Happens more than most people know. I have a friend who owns a restaurant. He has found 4 magazines last count I know in the booths of his place. Several in the past few months. One was even a police officer.
I would think it is usually a holster design fault.
- and -
Ultimately thou, it's an operator fault................
It's a combination of both - and
@Stormytexas , would you believe it that this can happen even with holsters that cover the magazine release?
Gear interacts with each other, your clothing, and also your unique body and all this reflects back on how you choose to wear your clothing and your gear. This means that there's any number of multivariate ways which can cause your properly seated magazine to unintentionally eject.
Similarly, just because a holster does not cover the magazine release does not automatically make it a bad holster or bad design. To-wit, neither Raven Concealment Systems' old Kydex Phantom nor their current injection-molded Perun (OWB) or Eidolon (IWB) provide magazine-release coverage, and RCS is considered a benchmark of the industry. Leather? Take a look at offerings from Milt Sparks, and the same can be seen. Understand also that
for some shooters, this capability to access the magazine release *without* having the break the pistol from retention is a feature that's actually sought-after.
^ That's right when my XDm9 crested 30,000 live-fire rounds fired, through 6 days of Chris Costa's handgun classes, which featured *_a lot_* of ground-work,"fighting" from and out-of unconventional positions. That's an old RCS Phantom, and not only did I not lose a mag through that class (3K rounds fired), but I'd never lost a mag with that holster, period. I also never lost a mag with my Pure Kustom leather IWB, which also did not cover the magazine release.
And on the flip side, search around a bit, and you'll see posts from other shooters who run into your same issue, but with holsters which does cover the magazine release (i.e.:
https://www.glocktalk.com/threads/cc-accidental-mag-release-when-sitting.1507904/).
Both my current IWB and OWB setups (both KT-Mech Defenders) offer some degree of shielding over the magazine release, but that wasn't the reason why I chose these holsters...and the same as above, even with plenty of playing on the ground -sometimes with my rather porky butt laying directly above the holstered gun- I've never suffered unintentional magazine release.....
There's really no easy answer here: it's simply a set of variables that's very much affected by unique gear choices and the unique shooter.
Before you look at another holster, examine your current setup carefully to find out exactly what it is that's causing the magazine release to be unintentionally actuated so that your next holster/setup will not also run into the same issue.
Gear must work both in a static sense (with the holster, this could be your subjective "comfort" while seated) as well as dynamic (i.e. that the gear must not "do strange things" when you're actively drawing - for example, in the thread I cited above, one of the later posts is from a shooter who, with one of his holster setups, when he draws, there's interference with that particular holster which causes an unintentional actuation of the magazine release). Unfortunately, particularly due to the by-definition subjective nature of "comfort" and the many variables which cross-talk during active use, there's a lot of trial-and-error to be had, here.
