More From That Cat Lady

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When I was down in Memphis taking my course with The Cornered Cat,  I learned a ton of very helpful things and I would like to share one of those handy dandy tips with you.

When all is right with my gun it looks like this…

That is the part of my gun where the bullet comes out and in this picture you can see everything is lined up and ready to go.  Perfect.

The way I have always reholtered my gun is to maintain my normal grip, but with my finger off the trigger, sort of like this…

With my Glock and both my Crossbreed and my Remora this has always worked, but Kathy suggested that when we reholster the gun, we move our thumb onto the backplate, like this…

The point of this is to be sure the slide does not get out of whack like this…

I have never had my gun do this when reholstering until I got my new AGirl holster from The Holster Site.  The fit is snug and therefor when I slide my gun into the holster, the slide pushs back which could be a problem for a variety of reason.  By placing my thumb on the back of the gun instead of on the side, I can assure that the slide does not move and that I get a good holster. 

The woman knows her stuff, I tell ya.

28 thoughts on “More From That Cat Lady”

  2. Yikes! Did it stick out-of-battery like that when you drew it, or did you mock that shot up?

    Out of battery guns don’t shoot (BTW a useful tip in the horrible event you can grab a gun in an attacker’s hand. Get that slide back, Get it to double-feed, get your finger mashed in the ejection port. Make the gun a crappy club!)

    Advantage is a tap-rack-bang will fix that problem.

    • I did it for the picture, but when I was practicing my draw with an empty gun, it did get out of battery that bad. Part of it was breaking in the holster, but part of it, is the fit, so holstering with my thumb on the back keeps that from happening.

    • Yes, please spend time breaking in the holster. Side effect of a tight fit. It won’t do that after a few draw/ reholster repetitions

  3. Thank you for sharing! I have been having this exact problem!!!!! I thought my firearm was having a problem with the spring.

  4. [1911 haughtiness on]Hmm… mine don’t seem to have that problem.[/1911 haughtiness off]

    HA! It’s Friday! Cut me some slack!

    Umm… Mas Ayoob teaches the same thing. He advises placing the thumb on exposed hammer guns when holstering up as well.

  5. My Sparks VM2 is tight on my 1911.

    Since the 1911 has a thumb safety and it is engaged when holstering, the slide doesn’t slide back, but when I insert it in the holster, I still have my thumb on the back of the slide to aid in putting the pistol in the holster.

    I also have my thumb up as I pull out of the holster as well (with finger off the trigger and out of the guard area – as you do), and as I clear, it slides down to get the thumb safety to the off position so it is ready to go.

  6. I do the same thing with my XD. This has the added benefit of deactivating the grip safety as I put the gun back in the holster. This way if my shirt or anything else gets in the trigger area for some reason I’m not going to have a bad day.

    Also you must activate the grip safety for the slide to move on the XD so that alone helps prevent the slide from moving out of battery.

  10. My M&P9 does the exact same thing from time to time. I’ve actually gotten in the habit of giving it a *forward* press as I draw. I’m curious to see what the .40 will do.

  11. Makes perfect sense. I have never been taught that! But I typically use plastic holsters. I will try it. Can’t hurt to add that to holstering the handgun.

  12. Off topic from your post, I just needed a place to put this comment.

    You might be interested in the existence and name of this group:
    http://www.agirlandagunclub.com/

    http://www.myfoxhouston.com/dpp/news/weird/120308-womens-shooting-league

    break-break

    I’ve been very interested in reading about your journey. A bit of reading you should do — if you mentioned it before, I missed it. Rory Miller’s “Facing Violence: Preparing for the Unexpected.” A very good read for someone developing their “mindset.”

    It is available on Amazon very inexpensively, especially for the Kindle.

    Best wishes.

    Eric

    • Eric, thank you for the links! A Girl and A Gun shooting league is doing some really great stuff for woman and shooting. I follow them on FB and heard a lot of great things.

      I had not heard about the book, but I am interested. I will check it out. Thank you!

    • Glad you liked the links.

      Now for a comment that is on topic. Some of the other commentary here seems to imply that once your holster is broken in, you won’t have to do the thumb-on-the-back-of-the-slide thing.

      This is something you should do EVERY time you re-holster. Murphy’s law and all that, so take no chances you do not have to take. Reliability is the number one attribute for a carry gun — it must go bang when you need it to go bang. Some reliability is inherent to the gun (and Glocks are famous for being reliable), but you are part of the reliability equation also, so you need to do your part to eliminate failure points.

      (But you also still need to train for what to do when it doesn’t go bang).

      …

      I think you will find Rory Miller very interesting.

    • Eric, I have put my thumb on the back since my tine in Memphis. It’s just part of how I always holster now regardless of gun or holster. I am huge on routine:)

  15. These commenters are hilarious. I have never been trained that way, either. I’ve not had that issue with the holsters I’ve had, even with Glocks. I’m glad you identified a solution. Also, as mentioned, break-in with leather is important and leave it in the holster as much as you can. Of course, by this I mean carry it all the time. 🙂

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