It Followed Me Home: Shield Edition

Local gun shops are dangerous places for your wallet, especially when the guys behind the counter know you well enough to know your taste in guns.

This afternoon I stopped in to Carolina Gunrunners in North Raleigh to consign a pistol that I don’t shoot anymore, and we got to talking about the XDs recall and Mike suggested that I should buy a S&W Shield to carry while the XDs is off getting repaired. I’d been looking at a Bersa BP9cc, or some other cheap single-stack 9mm to fill the gap.

I commented that I probably would consider a Shield if I could find one, and he countered that he currently had 3 of them in the case, one of which was lightly used.

Needless to say, 10 minutes later we had worked out a deal for my other pistol, filled out the .gov paperwork and I was on my way with a lightly used S&W Shield.

It’s in great shape, looks new. It’s been shot a little, but not enough to wear all of the paint off of the slide rails just yet. I’d estimate less than 500rds through it, by comparing the wear to my other M&Ps.

It’s Temporary… I promise.

Being that I’m only planning to keep this pistol until the XDs 9mm returns from Springfield, I couldn’t justify purchasing another G-Code INCOG holster for it so I had decided when I left the shop that I would just make a small kydex IWB rig for it and use that until the XDs returns.

Well, once I got home I began looking at my INCOG for the XDS, and realized that making a similar holster for the Shield that used all of the hardware from the XDs INCOG would actually be pretty easy, I headed out to the garage, and this is what I came up with after about an hours worth of work (and two hours in the garage, I had to pause working to watch Sons of Anarchy on my phone for a bit…):

It conceals just as good as an INCOG, but it isn’t fuzzy, and its ugly. It’s perfect. The nice thing is that when the XDs returns, I can just pop off the clips, and screw them right back onto the real INCOG.

Stand by over the next couple days for my thoughts on the Shield overall. I’ll already tell you that I don’t like the itty bitty safety.