A customer recently reached out to me about an AIWB holster I had built for his Kimber 2K11.
The problem was simple: the retention was too tight. Not the gun is permanently installed in the holster now tight, but tighter than he wanted for an appendix carry holster. Fortunately, this wasn’t much of a problem. The retention is adjustable. A few turns of a screw and he could set it where he wanted it.
But the conversation got me thinking. How tight should a holster be?
The answer, like so many things in shooting, is: It depends.
I know. Very helpful. But in this case, “it depends” really is the answer.
Retention Is Personal
When I build a holster, I have to set the retention somewhere before I send it out the door. I tend to err a little toward the tight side. There is a practical reason for that. I use oversized rubber spacers in my retention systems. I can compress those spacers quite a bit when I tighten the holster, while still leaving enough material for them to expand as the customer backs the screws out. That gives the shooter a fairly wide range of adjustment in both directions.
The problem is that I can’t know exactly what every customer wants the draw to feel like. Some people like a very positive release. Others want the gun to come out with considerably less resistance. Neither is necessarily wrong.
That’s why I believe adjustable retention is important.
A fixed-retention Kydex holster is typically riveted or bolted together in a way that doesn’t give the shooter much ability to change the fit. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. For a basic range holster, it may work perfectly well.
But most shooters will benefit from being able to adjust their holster. That’s also why every holster I make has adjustable retention. The shooter should be able to decide what feels right.
There is, however, another part of that equation.
Retention Isn’t Only Personal
Preference matters, but the holster still has a job to do. It needs to retain the firearm through whatever you reasonably expect to do while the firearm is still in the holster. That last part matters.
Consider concealed carry.
For most of us, a typical day probably involves walking, driving, sitting, bending over, climbing some stairs, and perhaps occasionally running. If your daily routine involves parkour, bull riding, or being chased through an airport by international assassins, you may want to adjust accordingly.
The point isn’t that an AIWB holster needs less retention. It needs enough retention for the person wearing it and the things that person actually does.
The same principle applies to competition. Imagine a stage where you start standing still. At the buzzer, you draw the pistol and then begin moving. The holster only had to retain the gun while you were standing there. Once the gun is in your hand, you could run the rest of the stage wearing an empty cardboard box on your belt and it wouldn’t affect retention.
Please don’t do that. I don’t make cardboard holsters.
Now change the stage. You have to move before drawing. Suddenly, the holster has a different job.
If you’re going to run several yards with the pistol still holstered, you probably want more retention than you needed while standing still.
The gun doesn’t know what kind of match you’re shooting. It only knows whether it stayed in the holster.
Multigun Makes This Even More Obvious
Multigun competition is a particularly good example.
A shooter may be running, changing positions, getting into and out of awkward shooting positions, or negotiating other movement while the pistol remains holstered because they’re currently shooting a rifle or shotgun. That makes retention considerably more important.
Compare that with a pistol stage where the gun leaves the holster before any meaningful movement occurs.
Same shooter. Same pistol. Potentially the same holster. Different situation.
Different retention requirement.
That’s why I don’t think there is one correct answer to the question, “How tight should my holster be?”
The better question is: How much retention does my gun need, prior to drawing it?
Adjustable Retention Gives You Options
Most adjustable Kydex holsters use screws and some form of rubber or elastomer spacer. Tightening the screw compresses the spacer and increases retention. Loosening it allows the spacer to expand and reduces retention. It’s simple, and it works.
The disadvantage is that conventional adjustment usually requires a tool. That’s not a major inconvenience when you’re setting up a carry holster at home. It can be more annoying at a match.
That’s where on-the-fly adjustable retention becomes useful. A knob, thumb nut, or similar tool-less adjustment allows the shooter to change retention without digging through a range bag for a screwdriver or Allen wrench. I particularly like this feature on competition equipment because the retention you want doesn’t necessarily have to remain the same throughout the entire match.
A mostly static stage may allow you to run relatively light retention. A later stage that requires significant movement before the draw may convince you to add a little.
Turn the knob. Shoot the stage. Adjust again if necessary. No ceremony required.
Importantly, tool-less adjustment doesn’t create a different type of retention. The firearm is still being held through passive retention. You’re simply able to change the amount of it more conveniently.
Then There Is Active Retention
So far, we’ve been talking primarily about passive retention. The shape and fit of the holster hold the firearm in place, and the shooter overcomes that retention simply by drawing the gun.
Active retention is different.
An active-retention holster incorporates a mechanical device that must deliberately be released as part of the draw. This might be a thumb-operated lock, rotating hood, or another mechanism.
You’ll see these systems most commonly on duty holsters. And there’s a good reason. A duty holster doesn’t just need to prevent the gun from falling out while its wearer runs or fights. It may also need to make it more difficult for someone else to remove the firearm.
That’s a very different problem from shaving a little resistance from the draw on a competition stage.
A Quick Note About Retention Levels
This is where the terminology gets messy.
There is no single industry-wide standard defining Level I, Level II, and Level III holster retention. Different manufacturers use different rating systems. Safariland, for example, uses its own Duty Rated system based on distinct hand movements required to clear security mechanisms and does not simply count passive friction as Level I.
So when Dark Lantern Works uses retention levels, this is what we mean:
Level I — Passive retention.
The firearm is retained by the fit, friction, and molded engagement of the holster. No deliberate action is required to release it.
Level II — Passive retention plus one release action.
The shooter must perform one deliberate action to release the active retention before drawing the firearm.
Level III — Passive retention plus two release actions.
The shooter must perform two deliberate actions to release the active retention before drawing the firearm. These actions may operate a single mechanism or separate mechanisms.
If you’re comparing holsters from different manufacturers, don’t assume their “Level II” necessarily means exactly the same thing as someone else’s. Look at how the retention system actually works, not just the number printed beside it.
More Isn’t Automatically Better
It would be easy to conclude that more retention is always safer and therefore better. But that’s not really the goal. Every bit of unnecessary resistance is something the shooter has to overcome during the draw. Go too far in the other direction and you’ve created another problem. A wonderfully fast draw isn’t particularly useful if your pistol departed the holster somewhere between Position 1 and Position 2.
There is a balance.
For concealed carry, the holster should retain the firearm through the activities you reasonably expect to encounter during your day.
For competition, it should retain the firearm through whatever happens while the gun remains holstered.
For duty use, the retention problem may also include preventing another person from gaining access to the firearm.
Those aren’t necessarily the same requirements. And even two people using the same holster for the same purpose may prefer somewhat different settings.
That’s why I keep coming back to adjustability.
Set It. Test It. Adjust It.
There isn’t a magic number of turns on a retention screw that I can give you.
I couldn’t tell my Kimber customer exactly where his retention needed to be from hundreds of miles away, either. What I could tell him was that he could loosen it.
Set the holster where the draw feels right. Then, with an unloaded firearm and in an appropriate safe environment, make sure it will retain the gun through the kinds of movement you actually expect it to encounter.
If it doesn’t, add retention.
If you’ve cranked it down so tightly that every draw feels like you’re trying to start a lawn mower, perhaps back it off a little. Then test it again.
Your holster doesn’t need the most retention you can possibly give it. And it doesn’t need the least retention you can get away with.
It needs the right amount of retention for you, what you’re doing, and what you’re going to ask it to do.
Sometimes the correct answer really is: It depends.
The Watcher’s Observation
Retention shouldn’t be measured by how hard it is to draw the gun.
It should be measured by whether the gun stayed where it belonged until you needed it.