A good belt is one of the most overlooked parts of carrying a gun. A lot of folks put hundreds or thousands of dollars in their gun and holster rig, only to use a cheap, weak, and flimsy piece of leather to hold it to their body.
If you couldn’t tell by my snarky tone, I believe that is a huge mistake. I carried a gun for about a year before I realized the error of my ways. When I first started carrying a gun for protection, more than a decade ago, I concealed a full-sized Springfield XD using my old duty belt from my time as a corrections officer.
It was a terrible option, even though that belt was far sturdier than anything you can buy a Walmart.
We’ve covered this topic in depth before, but suffice it to say that having a gun belt that actually distributes the weight of your setup properly across your waist is a huge benefit to carrying correctly. It prevents the gun from moving and reduces the dreaded print.
Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s discuss my newest concealed carry gun belt, the Kore Essentials EDC belt.
Kore Essentials Belt Review:
The Kore Essentials gun belt is one that has no holes. Instead, it utilizes a ratcheting system with a bunch of notches on the inside of the belt. Keeping it cinched together is a little piece of metal attached to a small quick release lever that sits on the bottom.
The notches on the inside allow you to get very small adjustments, so instead of having to move an entire inch to the next hole, thus experiencing some discomfort or allowing your gun to sag, you can move in quarter of an inch increments to get it right where you want it.
That way, after a big pizza dinner you can let yourself out a bit by just releasing the little lever that holds the buckle to the inside notches.
After using this system for a few months, I can say that I don’t actually want to go back to either my leather gun belt, or my Cobra-style belt.
The Kore Essentials EDC belt offers up much more adjustability than the leather belt, and is far superior to the Cobra-style belt, at least in terms of ease of use.
The belt does a good job of holding everything up right where it’s supposed to be, and I’ve carried both my SIG P365XL in a Kydex holster, and my P320 AXG Classic in a leather holster.
Neither guns moved unless I moved them, and adjusting is easy as a pizza pie, after eating, ya know, a pizza pie.
Setting Up The Belt:
Setting up the belt, while not hard to do, was the most difficult part of the entire thing. It involves cutting the belt’s end to the right size to make sure you can actually get it to hold up your trousers and gun.
The belt is thick and sturdy for a reason. Remember it’s meant to hold up your gear. Again, good. When I was cutting through the belt with my kitchen shears, the handle broke. A testament to how sturdy the belt is, for sure.
It needs to be cut down because the little adjustability grooves don’t run the entire length of the belt, and without them you can’t cinch it down.
It’s like a one size fits all sort of thing, that needs to be cut down to your specific waist size. If you get it and it’s too small for you, you may need to figure something else out–like cutting down on the pizza.
My Issue:
For the most part, I have zero issues with the function of the belt. That said, the finish on the belt’s buckle is wearing out faster than I’d like, as indicated by the picture, right at the top of the buckle.
That is a minor issue for me, however, because I never tuck my shirts in, and nobody ever sees the buckle but me anyway.
Conclusion:
You need a good gun belt if you carry a gun for self-defense. It’s the only way to carry if you do so on your hip. I actually consider it to be dangerous to use a regular belt, or even a worn, stretched out gun belt.
They can sag, dip, allow your pistol to move, not hold it properly, etc. If you’re in the market for a new belt, why not check out Kore Essentials?
They offer a sturdy belt that has held up for me very well over the past few months. I’m not sure I’ll go back to another design.
