Looking at my safariland holsters, and being cheap, I’m beginning to wonder something. What exactly goes into a safariland being firearm specific. In all of the examples I have, there seems to be this large cavernous void that the pistol slides into, with the x300 being the widest point on all of them, and then resting on the barrel plug and locking in at the ejection port.


What is stopping someone from maybe swapping out the ALS system and modifying the barrel plug? Like, say you had a limited edition pattern and wanted to lightly modify the safariland to fit another firearm?


Anyways, maybe that’s silly, but it seems to me that there isn’t a huge difference from one holster to the other besides the barrel plug and the ALS system.

In most cases they are pretty close. RDR Gear mods and sells Safariland holsters for makes/models that aren’t a factory option.

Although they’re “gun specific” there are some crossovers that work. My CZ P10c worked in my 6390RDS for my G19.

You can also swap plugs around, if you can find them. I swapped a plug from a 229 ALS into a G17 holster so that I could run a G34 length G19 w/comp. I believe the plug and the the ALS portion that locks in the ejection port work together to make the holster “gun specific”.

There’s lots of crossover in fitment

It’s a moldable plastic

The internal hood the interfaces with the slide/front of the chamber is what's model specific. Length of the plug also changes, and some small changes in the shell itself. But the locking mechanism is that internal hood, and that's the biggest difference