Five Holsters. $363. Two Years of Frustration. And a Drawer Full of Gear Collecting Dust Until I Found This Simple Fix

Five holsters, two years of frustration, and countless mornings fighting my waistband, until I discovered the simple carry change that finally ended the daily misery.

I'm 54, 265 pounds, and it took me $363 and four years to find out why. Then a former infantry NCO who teaches carry for a living looked at my list and gave me the answer in about ninety seconds. It wasn't a holster.

I labeled this box "old gear" four years ago.

I never opened it again.

That's not a collection. That's a surrender.

Why did five different holsters fail in exactly the same order?

They all failed the same way. Four steps. Every time.

There was no moment. Nobody talked me out of it. That's the part that still gets me.

What does $363 actually buy you?

Five products and one mistake. I pulled the box out to write this. First time in four years. And I kept the receipts, because I'm that guy.

The Kore, because three guys at the range told me my belt wasn't stiff enough. The Hanks, because apparently that one wasn't stiff enough either. The 5.11 had pockets so shallow my G19 sat wrong right out of the bag.

Every one of these fit me fine in the store. Not one of them fit me at 265.

Why does everybody give you the same four sentences?

Range guys. Counter guys. Forums. YouTube. Always the same four:

I'm not mad at any of them. They meant it. But read those four again and hear what's underneath:

Four answers. Not one of them looks at the system. All four look at me.

So I did what any reasonable man does when four people he respects say the same thing. I bought the next thing. Then the next one.

Dave sent me a photo of that box and I knew what the problem was before I finished the list.

Two holsters, two belts, a shirt. To him that's five attempts. To me that's one attempt, made five times.

Every item on that list anchors to the waistband.

The one question I ask before I look at anybody's gear

I don't start with the holster. I start with this:

Almost nobody says seven. Most men have to stop and count, and the counting itself is the answer.

Then I ask the second question. What made you skip? Eighteen years of asking, and it comes back as the same short list every single time:

• It digs into my gut when I sit down.
• It rotates. Grip's pointing the wrong way by lunch.
• It slides down through the day. I'm hiking it back up in the truck.
• It prints when I bend over or reach up over my head.
• The clip lets go on the seat belt, on a chair arm, getting out of the van.
• My hip and lower back ache by three o'clock.
• Wrong pants today. No belt today. Shirt's tucked today.

Now look at what is not on that list.

Nobody has ever told me the holster broke. Nobody says the stitching failed or the kydex cracked. In eighteen years I have never once heard "poor quality."

Digs, rotates, slides, prints, lets go, aches. Those are six different words for the same event: the mount point shifted. And every one of them happens at the same three inches of the human body.

That's not five men with five gear problems. That's one engineering problem, sold five thousand times.

Why is the waistband the worst place on the body to hang a gun?

Three reasons, and they compound.

1. It isn't a structure. It's a fold.

Your waistline is soft tissue over a joint that folds in half every time you sit down. Put a tape measure on your beltline standing, then sitting. Then do the same at your ribs, where there is actual bone.

2. It changes size permanently. Your ribs don't.

Weight, age, surgery, a bad winter. Dave put on forty pounds after a back surgery and every rig he owned had to be re-figured. That's not a gear failure. That's an anchor failure.

3. It's already occupied.

Dave wears a tool belt for a living. Twenty-plus pounds on his hips, eight hours a day. Then he's told to mount a firearm on that same waistband.

I call it anchor instability. It isn't a comfort problem. It's a mounting problem, and no amount of belt stiffness fixes a mount point that moves.

The four years I spent thinking I was the problem

Back to Dave

It wasn't the $363 that stung. It was four years of believing all four sentences, thinking that if I could just get to 230 and find a stiffer belt, it would click.

Nobody sat me down and said: you're not failing at this, you're mounting it wrong. If somebody had, there'd be no box.

What I wear now. I just wish I had found it four years and $363 ago.

It doesn't touch my belt line at all.

It's a compression tee. Goes on under whatever I was already wearing that day: work shirt, flannel, polo for a commercial walkthrough. The gun sits in a pocket against my ribs under the arm, and it's the compression of the shirt holding it there. No clip. No buckle. Nothing between me and the seat.

That's the whole engineering claim, and you can measure it yourself in two minutes.

Mine's the 2TAC Shadow Carry Tee. One pocket under each arm, identical both sides. My buddy's a lefty and he ordered the exact same shirt I did.

What actually changed:

• Two hours on my knees at a panel, and there's nothing to square away when I stand up.
• Twelve stops on a service day, nothing shifts, because nothing rides between me and the seat.
• Shirt tucks or it doesn't. It stopped being part of the decision.
• Different pants, same carry. It isn't attached to my pants anymore.
• Up nine pounds over the winter and the fit didn't notice. It's sitting on bone.

If you are a bigger guy, this is the part nobody writes for you

Every single thing in that box fit me fine in the store. None of it fit me at 265, and the answer was always the same. Get down to 230 first.

Fine. I'm working on it. But that's a two-year answer to a problem I've got this morning.

This is the first thing I've owned that didn't ask me to change before it would work. It runs S through 5XL, and the big sizes are cut for a big frame instead of stretched to reach one. I'm in a 3XL.

One thing to get right when you order: go by your chest measurement, not the size on your usual t-shirt. It has to be snug through the ribs. Snug is not a fit problem here. Snug is what holds the gun still.

Ninety handshakes on a Sunday morning. Nobody found it.

Sunday used to be the one morning the gun stayed in the truck. Tucked shirt, an hour in a pew, and more people putting their hands on you than any other day of the week. With a belt rig there was no version of that morning that worked.

Now I wear the Shadow Tee under the same oxford I have always worn, tuck it in, and go.

I hand out bulletins once a month, which means I stand at the door for forty minutes and shake every hand that comes through. I counted one Sunday out of curiosity. Ninety-one. Plus the shoulder pats, plus three hugs at coffee hour, plus my granddaughter on my hip for most of the second service.

Nobody found it. Not that Sunday, not any Sunday since.

The shirt does not hide the gun better than a good holster does. It puts the gun somewhere people never touch.

I am not there to be a hero and I hope I never have to be anything. But there are two hundred people in that building on a Sunday and a lot of them are somebody's grandmother. If it ever came to it, I would rather be a man who is there than a man who is at the truck.

What the first thirty days actually look like

1. Days1-3
   It feels strange, and you check it constantly

   That's not a fit problem. That's four years of muscle memory from rigs that moved, looking for movement that isn't there anymore.

2. Week1
   The checking stops

   Mine quit on day five.

3. Week2
   The marker most men remember

   One night you're getting undressed and you realize you never thought about it once all day. Not in the truck. Not standing up off the floor. Not at all.

4. Weeks3-4
   The decision at the door disappears

   This is the actual product. Not comfort. The decision goes away. Step 2 runs entirely on that decision, and when there's nothing to decide, the drift has nowhere to start.

5. Day30
   Count your days

   Compare them to last month. That's the only review that has ever mattered.

What comes back

Imagine thirty days from now

Comments

Most relevant ▾

Ronnie Vaughn, Mike D. and 1.4K others · 212 comments

Ronnie Vaughn Top fan

Man, that box. I've got the exact same one on a shelf in my garage and I labeled it "extra" like that made it better. Never once thought about the fact that every single thing in it hooks to my belt. That got me.

LikeReply6h👍 428

Dave R. Author

Ronnie, mine said "old gear" which is somehow worse. Four years I walked past it.

LikeReply5h👍 191

Travis Kaufman

Gonna be the skeptic here. A shirt holster is not a holster. No hard trigger guard, slower presentation, and if it stretches out you've got a gun rolling around in a t shirt. I've seen these before.

LikeReply5h👍 96

Dave R. Author

Fair, and I put most of that in the article on purpose. Soft pocket, so you run a trigger cover or a gun with a safety. Draw is 0.9 slower on my own timer and I said so.

The part I'd push back on: I ran 3 days a week for four years with the "correct" gear. I'm at 7 now. You can be right about the draw and still be carrying less than me.

LikeReply4h👍 340

Steve Barnhardt

Travis this is the same argument guys made about appendix carry for ten years. Nobody's saying throw out your hip rig.

LikeReply3h👍 77

J. Mercer Retired LEO

The duty belt part is dead accurate. 22 years on and my department went to external vests in 2019. Half the guys my age have hip and lower back problems from that belt. Nobody connects it to how civilians carry but it's the identical load path.

LikeReply7h👍 611

DW

Denise Whitaker

Bought one for my husband after he read this over my shoulder and went quiet. He's 6'1", 280, and has been "meaning to carry" since 2022. Ordered the 4XL black. Fingers crossed.

LikeReply4h👍 254

GM

Grant M.

Denise I'm 290 and the 4XL is right. Tell him it's supposed to feel tight, that's what holds it. He'll want to size up. Don't let him.

LikeReply3h👍 168

Paul Hendricks

Anybody running a G19 in one of these? Article says it fits but that's a chunky gun for a shirt.

LikeReply4h👍 41

Dave R. Author

G19 is what I run. It's the top of what I'd put in there. If you're carrying a 17 or a full size 1911 this isn't the answer for that gun.

LikeReply3h👍 129

Lonnie Craddock

Southbound on I-70 four days a week. The console thing in the second review is me exactly. Take it off at the first stop, forget to put it back on, and now it's in the truck instead of on me. Which is worse than not carrying honestly.

LikeReply8h👍 302

Marcus Kell

Lefty here. Been paying the "wrong hand" tax my whole life, every holster is a special order and half of them never get made. Two identical pockets is such a small thing and it's the reason I ordered.

LikeReply6h👍 187

RA

Ray Alvarado

Did the tape measure thing at my desk just now. 3.5 inches at the belt, basically nothing at the ribs. Kind of annoyed nobody ever showed me that in twelve years of carrying.

LikeReply2h👍 396

HT

Hank Tolliver

Three weeks in. The line about the decision at the door is the true part. I don't think about it anymore. I just get dressed.

LikeReply1d👍 233

EW

Earl Whitcomb

Had the same back surgery he's talking about. L4 L5 in 2019. Put on almost fifty pounds after because I couldn't do anything for six months. Every holster I owned became useless and I blamed myself for that too.

LikeReply9h👍 288

CB

Curtis Beal

How does it hold up in the wash? Compression stuff always stretches out on me after a couple months and then it's just a t shirt with pockets.

LikeReply7h👍 64

Dave R. Author

Cold wash, hang dry. No dryer. Mine are two years old and still snug. The dryer is what kills compression fabric, not the washing.

That's also the real reason I tell guys to own three. You're not running the same one through a hot cycle twice a week.

LikeReply6h👍 212

DN

Doug Nazario

Ordered one, wore it three days, almost sent it back. Felt like a wetsuit and I hated it. Read the part about day five again and gave it the full week. He's right. I stopped noticing it on day six and I've worn it every day since.

LikeReply11h👍 341

BF

Brenda Fowler

My dad is 71 and stopped carrying after his hip replacement. He won't say it out loud but I know it bothers him. Ordering him the 2XL for Christmas.

LikeReply5h👍 197

TS

Tom Sczepanski Range officer

I run a public range and I see the drawer problem constantly. Guys come in with a brand new holster every few months. Same guys. Nobody ever asks why they keep needing a new one.

LikeReply10h👍 419

KR

Kenny Ruiz

Texas in August is the objection nobody wants to answer. Is this thing wearable in the heat or not?

LikeReply4h👍 88

Dave R. Author

Straight answer, it's a layer and in an attic in July you know it's on. I already wore an undershirt so for me it was a wash. If you go bare under a tee in the summer, this will be an adjustment.

LikeReply3h👍 156

MH

Marty Hollins

Bought three like he said. First week I thought that was overkill. Now I get it. Laundry day used to be a skip day and I never once connected those two things.

LikeReply2d👍 174

VL

Vince Ladner

Permitless state here so I've carried daily for years, or I told myself I did. Sat down and actually counted last month. Nine days out of thirty. Nine. That number is going to bother me for a while.

LikeReply8h👍 367

GP

Glen Pruitt

Sizing question. I'm 6'3" and 240 but I'm long in the torso, not wide. Do I go by chest or by the usual shirt size?

LikeReply6h👍 52

Dave R. Author

Chest measurement, every time. Long torso guys should go true to chest and not size up. If it's loose through the ribs it won't hold the gun still, and holding it still is the entire product.

LikeReply5h👍 143

AJ

Arlen Jessup

Been carrying 26 years and I'll admit the four sentences part stung. I've said all four of them to younger guys at the club. Never once asked any of them what they do for a living.

LikeReply1d👍 502

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