Picked up a nice holster for those rare times that I take the early post war M&P 4" out to play. Holster is very well made. Got it for a nice price on the bay.

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Get off my lawn!

Very nice old holster and S&W. What's with the 2 snaps?

The holster was not gun specific. Two snaps permitted the use of different size guns.

Nice holster Jeff. Is that the M& P you just got?

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Tom
NRA Pistol Inst

Yes, Tom, it is. Still haven't gotten around to shooting it yet.

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Get off my lawn!

As a side note, that holster in plain black was adopted and issued with the last special made General Officer's pistol custom made at Rock Island Arsenal in the early 70's. The cutdown 45 Gov't{ just a shade over 1000 guns} was designed and made by several of my friends{as well as friends of a couple of other forum members besides myself}. Way neat guns and a very cool pistol.

Nice. Buchmeir made great holsters. I prefer the swivel variety, though.

Usually the second snap was so the strap could be snapped around the front of the holster out of the way. In Bill Jordan's book "No Second Place Winner" he states that the border patrol holster was intended to be worn with the strap around the front or completely out of the way snapped onto the back of the holster. The theory was you would always have time to snap the strap over the gun if you were going to climb up on a boxcar or something but you wouldn't have time to unsnap it if you needed to draw and fire in an emergency. They were way more concerned with draw speed than they were with retention. The book also explains how to wet mold the holster to your gun so the excellent fit helps the gun stay put. Some of us added a tension screw to the holster to keep the gun from being able to fall out when it was not strapped in. Thumb break straps came later. The Berns-Martin holster was pretty secure strapped in or not. Bianchi bought the rights to this holster and it evolved into the Judge and the Model 3000 break front holsters.