Mostly Genius thinks that junk holsters are worthless. The Defense Handgun Blog highlights hybrid models that are available. I can see the point a few people have made that cheaper holster offer an inexpensive way to try out a carry method. I have, somewhere, a Galco shoulder rig which I paid good money for, only to find out that shoulder rigs don’t work for me. Strong side carry at 4:00 is the only thing that I feel comfortable with.
But I think if you’re going to bet your life on something, spend a little extra money and get something that works.
I just think that maybe until a person has taken the cross-town bus to work for a year or so to a series of overlapping, crappy, low-paying part-time jobs like washing dishes covered by trimming bushes (and had their PS2 or X-Box taken away), and lived on much less than the median income – then maybe they just don’t/can’t really *get* how even the cost of a junky, worthless, irresponsibly-dangerous, nylon holster can seem expensive – especially when there isn’t any “extra” money to spend. (No ammo for training!)
A whole lot of people were rendered defenseless and turned into a dependent-class by the anti-gun movement’s successful prosecution of “Saturday Night Specials.” I guess as guns go they’re worthless too – except maybe in Hunter’s Point.
Those inexpensive guns that a poor person could afford were disdained by hunters and swell gun aficionados — a word that you might only hear on the cross-town bus spoken by someone with high verbal skills but a low IQ – and the usual hacking cough and other bleary-eyes.
And with those guns absent among the hands of the poor, unable to defend themselves or their community, crime in certain very obvious locations skyrocketed — not outside of it where wealthy and affluent people lived and where the perpetrators standing-out would be easily caught, but within it where the perps could easily hide and blend in, and keep at it. Taking the Dependent’s Class’ Government Money, one way or another.
But what do I know, I don’t even have a thumbs forward tactical grip or the extensive training that goes with it.
I’m sympathetic to that DirtCrashr, and I would argue a gun carried in a waistband beats a rock any day of the week. But there are some methods of carry that are asking for trouble. I’m also sympathetic to the argument that re-holstering on some cheap holsters is hazardous.
I’m using nylon holsters for two of my guns. I have a nylon pocket holster for my P3AT that works better than others I’ve tried, and due to the variances of the guns-in-cars law here, I have a nylon holster for my car gun that I use as more of a case than a holster.
But try re-holstering a pistol in a nylon holster on your waist without sweeping your weak hand. Can’t be done.
If you can afford a given pistol, you can afford a retention device to keep it safe, good self-defense ammo for your protection and enough practice ammo to keep your skills up-to-date. If you can’t afford all of that, buy something else. The latest wiz-bangbang wonder pistol does you no good whatsoever if you don’t know how to use it or carry it unsafely.
It’s back to the means/money-test. When *any* holster is an unaffordable additional expense, you still have pockets!
That may reflect the popularity of cheap guns among the Urban indigent – pocketability. They’re not “carrying” per-se as gunnies think of it, and they don’t practice – there’s no practice ranges in Oakland (for example). They just happen to have a gun along for “just in case.”
Lack of resources may also reflect why many of them have adopted a posture of passivity and resignation – and having given up on self defense rely on the Police instead.
That would also explain the popular urban popular expression of helplessness and the calls to, “Stop the Violence” — as if “it” were a thing alive and animate, and could be appealed-to by a priest (High Priestess?) or candle-light vigil – or some other act of socio-dynamic voodoo – by a savior or a “community organizer.”
Doesn’t seem to work in Oakland, even after years and years.
From the Wikipedia, Saturday night special entry: “The people most likely to be deterred from acquiring a handgun by exceptionally high prices or by the nonavailability of certain kinds of handguns are not felons intent on arming themselves for criminal purposes (who can, if all else fails, steal the handgun they want), but rather poor people who have decided they need a gun to protect themselves against the felons but who find that the cheapest gun in the market costs more than they can afford to pay.”[6]
String carry, condition 2. Cheap, safe, comfortable and always in fashion.