This seems to be an old model of the LAW Concealment Systems holster. It’s an IWB pouch with the bottom divided (by sewing front and back together for an inch or so). It has a big flap to keep the butt of the gun off your skin. I’ve borrowed it from Joel’s holster drawer.
It’s a very good design, particularly for a small revolver. The division of the bottom of the pouch lets you put the gun in either upright, or canted either direction. With a revolver, the cylinder ends up below the belt, so retention is excellent, but the butt sticks up well clear (and hence easy to grasp). For me it rides well about over my kidney.
I’ve just spent a rather exhausting day, teaching a carry course with Joel and helping run the students through their qualification shoot (and setting up the range; we were at Oakdale Gun Club, so we had to haul shooting benches and target holders up close to the target wire on the 50-yard range we were using to get the students 15 and 21 feet from the targets, and then haul them back afterwards). My Taurus 85 rode in this holster from when I left the house to pick up Judy (about 9:15) until I got back after dinner (about 9:30pm); so right about 12 hours. Driving 30 or so miles in the car, sitting in class, standing teaching, doing the lifting and hauling of setting up and tearing down the range, putting up targets for the students, and so forth.
Actually, my major discomfort from carrying all day seems mostly to come from having my shirt untucked. It’s not specific to where the holster is; it’s all around my waist, where the belt bears. I’m not used to that, most of my life I’ve kept whatever shirt I’m wearing tucked in
This holster works well with my Kahr K40 also. Without the cylinder, retention isn’t as solidly locked in as as with a revolver, but it still feels very secure.
This holster is especially good for people who don’t want to settle down to just one carry weapon. It will work for a wide range of carry guns, and save you having to buy holsters for each and every one of them.
Old Business
Taurus 445
Tony picked up some 44 Special loads for me at Gander Mountain on the shopping trip, so I was able to try my Taurus 445 again, with something other than Blazers (which resisted ejecting from the cylinder after being fired). They were 240 grain lead round-nose, basically cowboy loads. Mostly I’d pick something lighter than 240 grain for a defense load, and of course something other than a round-nose, but this is what I could get locally in brass cases.
I was able to extract all the brass casings, but some of them were a bit stiff. Tony suggests the visible rings in the cylinder may not be supposed to be there, but to my eye they look like they’re where the case should end, and may help to prevent loading magnum loads (and keep you from trying to close the cylinder with the bullets sticking out). I’m not going to start trying to polish them out yet, anyway.
So I shot most of a box, mostly at 15 feet. It was fun to shoot, though I did find my right wrist twinging slightly afterwards, presumably from the shock. But it didn’t hurt at the time. It points excellently. I could fire a full cylinder in just a few seconds, and put them all very near the centerline of the target, and mostly grouped in under a foot vertically. And I could make 4-inch groups with aimed fire; no doubt better will come with practice.
Kel-Tec P-3AT
Joel found one of these last week (they’re just out; Joel’s is a 1xx serial number). Today I finally got a chance to shoot it. I found it very comfortable, not any more challenging than the P-32. What I was shooting was some lead round-nose bullets from some reloading company, so I have no idea what velocity they were reaching. They may have been softer loads than the S&B 73gr I’ve been shooting in my P-32.
I believe Greg found it would occasionally fail to feed with FMJ.
We were both shooting it at something like 50 feet, I think; I don’t actually know what the distance to that intermediate target wire on Oakdale’s “comp” range is. Anyway, an absurd distance for a gun of this configuration. And I believe we thoroughly scared the target; in fact there were some holes in it.