Ankle Carry Qual

[AdequatleySupervised]

I’ve been carrying AIWB exclusively for the last 10 years but I’m going to add ankle carry as an option for my G26. I read on here that DSS has an ankle carry specific pistol pistol qual. I know LE pistol quals generally suck but it’s a standard and I think it’ll be a good start for me since I have no experience ankle carrying.

Can anyone post your agencies ankle carry qualification if you have one? Holster is a Galco ankle glove.id also appreciate any shooting drills or other tips anyone would be willing to provide.

[Coyotesfan97]

We didn’t have a specific off duty qual for ankle holsters. We shot the same off duty qual as everyone else. It wasn’t a hard qual. It started at 10 yards IIRC.

[TGS]

I’ve been carrying AIWB exclusively for the last 10 years but I’m going to add ankle carry as an option for my G26. I read on here that DSS has an ankle carry specific pistol pistol qual. I know LE pistol quals generally suck but it’s a standard and I think it’ll be a good start for me since I have no experience ankle carrying.

Can anyone post your agencies ankle carry qualification if you have one? Holster is a Galco ankle glove.id also appreciate any shooting drills or other tips anyone would be willing to provide.

This is one of those weird things where you might not get a ton of answers, because sometimes qualifications are labelled "For Official Use Only". So, it might not be classified material carrying a legal penalty, but a LEO from that organization may be hesitant to post it because they don't want to get in administrative trouble (even if that trouble doesn't progress beyond unwanted attention). As ridiculous as this sounds, that's just the way it is for people that have to play by the rules.*

With that said, you can develop your own "qual" that is consistent with an LE ankle qual by taking whatever par-time you use for a given drill which is started standing, and adding 3 seconds to the par-time to account for starting from the standing, going to kneeling to draw, and firing from the kneeling. So if you really like shooting LAV's 10x10x10 "Test", you can make the par-time 13 seconds. Or, for me, I personally set the par time for that drill at 7 seconds as my personal baseline to not fall under...so I could literally just shoot it at the original 10s par time from an ankle holster.

Additionally, you can shoot from a seated position, adding 3-4 seconds to the par time of whatever drill you're shooting to account for drawing/firing while seated. So if you like shooting the Haley D5 (if I recall correct, 5 rounds at 5 yards in 5 seconds), you could shoot this drill while seated with a par time of 9 seconds. Drawing from a seated position is usually slower than the mechanics of drawing from a standing position, and it's also usually more difficult to engage the same isometric tension on gun while seated as opposed to standing (difference in body mechanics), so it's fair to go for an increase in 4 seconds as opposed to 3 seconds. But, hey, adjust it and challenge yourself.

If you do this and pass your drills, you'd be consistent with the par times for at least one federal agency with an ankle qual...and, have the benefit of it still being relatable to the performance standards you're usually testing yourself by. It'd give you a better judge of how much your performance is impacted since you're not usually shooting XYZ agency's qual, anyway.

IMO, the most important thing is to understand that the draw needs to be reliable and rapid, but trying to go as fast as possible isn't necessary. Getting down the muscle memory for a reliable draw is critical, as it's actually very easy to fowl the draw from an ankle compared to typical belt carry. That usually involves chucking up the pant leg in an exaggerated fashion, possibly twice, with both hands. You can do it quicker if you just use one hand, but it probably won't be reliable with many of today's pants.

Hope that helps

*: regarding that note, anyone with an official LE government/department email can PM me your email and I'll send you our quals, if you're so inclined.

[psalms144.1]

For a while we had a "Non-Standard Holster Qual" that was untimed and, largely, unscored. It involved drawing from (ankle/shoulder/fanny pack/whatever) and firing a single round at 7 yards, then working back to the holster. IIRC, we did this five times. Then we would draw and fire two rounds, five times. All iterations were untimed, and the requirement to "pass" was just getting all 15 rounds somewhere on our ridiculously huge silhouette.

After that, FIs had to forward the results to the Field Office SAC, who approved for carry that pistol/holster combination.

We only did this drill for a couple of years before the "issue" was resolved by removing the whole discussion from our firearms policy, basically putting it into the "see no evil" category. For as long as I was with the agency, ALL record qualifications had to be shot from strong side hip, IWB or OWB.

[TGS]

That's interesting. Our ankle qual is it's own course of fire, scored, timed, specified course of fire all the way out to 25 yards just like the regular qual. Shoulder holsters are shot using the standard qual, no changes. Fanny pack and bag quals (mandatory for new hires, not requalified on throughout the career) add 1s to the par time of the standard qual to account for the slowness in acquiring/opening the pack/bag.

The obvious caveat that we can't shoot any of this at FLETC ranges due to their lowest-common-denominator safety protocols...so if we're in the DC area and want to qualify on an ankle holster or shoulder holster, we just have to plan ahead to make sure we can get a slot at our facility instead of Cheltenham. And, of course, even then, regardless of reviewing the safest way to draw from a shoulder holster in order to mitigate risk, we will only accommodate one right handed shoulder holster shooting on the very left lane, and one left handed shoulder holster shooting on the very right lane.

(I prefer the latter. Something about that FLETC nostalgia )

[S Jenks]

This is Massachusetts’ Municipal Police Training Committee’s BUG qual. It’s not ankle holster specific but is to be shot from concealment and on a timer. It is designed around a 5 shot capacity and runs 7 yards to contact distance. 50 rounds, each round is 2 points, and a hit is anywhere in the white/green on these targets. 80% is a pass but I’ve never had anyone not shoot 100%.

https://www.mass.gov/doc/mptc-concea...ourse/download

[jnc36rcpd]

I find it interesting (and not a bad idea) that agencies have an actual ankle holster qualification. I struggled with that issue when I was firearms training coordinator for my former agency. Our detectives and street crime officers worked in plainclothes with concealment rigs, but had to return to uniform for special events. I considered running them through a course of fire in concealment rigs as well as uniform duty holsters, but the time demands of a part-time program precluded that. I also considered that the most likely dust-ups our plainclothes people would get into would be during a planned arrest or search warrant service when the pistol was unlikely to be concealed.

No one asked, but I doubt we would have authorized ankle holsters as primary carry for on-duty plainclothes holsters. Since the ankle holster would be used for a BUG or off-duty pistol, I figured that the officer paid hiis money and could take his chances.

We did have a female detective who wore her pistol ina shoulder rig. This caused tremendous angst in the ranks by officers convinced she would gun them down during qualification. Since she was the only one with a shoulder rig, I planned to put her at the end of the line, but she wore her duty holster to firearms training eliminating the issue.