Claymore: "Danny's First Day"

 Going a long time back at The Firearm Blog, there was an occasional contributor that went by the name "Claymore". In this particular story--"Danny's first day: An argument against ankle holsters"--he had been tasked to go undercover and take photographs of people attending a protest outside a courthouse where a Puerto Rican terrorist was being tried. This was back in 1988. As Claymore explains, "Normally when one is undercover in situations like this there is an intelligence gatherer and a cover officer. The cover officer’s only job is “watching the back” of the one gathering intelligence." But because a KKK rally was also being held, the law enforcement agencies were short handed and didn't have a spare experienced "cover officer," leaving Claymore having to use a newly minted U.S. Marshal who carried his concealed weapon exactly as taught in the academy--in an ankle holster--and was not going to change for just that job. 

    Most of the article is about his covering the protest, but I've always found the discussion relevant to holsters to be particularly interesting:

    It had been a long three hours so we went in the store and got cold drinks and we deciding what the best way back to my car was and decided to cross the road. Being good citizens after crossing the road we started toward the entrance of the park to throw our soda cans in a trash barrel at the entrance of the park when the Big armed dudes were back with a bunch of pissed off people along as helpers…. we were in deep shit and were quickly surrounded and driven by the force of the crowd into the fenced park.

    I have always appendix carried my Browning BDA-380 when undercover just the the right of my belt buckle and had put on rubber Pachmayr grips that work perfectly to prevent the firearm from slipping down from the belt. [Ed: Claymore was left handed, so this meant that he was carrying in a quasi cross-draw position].

    The big dudes were kicking us in the achilles tendon, and calves, while wearing heavy work boots, and pinching the back of our arms. Let me tell you when a large full grown man pinches your muscles it hurts like hell.

    We were in deep deep shit but fortunately we had stopped right before the May 19th lady and I quickly got my firearm out because I could still move my forearms and it was a simple matter to just move my hand to my belt buckle area to draw. Danny on the other hand had seen me going for my weapon but when he bent over to get to his ankle mounted weapon they “bucked” up against his extended rear end preventing him from bending over and when he tried to lift his leg to get to it they jostled him so he couldn’t stand on one leg.

HE COULD NOT GET TO HIS WEAPON TO SAVE HIS LIFE.

    I took my weapon out from under my shirt with just and inch or so of the barrel showing, so the rest of the crowd couldn’t see it, and told the May19th lady “I know who you are and you know who I am. Look down (she did) and in three seconds I’m going to start shooting, starting with you right in the stomach if you don’t get your goons off us” I told her “we are leaving so just get them off us and we are out of here” All this time they keep up the pinching and kicking and I could see Danny was having a hard time of it.

    Out of the corner of my eye I spotted the boss of the local police intelligence unit and the assistant Special Agent in charge of the local FBI office, I knew both of them well, standing on the other side of the road laughing.

    Well she gave a nod and the goons backed off and we slowly backed out of there. I was HOT. I walked over to my alleged friends and said something like “WTF is wrong with you assholes why didn’t you send us some help?”

    They were grinning and and in unison they came out with a line, stolen from the Texas Rangers, and said “one riot one trooper” we knew you could handle it.

    I was floored and when I said “I had drawn my weapon and was one second from shooting”. They lost their smiles quickly and explained that they did not see that and thought I had it handled.

    I calmed down a little but I could see Danny was a little unnerved by the whole thing. I got him back to my car and drove back to his office. I asked him “how did you like that day in the life of a trooper?” He said “does things like that happen very often?” I said “not too often that bad but working rallies either KKK, commies, or whoever is part of the job.

    He said “I have changed my mind” and he never became a trooper but went on to a long career with the Marshal service.

    So my advice is that an ankle holster is the very last place you want to carry your primary weapon if there is any way to avoid it. There are a multitude of other carry positions that you can come up with that are much better. That being said I did carry a SECOND firearm in an ankle holster while working in uniform, but never a primary.