Craft Holsters: Beretta 92FS holster

A while back the good folks over at Craft Holsters contacted me and made me an offer I couldn't refuse. They would custom make for me a leather, open top pancake holster for the firearm of my choosing -- for free -- and all I had to do was review their product. Sounded like a good deal to me then and it still seems like a good deal now that I've had the holster for a week or so.

As for the firearm involved, I decided a holster for my Beretta 92FS would be best. I carry my Beretta fairly regularly, so another holster for it would serve me well.

First off, I have to say this is a quality holster. It's made of thick, solid leather and has double stitching all the way around. It has been shaped to a Beretta 92FS perfectly, allowing my own handgun to slide in and out of it with ease.

Being this is a pancake holster, it holds snug against the body, allowing one to pull a shirt over and hide the holster and firearm with ease. Also, while shaped for a firearm, the leather here is smooth enough that the shape of the gun will not easily appear through one's clothing. As a nice bonus feature, the inside of this holster rises a little higher than the outside, placing a strip of thick leather between your firearm and yourself, so you don't have to worry about a handgun pressing into your flesh or any undershirt you might be wearing.

All in all this is a solid holster, a quality holster, and I'd suggest anyone interested should hitch their way on over to the Craft Holsters site and put in an order. The prices for these holsters are not cheap, but they're also not exorbitant; you get what you pay for, and here you actually get a little more than what you pay for.

Now in fairness, is this the perfect holster? No, of course not. There's no such thing as a perfect holster. There might be a perfect holster for you for a particular gun, but that's a rare find and one every gun owner should cherish when it  happens. To put it another way, the particular holster I received is a great holster, but it's not necessarily perfect for me, or at least it's not perfect for every situation in which I carry.

For example, there's not a lot of movement with this holster once it's on your belt. Personally I like to be able to slide my holster around a little because my situations change; sometimes I'm standing, sometimes sitting in a vehicle, other times sitting at a table, etc. This particular holster doesn't slide around easily if at all. In fact, this holster is quite wide, so one might find a difficult time placing it between loops on a pair of pants. This doesn't mean this is a bad holster, just that it's good for some things and not so good for others. If you're someone who doesn't want your holster to have any movement in it, then this holster could be perfect for you. And let me add that I'm talking about one particular holster from Craft Holsters, the holster they sent for my Beretta 92FS, and they offer lots of different styles of holsters for different firearms, so another holster or one for a different gun might not be as immobile as was my own.

The big questions are: Would I buy one of these holsters? And would I wear it? The answer to the first question is "yes," and in fact I'm planning to buy at least a couple more of these holsters. The answer to the second question is a bit more complicated, but it's basically, "yes, I would wear it, but only during certain situations, ones which would have to be determined at the time of holstering up." If that made sense. It basically means that whenever I'm planning to leave the house and carry a sidearm, at the moment of putting on a holster I would have to decide what type of handgun and which holster I'll be taking with me. Sometimes this Craft Holsters holster would be appropriate and even preferable, but not always.

Okay, I've rattled on enough. This really is a top quality holster, and made in Italy to boot. Go check out the Craft Holsters web site for yourself. I'm sure you'll find something there you'll like.