3 Reasons I STOPPED Recommending Sidecar Holsters

hey guys welcome back to the channel a few weeks ago I did a q a video here where one of the questions was why I no longer recommend sidecar holsters and a couple of you had some follow-up questions on that and I feel like this topic this specific question warrants a lot more explanation and more detailed explanation so that's what I'm doing in today's video I'm going to walk you guys through why I no longer recommend sidecar holsters and why they're not the most optimal thing that you can use I do want to add really quick as a disclaimer at the beginning of this video that I do work for a holster company but I establish my thoughts and opinions on sidecar holsters with my own money and prior to ever working for this holster company and so that kind of bias that might exist doesn't exist in this video or on this specific topic so for those of you who don't know what is a sidecar holster a sidecar holster is just a gun holster and a magazine carrier attached to each other in some way shape or form some are simply just one solid piece of Kydex While others are attached by some other means usually a slightly stretchy cord material tons of holster companies make sidecar holsters and they're really really popular which is largely why I think that I wound up with a sidecar holster as my first ever Kydex holster when I initially got it in it felt like a lot and I struggled to conceal it and so I actually removed the magazine carrier from the sidecar holster her and just carried the gun portion of it for a couple of weeks and then I wound up adding the magazine carrier back on and carrying it that way for almost a year during that year of carrying in a sidecar holster is when I started posting on Instagram as armed and styled so if you have been following since day one you've watched me go from wearing a sidecar holster every day and recommending them to everyone to completely abandoning them and discouraging people from using them one of the main reasons why I discourage people from using them is just because they're not the most optimal thing that you can get and I'm gonna get a little bit more into that later on in the video but one of the main reasons they're not optimal is because they resist concealment mechanics but before we get into how they resist concealment mechanics I want to quickly outline what concealment mechanics are if you know exactly what I'm talking about you can skip to the next time card concealer mechanics are how we use force from a belt or an independent holster system like the Enigma to work in Junction with things like wings and wedges in order to press the gun up closer to our body so that it kind of Blends into the shape of our body independent holster systems are really easy to manipulate this way the second big component to concealment is finding your concealment sweet spot this is the place on your body where you can Nestle a gun into your natural curves so that it Blends in better one of the ways that you can kind of verify this for yourself and work through concealment challenges for yourself is to use something called the Poke and check method and this is just where you essentially put the gun on your body and you look down and you'll see portions of the gun that are trying to print often it's the gun's rear sight or the optic or the edge of your grip something like that and you can press on those pieces of the gun to kind of find out what areas need to conceal and what what needs to happen with the holster in order to get those areas to tuck in closer to body I'll have more resources linked Down Below on that it's a little bit more complicated than how I just explained it or rather I made it sound more complicated than it actually is so if you actually want to use the Poke and check method check out the link I have down in the description okay so now for the part of the video that you actually came here for why I no longer recommend sidecar holsters and how it is that they actually resist concealment mechanics sidecar holsters are so wide and rigid regardless of their design that they resist our efforts to apply concealment mechanics that's not to say that you can't use a sidecar holster and conceal gun that's just to say that you won't be able to get as much performance out of a sidecar ulcer that you will be able to get out of an independent holster design for example with this hinging sidecar design grip rotation is counteracted by the mag or even the hinge Point rotating outward like this slide tuck is counteracted by the white holster shape and wedges can't really be used to tune grip rotation or slide tuck like they can be with an independent holster design you also can't put a sidecar holster in a concealment Sweet Spot it's too big even if the gun is in a good place the magazine won't be and vice versa these competing forces also put a lot of stress on the holster which can cause sidecar holsters to break much more regularly than independent holster designs I've heard of some people breaking their sidecar holsters as much as once a year one of the things that I want to kind of insert here is that when I was still using my sidecar holster I absolutely came across videos like this or articles about this topic explaining why sidecar holsters weren't the most optimal thing for you to use and I didn't really get it because those articles and videos were focusing a lot more on sidecar holsters that didn't have any hinging points and mine had a hinging point and so I felt like mine was performing better and in actuality absolutely was performing better than just a rigid one piece of Kydex but the reason it is performing better is because it's hearkening back to the individual independent holster design what is more flexible than something that's just not attached to something else so it's worth noting that sidecars have gotten more and more flexible over the years with shock cord pivots and other flexible joints but really all they're trying to do is become more like independent holsters in their performance this doesn't mean that sidecar holsters can't conceal acceptably for example I carried in a sidecar holster for almost a year and for the vast majority of the time I was happy with my concealment I was okay with the performance I was getting but it's not something that everyone's going to be able to get away with even if you can get away with it though be aware that you're not maximizing your concealment potential the second reason I no longer recommend sidecar holsters is because you can get a lot more for your money going with an independent holster sidecar holsters usually run about 120 to 140 ish dollars and for that price range you can easily get yourself a independent holster magazine carrier and maybe even have some left over for a belt some upgraded Clips or some wedges and not only can you get more for your money with an independent holster design but the independent holster is going to take to concealment mechanics much more easily you're going to be able to place it in your concealment sweet spot you're going to be able to manipulate the holster in ways that you aren't going to be able to manipulate a sidecar holster and all of that with less stress on the holster itself which very well may and probably will lead to a longer you know lifetime for your holster also if you don't care about carrying a spare magazine or you don't necessarily want to carry a spare magazine every single day then you can ditch that accessory and spend that money on something else like a tourniquet carrier or just medical supplies to carry in general or other priorities so what is the advantage to using a sidecar holster honestly I don't really know that there is one but I have heard people say that they feel that their draw time is faster with a sidecar holster and I can actually understand stand how that might be the case when you're limiting grip and slide tuck you might feel that your grip is actually more accessible which could potentially lead to your draw times being faster but then you also have people like Brett newmeyer who are carrying entirely below their waistline and are able to maintain a sub second draw that said though there are absolutely holsters out there that can and do limit your draw speed and just your overall access to your grip but so long as you're buying your holster from a quality manufacturer you shouldn't have to worry about those kinds of design flaws so in summary I no longer recommend sidecar holsters because they resist concealment mechanics and because they resist concealment mechanics they can be more susceptible to Breaking prematurely and lastly you can get more for your money with an independent holster system and again just to reiterate for those in the back I'm not saying that you can't use a sidecar holster or that you're a bad person because you're using a sidecar holster I'm just saying that you can get more performance potentially more longevity and more for your money if you're going with an independent holster design thanks guys for watching today's video and I'll see you in the next one oh my gosh um it probably seemed like a really dramatic response that's probably because it was but I have this I have this thing where I am a drama queen [Music]

Channel: Tessah Booth

Views: 164,087

Keywords: sidecar holster

Id: P-sYg0MWS0k

Length: 9min 37sec (577 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 16 2022