You almost never read about them in the gun mags, and a suspicious guy might think that’s because they don’t have a lot of a coolness factor.
Me, I’m not capable of being cool, and I like the practicality, and yeah, I’m suspicious.
For those who came in late: a pocket holster is just what it sounds like: it’s a holster for a handgun that you carry in your pocket. Keeps at least some of the lint out of the gun; minimizes the chances that other things, like keyrings, get caught inside the trigger guard (which isn’t going to be good for your lower leg), and adds to how discreetly you’re carrying — it looks to somebody bothering to look at your pocket like, maybe, you’ve got your wallet there, if they bother to notice at all.
Pocket carry makes a whole lot of sense for reasons both practical and tactical, although they have no tacticoolness going for them. That’s okay.
As a practical matter, if your local law or personal preference militates toward discreet carry — my law doesn’t; my preference does — it makes it easy to keep the gun handy without changing much of anything else about your day-to-day life. What do do with the gun while in the bathroom? No big deal; just leave it in the pocket. You might have to take your covering garment off? Instead of a problem to think about, that becomes something to shrug about.
My personal favorite is Bob Mika’s holster, pictured above. It’s a bit over thirty bucks, these days, including shipping (Bob’s very busy; his holsters have justifiably become popular), and well worth it.
Probably the biggest plus in pocket carry, though, is in ambiguous circumstances.
You’re heading out to your car late at night, and somebody approaches you in an underground parking lot. Now, maybe — probably — they’re coming over to ask directions, or panhandle, or panhandle while pretending to ask directions or whatever.
But it might be the opening move for a mugging. Such things are known to happen.
So, naturally, you whip out your handgun and tell them, “Stop right there!” in an authoritative voice …
Well, no, you don’t. You might be very concerned, and reasonably so, that this is about to become a mugging if you don’t do something quickly, but you’ve got a fair number of problems which boil down to you don’t want to be hiring an attorney to be explaining to the authorities — with no guarantee — that that’s what it was.
Here’s the good news: the odds are that you’re not going to need your gun over the next few seconds. The bad news is that if you do need it, you’re going to need it very quickly.
So you pull back your coat and take a shooting grip on –
Err, no. Yes, that’s probably going to scare the mugger — if he is a mugger — but if he’s not, or if the folks monitoring the security camera (is there one? I dunno, but just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there), you may be about to become the guest of honor of a “man with a gun” call, and those aren’t fun.
So, let’s assume you’re carrying in a pocket holster.
You use a bit of basic body language: you turn your strong side slightly away from the guy, stick your strong hand into your pocket, gripping the handgun, and extend your other hand out, palm outstretched, and say in as unfriendly a voice as you can muster, “Can I help you?” as you start moving diagonally away.
At which point, one would hope, the guy starts walking away, saying something like, “Hey, I just wanted to know what time the bar closes,” or something. If you’ve been rude to somebody who really ought to know better than approaching a stranger in the kind of place where a lot of muggings happen, you’ve probably done worse. If you’ve deterred a mugger, you’d gotten out of it cheap and easy.
If it turns nasty? Well, you’ve already got a shooting grip on your gun; if it turns out that you really do need to take it out, you’re a lot closer than you’d be if you had to start by sweeping back some covering garment.
But, if things go well, what do the witnesses — including the security cameras – see?
No threat; no gun; nothing all that interesting. Get charged with assault for sticking your arm out? Nah. It’ll be boring.
Boring can be very good.
I like pocket holsters.
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Joel – I’m military trained, which leads me to want something I shoot to go down and stay down. Most of my personal training is with .45 ACP, and my preferred carry weapons are a Glock 36 (usually when dressed casually for ease of concealment) and a Kimber .45 (where I need a jacket to cover a behind-the-back holster). Some of my training involved two to the chest, one to the head, but I don’t plan on any urban combat soon. But on top of all that, if I am not carrying a .45, I have a North American .32 in a pocket holster. Not much good at 25 yards, but at gunfight ranges of 10 to 20 feet, accurate enough.
I guess this is better than a lame-ass fanny pack, but the utility of a pocket holster ranks right up there with an ankle rig. If you are in a situation that dictates rapidly retrieving your pistol, you are probably dead.
I’m so glad that I live in Phoenix, with it’s sensible open carry laws. I rarely carry a weapon, but when I do, I’d like everyone to know how I am likely (and prepared) to react if anyone tries to harm me.
Oy. I promise to get into the issue of open carry some time, honest. But not today; I’ve got a haddock. Here, the issue is much more the culture than the law. It’s lawful for a permit holder to carry openly, here; doing it is also pretty much guaranteed to sign up for all sorts of unpleasantness, unless one’s very careful about where and when (which I am; there are a very few places where I carry openly), or preposterously lucky. We’ve still got a huge number of people — including some importunate ones with not only guns but badges — who are sure that that’s a crime. I know some folks who are into educating such people, and wish them well, and all, but . . .
Onward . . . I’m pretty sure that most people can go from empty hands to getting a gun out of a belt holster — particularly one that’s openly carried, without a covering garment to sweep away — faster than they can from a pocket holster. But the nice thing about pocket holsters is that you don’t have to start with an empty hand. In a situation where it would be awkward — or worse — to get a shooting grip on a belt-holstered handgun, the hand can already be in the pocket, gripping the gun. And most people can draw more quickly that way, I think, than they can starting from scratch with a belt holster. (I know I can, and I’ve practiced some.) In my case, I can draw and shoot from the pocket (starting with my hand on the gun) in under a second; I can’t do that from a belt holster, although there certainly are folks who can.
Pocket holsters are, I think, a natural evolution from Bill Jordan’s words of wisdom, roughly: “if you don’t have your gun in your hand when the fight starts, you probably never will.” He was able to — demonstrably — get around the problem by a combination of practice and mutant reflects (I mean, sheesh, drawing and shooting from a random tone in .270 seconds?) but most of us can’t.
I’m with you on the ankle rigs, though. “Excuse me, Mr. Mugger? I’ll be right with you, just as soon as I bend over, or hop on one foot for awhile . . . ”
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It is an interesting conversation, to be sure. The operative lesson from my perspective is this: the brain is the most valuable weapon for self defense. Usually, this means removing myself from a situation prior to it becoming unpleasant. I work as a criminal defense investigator, and routinely come into contact with folks you probably wouldn’t invite to dinner. If you are ever in Phoenix, let me know, and I’ll give you a tour of our fair city that should turn your hair white. And that is before we head out to one of the nearby, third-world Indian reservations…
Sure. The best way to defend yourself with a gun is to put it, and yourself, somewhere else.
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