're worried about retention, get a thumb-break leather holster.

2. Keep the safety on and your finger off the trigger until the gun is pointed at the target.

Tex is a good friend. He called me right as he was getting in the ambulance. I think his video was a completely professional and accurate description of the incident.

All I have to say is, I'm glad the injury wasn't worse. The idea of a close-range bullet wound to a KNEE just freaks me out. (Not that it would be WORSE than a torso hit, but for some reason it is scarier. I'm eccentric that way.)

I have a serpa for my glock. It places your finger perfectly on the side of the frame during the draw. If you draw straight and keep your finger where the button is, you will never find yourself with your finger inside the guard.

The number one thing I like about the serpa is how it "helps" you learn to draw safely. Your finger needs to be in proper position or the gun stays in the holster. The release on the serpa feels very natural to me. I don't ever fight with it like a thumb break. IMO, it's faster too.

Keep your booger hook off the bang button. It's not the gun or the holster's fault when you have a ND.

I would like to add that SERPA holsters stick out a mile and are a poor choice for concealment.

I give him a ton of credit and not blaming it on everything else. Good lesson learned for everyone

"that's when my training took over"....lol. It should have taken over a little sooner like before you shot yourself in the leg. It's just a matter of time before one of these "Internet Commandos" kill themselves or someone else while filming their "outdoors show". Scary, pathetic, moronic, and several other adjectives that I can't quite verbalize at this point.

ND's happen when your finger is on the trigger and you do not intend to shoot. Looks like he needs to practice trigger finger control and muzzle awareness.

Maybe it is not the holster(serpa) problem but the gun (1911) problem......OR maybe he was not following the basic three rules, one of which is KEEP finger off trigger until ready to fire.....

ND's happen when your finger is on the trigger and you do not intend to shoot. Looks like he needs to practice trigger finger control and muzzle awareness.

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Muzzle awareness? I honestly don't know of too many holsters worn on the belt that point the gun downward that don't have the muzzles crossing body parts. This is why so many such injuries occur like this.

Here is a great example showing an open holster (Yaqui slide?) where you can see the muzzle in regard to the operator and see how the muzzle continually covers the leg. Watch how the gun clearly covers his leg on every draw and reholster, even if the gun was perfectly aligned with the holster, it would scan the leg. In this case, the operator has repeated issues with finding the holster and points the gun at himself when he holsters. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKgAkwB8WRo

Hmmm. Watching some of his other videos taught me all I need to know..

Not the holster's fault.

Keep your booger-picker off the trigger until you're ready to shoot.

Regarding the Serpa holster......

I have one, but I bought it back when I was first getting in to shooting and didn't realize there were better holsters out there than generic "ballistic nylon" Uncle Mike's stuff. At the time, the Serpa seemed the coolest thing ever.

Now I realize there are better Kydex options, or good leather to be had. The Serpa is now just something I carry the 1911 in when I go plinking. I don't think I'd use it if I were to be carrying a firearm for defense, simply because one of two things could happen--1) I'll screw up the draw, or 2) the retention button device will fail.

I see that some of you are at least using this as a reason to review your own holsters and draw practices. And the usual crowd is just dismissing it by saying he should have kept his finger off the trigger. In other posts of this sort it was far more clear. But in this one it seems like we've got a reasonably competent shooter that happened to be using a holster with a gun which produced a bad combination for safety.

A holster draw when retention devices are involved can be a fairly dynamic process. As shown in the video linked in Post #37 there can be some issues. It's not always so black and white as some of you seem to think it should be. Yet because we, as failure prone humans, are subject to errors it's wise to look at stuff like this and see if just perhaps there's something to be learned from such an incident and if we have holsters that hold guns which could cause us to behave in the same manner as "Tex" in the video if the holster should balk on us at all.

For my own IDPA shooting I have used two different guns. One uses a self made leather pancake OWB holster which has never given me a moment of grief. The other uses a Blackhawk Serpa with the fore (trigger) finger release latch. I can't say for sure if I've tapped the trigger or not. That's because I use it with a DA/SA Beretta 92fs which is always decocked before placing into the holster. And with the typical long and fairly stiff DA first shot in such a case I sure don't need to worry about any errant fingers accidentally flicking against the trigger and setting off the gun. But having looked at all this thread I sure would be reluctant to use any holster for a 1911 that requires inward pressure from the trigger finger to unlatch the gun from the holster. Seems to me that any such hoster is tending to set me up for a trigger slap. Not a big deal if the safety is on. But it's still an error to use something that may in any way negate a basic safety practice. And a holster that requires any inward pressure that may result in the finger snapping inward onto any part of the gun as it clears the holster seems like it's setting the stage for a failure of one of the basic safety practices.

IMO (FWIW, which might not be very much) the root of this ND was in mixing up his holster systems. I'm betting he had a brain fart when drawing, and pushed with his thumb instead of his finger because he had been using a thumb-release retention device prior to this. That's when the safety got disengaged. Then because the gun wasn't coming out of the holster, he pulled extra hard just as his muscle memory was coming back and his finger was moving to the release. The extra effort of tugging at the gun caused him to clench his hand, and this is when his curled finger entered the trigger guard: "Bang!"

I call it a bad combination of holster systems. Keep it simple; if you're going to use a holster with a mechanical release, use only one kind. And not to dogpile the guy, but if your gun doesn't come out of the holster when you pull on it, stop and try to figure out why -- unless, of course, you're actively involved in fighting for your life at the moment.