Kneeling on the hardwood floor, the 1/16th-inch Allen wrench feels less like a tool and more like a needle-thin instrument of torture. I am hunting for a set screw that has disappeared into the fibers of a rug I should have vacuumed 18 days ago. My shins ache. The lighting in this room is subpar, casting long, mocking shadows over the ‘Modular Tactical Response System’ that currently sits in three useless pieces on my coffee table. I am trying to adjust the ride height of a holster that promised me 28 different configurations, yet I cannot seem to find the one where it doesn’t dig into my hip bone like a dull chisel.

The Wisdom of Stripping Away

I think about Wyatt C. often in these moments. Wyatt is a grief counselor, a man whose entire professional existence is predicated on stripping away the superfluous. When you are sitting in a room with someone who has just lost the pillar of their world, you don’t offer them 38 options for a commemorative plaque. You offer them presence. You offer them the one thing that works: a listening ear. Wyatt once told me that the hardest part of his job isn’t the crying; it’s the noise. People try to fill the silence of tragedy with ‘stuff’-elaborate ceremonies, complex legal maneuvers, or a sudden obsession with the 108 different ways to arrange a funeral procession. But the healing, the real function of the process, only happens when you stop adding things and start acknowledging what is actually there. My holster has too many screws and not enough soul. It has 18 points of articulation but zero points of intuitive trust.

Simplicity as the Apex Feature

This is where the ‘yes, and’ of gear design comes into play. Yes, we want our equipment to fit our bodies, and that is precisely why we should demand better engineering from the start, not more adjustment points. A truly well-designed piece of kit shouldn’t need to be a transformer. It should be an extension of the self. When you find a piece of gear that just works, it feels like that $28 in the pocket-it’s an unexpected relief. It removes a layer of friction from your life that you didn’t even realize was wearing you down.

I have spent a lot of time looking at justholsterit because they seem to understand this fundamental truth: simplicity is a feature. It is not the absence of design; it is the pinnacle of it. When you strip away the 28 ‘innovative’ adjustment tabs, what you are left with is the function. Can I draw the weapon? Will the holster stay put? Is it comfortable enough to wear for 18 hours straight? If the answer is yes, then the 17 other screws are just noise.

There’s a technical side to this that we often ignore. Each hole drilled into a piece of Kydex or leather to accommodate a screw is a weak point. Each metal-on-plastic interface is a site for wear. If you have 8 different holes for ride height, you have 8 places where the material could potentially stress crack. We are traded durability for ‘modularity,’ and in a high-stress situation, I will take a single, solid piece of gear over a modular kit every single time. Wyatt C. would probably say that the more choices you have to make in a moment of crisis, the more likely you are to freeze. If I have to wonder if my 38-degree cant is still holding, I am not focusing on the threat. I am focusing on my gear. And gear should be invisible.

I remember one afternoon sitting in Wyatt’s office-not for a session, but just as a friend. He was cleaning his desk. He had 8 pens. Not a jar of 58 pens, half of which didn’t work. Just 8 high-quality pens that he knew would write the moment they touched paper. He told me that he narrowed it down because he got tired of the micro-disappointments of a pen skipping during a sensitive moment. That resonated with me. Why do we tolerate micro-disappointments in our carry gear? Why do we accept a holster that requires a weekly maintenance check on 18 different fasteners?

The Burden of the Superfluous

I’ve made the mistake of equating ‘complex’ with ‘capable’ more times than I care to admit. I once bought a range bag that had 48 different pockets. I spent 8 days trying to remember where I put my ear protection. I eventually went back to a simple canvas duffel because, in the end, I just needed a hole to put my stuff in. The same applies to how we carry. The more ‘features’ a holster has, the more it distracts from the core mission. The core mission is simple: carry the firearm safely and allow for a clean draw. Everything else is just a marketing department trying to justify a higher price tag.

[The burden of the superfluous is a heavy one to carry.]

I finally found that 1/16th-inch Allen wrench. It was hiding under the leg of the coffee table. I picked it up, looked at the half-disassembled holster, and felt a profound sense of exhaustion. I didn’t want to fix it. I didn’t want to ‘tune’ it. I wanted to throw it into the trash and buy something that was built by someone who had already made the hard decisions for me. We need to stop rewarding companies that sell us complexity as a substitute for quality. We need to start valuing the engineers who have the courage to say, ‘This is the best way to carry this firearm, and you don’t need to change a thing.’

In the world of grief counseling, Wyatt deals with the ‘residue’ of a life. When someone passes, the family is left with all the ‘features’ of that person’s existence-the collections, the gadgets, the unfinished projects. But what they talk about in the sessions isn’t the 58-piece tool set or the car with the adjustable suspension. They talk about the simple, unchanging traits. He was kind. She was brave. They were there when it mattered.

As I sit here, finally tightening the 8th screw on this over-complicated piece of plastic, I realize I’ve spent my entire evening fighting with an object that is supposed to be on my side. That $28 is sitting on the counter, a small reminder of what it feels like when things are just… right. No adjustments needed. No tools required. Just pure, unadulterated function. I think it’s time I stop buying things that require a toolbox to put on in the morning. I think it’s time we all stop pretending that more screws make us more prepared. They just make us more likely to be looking for an Allen wrench when we should be looking at the world around us. Does your gear serve you, or do you serve your gear? If you’re spending 18 minutes a week checking torques, I think you already know the answer.

The Takeaway: Choose Function Over Friction

We need to stop confusing capability with complexity. The gear that truly serves us is the gear that frees us to focus on the world, not the tool in our hand.