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Shoulder Holsters: Beyond The Mystique
Guns Magazine, August, 1999 by Massad Ayoob
Glorified in movies and literature, the shoulder holster is still a useful special purpose concealment rig.
Ask any gun dealer. When a new handgunner buys his first gunleather, odds are he'll ask about shoulder holsters. After all, Mike Hammer, James Bond, Eliot Ness and Sonny Crockett couldn't all be wrong!
Then our new gunnie starts reading the magazines. The collective firearms literature implies that only a bozo would use a shoulder rig instead of a hip holster.
The truth, as usual, is somewhere in between. There are some people for whom the shoulder rig makes the most sense for routine carry. There are many more for whom, in certain times and places and under certain conditions, the shoulder holster is a special purpose item. I count myself among the latter.
Let's look seriously at that over-glamorized but sometimes decidedly useful thing called a shoulder holster.
A Brief History Of The Concept
The shoulder holster as we know it -- a harness strapped onto both shoulders that hangs the handgun beneath the armpit opposite the dominant hand --- is more than a century old. The originals were simple pouch holsters suspended from the weak side. They evolved at a time when many frontier towns forbade carrying of guns in public and citizens at risk committed the "willful civil disobedience" of carrying their Peacemaker under their coat.
Soon the cowboys developed a skeletonized version with leather-covered spring clips that allowed the gun to be ripped forward and down instead of pulled up and out.
In the early 1930s, the radical Berns-Martin was introduced. It used a spring clip design resembling a clamshell to hold a "snub-nose .38" upside-down, and proved remarkably fast. In the 1950s, Chic Gaylord of New York developed his Dynamite holster, perhaps the first successful shoulder rig that held a small revolver perfectly horizontal.
By the late 1960s, Rick Gallagher in Chicago had conceptualized two neat ideas in one. His Jackass Shoulder System, later to be modified into the Miami Classic when his company expanded and became Galco, not only hung the handgun in an angled, semi-upside down position, but was the first "shoulder system" (Gallagher's term) that balanced the weight of the gun on one side with ammo and perhaps a handcuff case on the other.
The stage was set for myth and misinformation. Let's try to set the record straight.
Breaking The Myths
Myth: Shoulder holsters have no advantage.
Reality: The shoulder holster offers a number of specialized advantages. First, when wearing it, you don't need a belt. In an emergency, you can throw it on your naked body and it'll work (to a greater or lesser degree).
Second, holding the gun under the weak side arm, it is by definition one of the easiest holsters to draw from with the non-dominant hand, though you have to cross your own body with the muzzle to do it.
Hunters like the shoulder holster because it keeps the gun under garments and safe from inclement weather; because it distributes the weight of very heavy high-powered handguns, and because it puts the gun in a place where it's less likely to snag on brush.
Myth: Shoulder holsters are uncomfortable.
Reality: That's only true of the badly designed ones. A good, soft "figure eight" harness of wide leather or synthetic that has some stretch capability will allow easy carry for a 10-hour work shift or longer -- if the hardware it carries is reasonably light. Avoid thin, stiff leather straps, or any straps that go across the back of the shoulders close to the neck.
Myth: Shoulder holsters are too slow to draw from.
Reality: Damn few professionals ever show up for a quick-draw match with a shoulder holster, but most quick draw matches begin with the contestant standing in a ready position. Started from a seated position, things change, particularly if you're strapped in place by safety belts. This is why so many police, military pilots and chauffeur-bodyguards use the shoulder holster.
When danger threatens, it's less of a giveaway to fold your arms and let your gun hand sneak onto the grip of your shoulder-holstered handgun than to reach behind your hip in a ready-to-draw position.
Some years ago at the National Tactical Invitational, I was able to take out four man-size 3D targets in two seconds including reaction time almost 180 degrees apart.
I did it because I was able to start in the requisite low-profile position with my right hand on my backup gun, a Colt .45 auto by Dave Lauck in a Bianchi X-15 shoulder holster. At the instant of the "attack stimulus" I was able to rip the gun across my chest and center punch the target on my left side and sweep right and do the same to the next one.
As I came across my 12 o'clock the support hand was coming onto the big Colt when I dropped the third target, and I pivoted into a strong two-hand grasp by the time the fourth 230 grain slug took out the fourth target at almost 3 o'clock.
I couldn't have done that from a hip holster with my primary .45, and neither could a hundred some other people who tried. The shoulder holster had made the difference under those street-duplicating NTI circumstances.
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