There has been quite a lot of uproar over the perceived safety issues of the Blackhawk SERPA holster. The primary concern seems to be about people shooting themselves in the leg. The complaint is that the holster design allows for the trigger finger to slip into the trigger guard upon drawing. Pictured below is my SERPA holster that I use for EDC and competition.
The trigger guard is completely covered. The locking mechanism is the “L” shaped pivoting insert.
Pressing on the part of the lock directly over the trigger guard opening does nothing. To free the pistol, the trigger finger must depress the upper end of the lock running just under the slide.
The pistol is gripped and the trigger finger depresses the lock.
The pistol is drawn and the trigger finger remains straight, sliding along the holster between the two fences around the lock.
As the draw continues, the trigger finger clears the holster body and lays along the frame of the pistol. The pad of the trigger finger actually rests against the protruding tip of the slide stop. The trigger guard is clearly not in the path of the trigger finger. A negligent discharge is not possible unless the shooter is an unsafe person.
As I stated before, my SERPA holster is for daily carry and hard competition use. It has gone through thousands of draw strokes and has never caused an unsafe situation.
Just as an aside, my duty revolver was my Colt Python carried in Bill Jordan’s River holster crafted by Don Hume. Fully exposed trigger guard yet there was never a safety issue. Know why? Because we kept our fingers off the damn trigger until we were on target!
Myopicvisionary 