Certain things are a tradition for good reason. Turkey dinners at Thanksgiving, because it’s right around hunting season. Thanksgiving day football games, so you have something to yell at besides your relatives.
Some things maybe were good traditions at one point, but maybe could stand to be retired. For instance, can we drop the act about caring about Olympic downhill skilling? If people only care about something every four years, they really don’t care all that much.
Another tradition that some people insist on is that a 1911 must be worn only in a leather holster. And it really should only be of the pancake, Askins, Yaqui Slide or Summer Special variety. Plastic holsters should only hold plastic pistols, as the refrain goes from the Statler and Waldorf fuddy-duddies.
Those holsters look good, it should be said…or at least, sometimes they do.
Let’s be honest – you should save that Yaqui slide holster for a barbecue gun, a shining safe queen that’s basically worn to show off because you dropped a good chunk of change on it. Beyond that, does it really matter all that much?
Arguably, Kydex and other polymer holsters actually are better for carrying on a regular basis. They’re more precisely molded than leather, which is block-formed and then stitched. Polymers are either press-molded – by heating a sheet of Kydex or Boltaron and then pressing down over a mold – or are injection-molded. Provided the company making the holster has done the molding right, that creates a better fit and without any break-in needed.
At this point someone mentions something about holster wear on your pistol. True, you don’t want your carry gun scratched, gouged and otherwise roughed up until it appears to have been beaten with the ugly stick. A two-year-old pistol shouldn’t look like it’s ready to buy its first legal drink.
But the truth is that if you want to keep a gun looking good, you should keep it in a safe. Guns can be art, no doubt about it, but a working firearm of any sort – a carry gun, your hunting rifle or shotgun – is going to get scratched and dinged if your’e doing it right. There’s no way to avoid it. Think of the marks as imparting a certain character and you’ll be fine.
As for function, look at police trade-in guns at your local gun store. They’re beat up, but still run very, very well.
And you know what? Some Kydex holsters actually look pretty cool. And some leather holsters are downright ugly.
Yes, leather was the standard many years ago and sometimes the old ways still make sense. Let’s get real, though. Unless you have a barbecue gun that’s worth showing off…nobody gives a tinker’s cuss what you wear your carry gun in so long as it’s safely carried.