In our latest “I Carry” video, we take a closer look at Kimber’s latest double-stack, 2011-style handgun, the 1911 DS Warrior, and pair it with a SureFire X300 Ultra weapon light and a PHLster holster. Watch our “I Carry” segment above to see why we chose these items and how they all work together.
“The 1911 DS warrior is a double-stack 1911 with an MSRP under $1,100 from Kimber,” American Rifleman Executive Editor Jay Grazio said. “It’s hand-fitted. American-made. Under $1,100. Lest you think this is a entry level version, it’s not. We have a carbon-fiber grip, an aluminum subframe. We have a steel slide and barrel. There’s an optics model. It takes different plates. Kimber will ship it with an RMR optic plate. There are others available.”
While our model is chambered for the 9 mm Luger cartridge, Kimber also makes its 1911 DS Warrior available in .45 ACP, 10 mm Auto and .38 Super. Each of these models is produced with a 5-inch barrel, save for the 10 mm Auto-chambered design, which can also be had in a longslide variant with a 6-inch barrel.
“Because of the aluminum subframe, it’s not quite as heavy as you might imagine,” Grazio said. “It’s 33 ounces. Heavier than your standard striker-fired, but not terrible. If you’re used to a 1911, you’re going to get along with it just fine. And you have 17- and 20-round magazines available. That’s a lot of capacity to have on hand.”
Each Kimber 1911 DS Warrior comes with a Picatinny accessory rail on the frame’s dustcover, and we used this real estate to mount a SureFire X-300U weapon light. This is one of the company’s most-popular designs, and it produces 1,000 lumens of LED light, providing illumination up to 230 yards.
“Because of the size of the 1911 DS warrior, this may very well be something you want to keep as a home defense pistol, in which case, having a light makes great sense,” Grazio said. “One of the big things we stress is Rule 4: know your target and what’s beyond it, and what’s going to help you do that better than a light that’s on the gun? Of course, one of the things you absolutely have to remember is that anything you point the light at, you’re also pointing a gun. So be very careful.”
To carry this light-equipped handgun, we selected the PHLster Floodlight 2, an inside-the-waistband, tuckable holster.
“This is an inside-the-waistband holster that indexes on the light,” Grazio said. “What’s nice about that is any firearm that has a rail that you can put a SureFire X300, or there’s a version for the Streamlight TLR1, any firearm that has a rail you can put a light on works with this holster.”
For more information on the Kimber 1911 DS Warrior, check out this full article here. For further details on the SureFire X-300U, visit the SureFire website here, and for a closer look at the PHLster Floodlight 2, visit the PHLster website here.
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