How do you know if your holster is good?

Seems like every other comment on this sub is people arguing about gear, trying to land on what's good and what isn't. Most of the argument is based on very little. Let's think about what qualifies a person to say whether gear is good or bad.You're eyeing holsters on the Internet and thinking about how they might work for you. After a thorough examination of the details, do you know whether the holster is good? No, because you haven't used it.You've been carrying your pistol around in a holster for two years. Do you know whether the holster is good? No", because you haven't used it. (A holster is more than a pocket for your gun.)You've gone to a range that lets you draw from a holster. Do you know whether the holster is good? Well, you know whether it's good against paper. Unless you're carrying a gun to fight paper, no, because you haven't used it.In order to know whether a holster is good, you have to try it. That means you need to fight people with it. Which is wildly, terrifically, spectacularly different from shooting paper. To shoot paper you don't even need a holster. Your draw can be as slow as you like. You can stand still. In short, there is no pressure on the holster to be good, because it can't fail. No matter how bad the holster is, it will always be good enough to accomplish shooting paper with.In know what you're thinking: I'll just head down to my local gas station tonight and pick a fight! That'll test my gear. As fun as that sounds, let's talk about the next best thing: force on force training. That's when you get together with some other gun folk and use paint-marking rounds, or airsoft replicas of your guns, and you shoot it out in realistic scenarios.You may discover that in the middle of a fight that the locking mechanism on your SERPA jams. Or you can't get your snubby out of your pocket holster while running to cover. Or your LC9 could actually use a couple more rounds in the mag, and that grip which was just fine at the range is actually a bit of a challenge under stress.Whatever happens, you'll undoubtedly agree that in a fight, you need to be able to draw fast. My life is in jeopardy right now fast. That's the only time you actually need to draw, right? A world-class first shot from concealment at 3 yards is 0.6 seconds. I'm hovering around 0.8 on a good day. Given the right equipment, most people can get to 2 seconds without a ton of effort.I say all of this because I see a lot of people arguing about what's good with no real basis in fighting. Almost never do I see "Well I thought this might be good but I tried to fight with it and discovered X." I see a lot of people taking about what feels good in their hands, and other stuff that doesn't matter. As a result, lots of people are carrying stuff that doesn't work. via /r/CCW http://ift.tt/2zShMvL