Dad and I’ve been running Safariland ELS belt rigs for a couple months now. If you’re not familiar with ELS, it’s a very easy-on easy-off belt and accessory system. It’s grown very popular in 3-gun where a stage can be rifle, pistol, shotgun, or any combination of the three. It helps to be able to clip on six shotshell caddies for one stage. unclip them and put on a race holster and a couple pistol mag pouches for the next.

Scott Carnahan’s Tac-Optics ELS rig. “Um, excuse me, could anyone direct me to Helmand Province?”

Scott’s same belt, only rigged up for the Occupy Central Missouri rally.

My thoughts? Best thing to hit holsters since kydex. Especially for those of us who serve as Gear Monkeys for two or more people (“Hey Brian, I think I’d like to shoot Production at tomorrow’s match, then Single Stack down in Vegas on Sunday. And don’t forget Ironman is coming up”. You know who you are. /rant.) Also, pretty much all Kydex/injection molded (and there is a difference between the two) gear either will fit or can be made to fit on an ELS fork.

The only thing I don’t like about ELS is that ordering it can be a little confusing. For example, you want to have one belt and a bunch of receiver plated to use for everything. No big deal. But safariland standard holsters won’t fit an ELS fork, so you need a QLS fork and receiver on the rig. But you want to use a race holster like an 013 or CRspeed for Open Division. Those holsters fit an ELS fork. Solution? Blade-Tech holsters will fit an ELS fork. But when you’re ordering and you’ve got several Blade-Tech holsters (one for production, limited, single-stack, whatever) and a bunch of other Safariland holsters, you’ve got to keep track of them and make sure you get enough forks.

Also, as I mentioned in an earlier post, nobody ever has any ELS compatible .308 mag pouches in stock!