Bad Practice: Mission Critical Baby carrier and holster

Introduction

In a unique moment that’s taken the gun community to a new level of strange, a gentleman named Mike Warren posted a picture of his Mission Critical baby carrier. Up to this point, we’re good. Dads carrying babies = cool by us.

Here’s the punchline: It’s got a pistol strapped to the front of the baby in a SERPA holster.

That one sentence alone is a wrecking ball of “oh please tell me your kidding” crashing straight through towers of reason, but now the internet is in full-tilt boogie, trying everything from Melody Lauer politely offering him coursework to Chuck Haggard offering him space to test his equipment out to P&S trying to reason with him on why this is a bad idea.

This topic hits at a good time for us. We’re spooled up from working with kids and problems of violence around children, so it’s fresh in our minds. With a level of arrogant idiocy rarely seen outside pop culture characters like the ‘Cash me Ousside’ girl, it seems the harder people lean on Mike to realize how bad this idea is, the harder he digs in his heels with the “iT wOrKs FoR mE” thing.

We’re ISG, and here’s our take on Mr. Warren’s controversial setup.

Prioirities

The very first thing we need to ask is “What is the objective here? Judging from Mike’s responses on social media, he’s just trying to keep his pistol accessible, so what?

Here’s the thing: This is a perspective deeply rooted in ‘wearing the juice‘. Sometimes the less you know, the more reasonable your solution seems. We really can’t fault anyone for not knowing what they don’t know. All we can hope is that they’ll accept feedback that could be crucial to positive outcomes and risk mitigation. So let’s talk about this for a second.

If you’re wearing a baby strapped to your chest and violence erupts around you, it’s a complete and categorical failure to prioritize if you think of your gun first.

Intrinsically, this is probably what the internet is reacting to, though there are certainly hallmarks of all the classic gun-cringe we’ve come to expect from social media and open carry advocates.

If someone is shooting at you and your baby is between you and them, your first priority isn’t ‘commit to a timing error’ and draw the gun. It’s not even subdue the attacker. It’s get away from the violence as fast as possible. We’re going to elaborate on this in detail in it’s own article, but suffice to say your first and only priority in that situation is to protect the life of your child.

Execution

Now, in our testing and study, we’ve found that there’s a big underlying problem with talking about problems of violence around children; age is a major factor. Children don’t act the same, and their age will directly affect the approach you have to take to resolve the situation without them being hurt. Toddlers, for example, have a innate desire to be both close to their parent and to want to mediate violence. They also fundamentally lack any notion of mortality, making them incredibly difficult to manage when violences is unfolding.

An infant, by contrast, is unlikely to do much more than cry, which… if guns are going off, you can believe you’ve got a siren strapped to your chest. Perhaps the only way to be less discreet than open carrying is attaching a screaming baby to your gun. Not exactly a tactical advantage. Now put flying lead and brass, 150 dB explosions, and violence in their face and at the very minimum, you’ve ruined guns for that kid for life.

More to the point for this specific example is that if whatever situation he’s preparing for doesn’t go according to plan, and his adversary gets the drop over him, he’s fighting a few major issues:

1. The reactionary gap is going to increase (giving him less time and fewer options) the farther that gun is from his person.
2. If a question of retention comes up, the holster is now a rigid structure braced against the soft body of his newborn. Not only is this difficult to defend against in terms of physical retention, but it creates a huge open door to injury for the child.
3. He’s placed his newborn baby in the space most likely to be occupied by physical violence; the length between your torso and tips of your outstretched fingers.
4. What happens if the baby spills out of that thing in a fight?
5. Hope you like talking to cops and CPS.

This, it shouldn’t have to be said, is an absolutely terrible idea that shows an utter ignorance of fighting, violence, the common threats faced by the citizen, and the efficacy of open carry.

It’s a bunch of not great ideas rolled into one colossal clusterfu*k of a bad idea, and then treated as if it’s just “opinion”.

Conclusion

Mr. Warren’s image is now viral, and the energetic hate reactor is spooled up and delivering. This has a tendency to shut people down to valid criticism and critique of methodology.

As is often the case with “Bad Practice”, we never thought we’d have to write an article of why not to strap your strap to your baby strap. It just seems common sense, and judging from the response, it is. Most people intuitively understand that just because you HAVE webbing to which you COULD attach a gun, it doesn’t mean you should.

This is definitely up there with Wyatt West tactical dual wielding long guns, so for the rest of you normies who aren’t doing wonky junk, thanks for keeping it low key.

Cheers,

ISG Team