defense

SOG Terminus EDC blade: All-purpose slip joint folding knife that is legal in many places

With hundreds of knife companies each putting out a number of new blades year in and year out, you have to admire their creativity. Managing dozens of blade shapes, steel compositions, frames, locks and pocket clips while trying to stay innovative and avoiding ground already covered is a daunting task. This is also why I never tire of checking out new blades, like the new for 2017 SOG Terminus.

Reading through SOG’s website after having had some quality time with the Terminus, I’m getting the answers to my questions about the design of this knife. The point-and-purpose of the Terminus is to provide an EDC blade to those in restrictive areas, such as NYC and the UK. Often, these diet-freedom locales mandate a three inch maximum blade length, lack of lock and sometimes even putting the kibosh on one-handed openers.

With all the above in mind, let’s review the tech specs. The Terminus has a 3″ clip-point blade made from BD1 Carpenter steel. While lacking a traditional lock, the Terminus has a “slip joint”, providing significant resistance before the blade is allowed to fold shut. The blade has a nail nick on each side, to allow some grip when opening. The handles are G10 scales and have a moderately aggressive grip texture. The pocket clip is reversible and allows for deep-carry.

The tough part about reviewing this is getting in the right mindset. This isn’t a “best possible” knife, this is a “best for those behind enemy lines” knife. By working around onerous and draconian legal limitations, SOG is attempting to bring a quality pocket folder to those who are bound by law from obtaining a modern pocketknife.

These legal limitations are where most of my issues with the Terminus come in. The blade is excellent. It’s sharp and made from quality steel. Opening it is a pain in the ass. Without a thumb stud or other pivot point, we’re back to grandpappy’s two-handed “pinch-and-pull” method of opening. The two nail nicks are almost under the frame, rather than being in the more accessible area slightly closer to the hinge. The slip joint does provide adequate tension to prevent the blade from shutting inadvertently, but the added resistance makes closing up shop a little tougher than it should.

The one issue I can’t attribute to legal dramas? Branding. There are no fewer than four instances of SOG branding on this little folder. One on each side of the grip panels, one on the blade and another that looks to have been laser cut into the pocket clip. Don’t worry SOG, we know your name.

Aside from that I do like the Terminus, and there’s a decent amount to like. The G-10 scales offer excellent grip, the whole package is nice and light (2.9 ounces) and the folded Terminus is barely longer than the blade (4″ overall closed length). The pocket clip allows for very deep carry and lends itself to a very minimal footprint in the pocket.

Taken as a snapshot in the wide world of knives, the Terminus would be a well-constructed knife with too many questionable design choices. Understanding it is designed for citizens of NYC, the UK and other places, we can instead look at this as the pocket knife for resistance fighters! Under that lens, the Terminus is a well-constructed knife with only a couple of questionable design choices: the excessive branding and the misplaced nail nicks. With an MSRP of $80, the price feels a bit steep for a knife with such a limited target market. The street price of $59.90 does make it more palatable. If you’re living in a heavily regulated zone, the SOG Terminus is a good knife for you to check out.

Three things that seem like they’ll kill you (but probably won’t)

People have always been fascinated with death, and for good reason. Despite the massive breadth of experiences that one can accumulate over a lifetime on Earth, our final disposition after we exhale our last breath remains a unique kind of mystery: one we will all eventually solve, but can never relay to others. Death represents a number of things: an end for some, a beginning to others, and in a biological sense, it serves as the extreme end of the spectrum of tolerable human injury. To die is to get hurt in the most significant sense, and because we’re genetically hard-wired to avoid both, our minds sometimes have trouble differentiating between the two.

What follows is a short list of things we tend to think of as “deadly” that are, statistically speaking, pretty unlikely to kill you. Some of these misconceptions are born of our evolution based drive to avoid that which slithers or crawls, others are born of TV and movie tropes, but what they have in common is a generally accepted exaggeration of the threat they pose to your life or well being. It’s important to note, however, that these things are still dangerous, they’re just not nearly as dangerous (particularly in regard to loss of life) as we tend to think of them as.

So if you’re the type of person that likes to be prepared for any and all life-or-death situations, you may not want to completely ignore the following, but you can certainly put them lowers on your priority list than popular culture might have you believe.

If you live in America, you have little to fear from Ebola.

News of Ebola outbreaks in Africa in recent years have renewed fears among Americans about the possibility of global pandemics. The idea that a deadly virus could spread throughout the world’s population quickly thanks to modern air travel is a legitimate one that healthcare professionals strive to find ways to counter everyday, but this concern (and the appropriate abundance of caution when dealing with Ebola outbreaks in underdeveloped nations) tend to make people more fearful of the Ebola virus than statistics seem to warrant.

There is already an experimental Ebola vaccine that has seen great success in helping to prevent the spread of the virus in affected nations, and, horrible as it may sound, Ebola’s rapid incubation rate often ensures that those who are infected display visible symptoms early (allowing for some level of prevention when it comes to world travel) and tend to either die or recover (and develop antibodies) rather quickly. Because of the virus’ short lifespan, those infected tend to die or beat the virus before they have the opportunity to spread it very far. In short, Ebola is so dangerous to those infected that it often doesn’t allow for a great deal of dispersion. Because it has to be spread via fluid transmission, it also makes Ebola fairly easy to protect yourself against, unlike airborne pathogens.

Although that have been a number of Americans infected with Ebola over the years, most often as a result of work in underdeveloped nations, only two Americans have died of the illness after receiving treatment in the United States.

All you need to survive a venomous snake bite is a trip to the hospital.

It’s easy to see how human beings might have developed an evolution based fear of snakes. They’re powerful and stealthy predators that can not only take you utterly by surprise but pack an awesome punch in the form of venom-injecting fangs. Everything about a fist full of teeth punching at your from a crack in the rocks on the trail and pumping you full of blood-clotting venom is terrifying but terrifying doesn’t necessarily mean deadly.

The likelihood that you’ll suffer a snake bite that even requires any sort of medical treatment is extremely low: only around 3,000 to 5,000 Americans go to doctors or hospitals after being bitten by a snake each year (out of a population of some 325 million Americans). Even if you are one of those unlucky few, your chances of dying from that snake bite are about 1 in a 1,000 — meaning you’re more likely to die in a car accident on the way to the hospital than you are to succumbing to the venom in the bite.

What’s the best way to avoid falling victim to a snake bite? According to experts, it’s about as simple as just taking two steps back. Fast as snakes are, they can’t hurt what they can’t reach, and they’re unlikely to pursue you. Being scared of snakes may make sense evolutionary, but it’s hard to worry too much about a threat you can mitigate by moonwalking.

It is extremely unlikely that you’ll die a violent death in the United States.

Thanks to the constant media coverage of violent incidents taking place around the world, Americans tend to think of themselves as living in some extremely violent and dangerous times. That perception, however, couldn’t be further from the truth. As Luke Ryan has pointed out in the past, the world is currently amidst perhaps its most peaceful era since the dawn of civilization, with fewer people (per capita) dying in conflicts that at any other stage of human societal development to our knowledge. Here in the United States, violent crime has been on a steady decline for decades, with the Pew Research Center even going so far as to say that the common American perception of violent crime doesn’t “align with the data.”

The truth is, you are less likely to suffer a violent end in the United States than ever before, even in the era of terror attacks and mass shootings that dominate the news. These incidents, while tragic, remain isolated and infrequent when compared to the population of the country — but because they make for the most pressing headlines, they dominate discussions for days or even weeks afterward.

So, while terror attacks, snake bites, and even the dreaded Ebola virus are all real and legitimate threats to a person’s general well being, statistically speaking, they each pose very little threat to the average person, with more manageable risks accounting for a far larger portion of the “stuff that might kill you” pie chart. If you want to help ensure a long and fruitful life, you may be better off skipping the concerns about snakes and terrorists during your drive to work and instead focus on keeping your eyes on the road.

Because chances are much higher that you’ll lose your life while changing songs during your commute than it is that any of the things above will get you.

Feature image courtesy of Jean Beaufort

How to throw a punch like a Marine

The Marine Corps Martial Arts Program has been the basic hand-to-hand combat system employed by the United States Marine Corps since 2002, and as I’ve written about in the past, it tends to get dragged through the mud by young guys with limited experience and a lot of bravado. In order to complete recruit training, you need to show competency in the program’s Tan Belt syllabus (comparable to other martial arts’ white belt) and depending on your occupational specialty, many Marines stop seeking continued training in the discipline except when mandated by their command.

You’ll often hear young Marines (or older ones that have managed to avoid getting hit in the face throughout their careers) say things like “MCMAP doesn’t work,” only to find that they never made it past their tan or follow on grey belts and have limited experience in any other discipline. That’s a lot like a guy spending two weeks training in Brazilian jiujitsu and then walking away dismissing the entire discipline because it hasn’t made him Royce Gracie yet. Doing it doesn’t really say much about the martial art, but it does say a lot about how naive you were as you approached the mats. Learning to fight takes time, discipline, and effort – things that come from within, rather than things that can be mandated through a syllabus.

There are certainly elements of the MCMAP syllabus I learned along the way to my black belt that I didn’t feel worked particularly well for me, but just like my training in other martial arts disciplines, I approached MCMAP with the mindset that I would find what worked, adopt it into my repertoire, and strive to better understand why other techniques didn’t seem as effective, in hopes that the broader understanding would make me a more capable fighter. Learning to defend yourself with your hands, like learning to drive or shoot, means repetition, analysis, adjustment, and trying again. If you approach the process expecting to become Randy Couture in a matter of weeks, the problem isn’t the program … it’s you.

And nothing better represents the distinction between the pseudo-tough guys that “already know how to fight” and students eager to become more proficient fighters than the time-honored rear hand punch.

Every striking coach I’ve worked with, every Marine Corps Martial Arts Instructor, hell, even most sparring partners I’ve trained with, start work at the rear hand punch. It’s supposed to be the simplest fighting mechanism a human being has at his or her disposal — all you have to do it ball up your first and throw at your opponent’s face, and you’ve got the technique down, right?

Wrong.

A rear hand punch, just like most powerful strikes, shouldn’t derive much of its force from your arm at all. In fact, if you’re hoping to end a fight with a knock out (something that’s far more difficult than movies and TV would have you believe in most cases) the force behind your punch should actually be coming from your hips. No, that doesn’t mean you should throw a long, telegraphed haymaker like we’ve all seen in dramatic fight scenes on the big screen – but it does mean you should spend some time working on the proper execution of a rear hand punch before demanding that a program move on to more exotic forms of violence.

If you can’t (or won’t) throw a proper rear hand punch, I don’t see any point in teaching you more until you can (or will). Learning is a mindset, not an outcome.

If you haven’t had the opportunity to learn the fundamentals of a rear hand punch, it would really benefit you to get some in-person training, but I’ll lay out the bare bones of the process for you here:

Start by getting into what the Marine Corps refers to as a “basic warrior’s stance,” but everyone that’s not a robot or manual tends to call just a “stance.” I have strong feelings about the right types of stances for different situations — but I also believe that one’s stance needs to be a reflection of one’s self. Subtle adjustments in hand and foot placement can make you a more effective fighter, but it takes a fair amount of trial and error to nail those subtleties down, so let’s make it as simple as possible:

Get in a quick and dirty fighting stance.

Raise your hands to around chin height (I prefer to draw from my Muay Thai experience and keep them higher) with your palms facing in, fingers curled (not clenched) and your chin tucked close to your neck. Place your feet shoulder width apart, then put your non-dominant foot (the same side as your non-dominant hand) a half step further forward than the other. Sink your butt into your stance a bit, balance your weight between both feet, and if needed for comfort, turn your feet so your toes are at a slight angle as compared to the opponent in front of you.

Protect Yourself

As you go about throwing a rear hand punch, remember to keep your lead hand up to counter any incoming punches. That lead hand should stay up throughout the technique.

Start the punch with your hips.

The momentum for your punch starts by rotating your shoulders and hips toward your opponent as you level and throw your punch. That means the core of your body should actually shift visibly in execution of the punch — rather than letting your arm do all the work. Think of your body as a hammer: your fist is the striking surface, but it’s actually the handle that allows you to produce the force. As you extend your fist and your core rotates with it (slightly now, don’t over extend yourself off your base) your rear heel can (and should in many instances) lift slightly and even twist or “flare.”

Throw the punch with your palm down and your wrist straight.

When training in a few forms of Filipino martial arts, I was introduced to the concept of throwing punches with your palms facing in – and I’ll admit, I found it pretty effective. Nonetheless, in most instances, I still prefer the good old fashioned method of face punching whenever possible. Close your fingers into a fist with your thumb wrapped around the outside below the striking surface of your hand. Do not, I repeat, do not wrap your fingers around your thumb. Some of you are laughing at that but others needed the reminder.

Although clearly over-exaggerated, this is close to how your body should be positioned as you make contact with your opponent.

Ensure your wrist is straight – it takes very little to fracture your wrist when striking a hard surface like a heavy bag or human skull, especially if it’s flat on the ground, so bone support is integral to keep you in the fight. I’ve been at this for years, and I’ve broken my wrist badly enough to be casted three times, once as recently as last year, so it’s a lesson we all need to be reminded of from time to time (especially when we’re gassed).

Drive through the impact point with just the first two knuckles of your fist.

I won’t lie to you, my hands look like shit. Callouses and scar tissue have left my knuckles shaped more like a flat block of flesh from a decade and a half of punching things the wrong way and living the repercussions. It’s easy, especially when throwing hooks and crosses, to start using your ring and pinky finger knuckles as a striking surface – but it’s also a good way to break your hand.

Make contact with your opponent using just your index and middle knuckles – contact should occur at the end of your hip rotation, just as your heel lifts or flares. Do not simply aim to make contact with your opponent’s face, try to drive your knuckles through the point of contact and into the opposite side of their skull. That follow through will make all the difference in the punch – but be careful, once again, not to over extend yourself off of your base. Maintaining your balance should be a focus.

Retract your fist quickly and properly.

Most people tend to think making contact with your opponent is the end of a good punching technique – but nothing could be further from the truth. Getting your hand back to where it belongs in a manner that keeps you protected is possibly the most important aspect of throwing a punch — because a good punch doesn’t mean much if your opponent knocks you out as you retract it.

The technique isn’t over until you’re back in your stance, protecting yourself.

First, be sure you don’t leave your fist lingering — an extended arm is my favorite thing to play with in a fight. If you leave your fist in the air for a second, you’ll find yourself in a standing side choke with your legs swept out from under you and a blurring view of the sky above before you have a chance to say, “I thought I was done with this punch!”

As you quickly retract your fist, don’t drop it – it’s a common mistake people make as they regain their “basic warrior” stance, but it also leaves your jaw exposed to a counter punch. Keep your weak hand up and retract your thrown punch along the same trajectory it followed as you threw it.

That’s it. I mean, that’s all there is to it – you’ll still need to practice it a few thousand times, but I’ll leave that to you.

Images courtesy of the U.S. Marine Corps

How slowing down can help you win a fight for your life

Out here in the regular world, where law enforcement is just a phone call away and most bars have bouncers employed specifically to break up fights, fist fights tend to be pretty short. A few punches thrown, maybe some poorly executed wrestling, and unless you’re on your way to become an internet celebrity on WorldStar, people tend to start to intervene — and even when they don’t, fights usually end once there’s a clear victor.

Fighting for survival doesn’t work like that. A fight for your life doesn’t end because one party is willing to acknowledge the other is the victor and, more often than not, no well-intentioned bystander (let alone police officer) is coming to your rescue. If you ever find yourself in a scrap with someone that legitimately means to end your life, the rules play out quite a bit differently than they do between rowdy frat brothers outside a Margaritaville.

Training to defend yourself is a strange endeavor. Thanks to movies and our tenacity for hero worship, we tend to think of training like it’s a suit of armor: we don’t imagine a highly capable Navy SEAL falling at the hands of a poorly trained nobody with an AK-47 in their hands, but the fact of the matter is, most of the special operators we’ve lost throughout the war on terror were killed by nobodies utilizing a combination of luck and seizing their opportunity. That’s not because SEALs, Rangers, Green Berets and the like aren’t as good as we think they are — it’s because underneath all that training and high-speed gear, each and every special operator is still just a bag of meat, susceptible to the same punctures, impacts, and explosions that would have killed them before they earned their elite titles.

A fist fight that turns into a life or death struggle with a burglar is different from the combat situations most special operators find themselves in — with one notable exception: the likely outcomes. Either you’re going to die or he is. In that moment, training can either be a weapon you carry with you into that arena, or it can an interesting footnote in your obituary. Don’t believe me? Lots of people know all about the stabbing deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman back in 1995 (O.J. Simpson case) but what most people don’t know is that Goldman was a black belt in karate, and according to a number of expert recreations, may have put up a decent fight against his murderer that fateful night in October.

He lost and was killed though. So, all that time he spent practicing katas, training with sparring partners, preparing himself for a life or death struggle really boiled down to nothing more than a few extra moments of life before succumbing to defeat. Training is important, but at the end of the day, it’s what you do in the moment, how you manage the fight you’re in, that makes all the difference.

There are a million things that go into effectively managing a fight, and many of them don’t translate well into the written word. I could tell you, for instance, not to get tunnel vision when your opponent reveals that they’re holding a weapon, but learning how to balance awareness of the blade with defending against the attacks of their other three limbs is the sort of thing you just have to do, over and over, before you get good at it. The one thing I can impart, however, is perhaps the most important — and can improve your chances at surviving long enough to worry about things like tunnel vision: it’s simple, counter-intuitive, and one of the toughest concepts to impart on new fighters, but it’s integral — efficiency of movement.

Here in the states, we all grew up on a healthy diet of Rocky movies and haymakers. When we fight, we swing for the fences, hoping to land that one-punch knockout we always see on TV. The truth of the matter is, knocking a guy out with one punch is usually more of a lucky break than it is about skill (at least when competing with a talented opponent), and if no one is around to break up the fight, those hay makers are going to empty your tank pretty quickly. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth giving them a try (provided you can do so without telegraphing your intentions so much that you leave yourself open to counter), but chances are that even a few landed haymakers won’t deter an aggressor intent on taking your life.

Most one-on-one fights end up on the ground eventually. We don’t have choreographers in real life, so dramatic roundhouse punches and hooks and jabs soon give way to stumbling feet and adrenaline. Before you know it, you find yourself in the grass, grabbing and feeling for soft spots on your opponent like you’ve been given the green light on prom night. That’s when efficiency of movement needs to kick in. You’re in close quarters, your life is in danger, and this fight isn’t going to end until one of you is unable to go on.

Unable to go on, of course, might mean different things to different people. If my family is in danger, “unable to go on” comes right after “completely dismembered,” but your opponent may be willing to give up their assault after you convince them with a concussion and separated shoulder. The secret is lasting long enough to seize your opportunity.

Ground fighting is different than stand up fighting at a fundamental level. When you’re standing up, every time your body comes into contact with your opponent is about causing harm or defending against it — but when you’re on the ground, you’re constantly in contact with your opponent, feeling your way through attacks and defenses, looking for opportunities while trying to minimize the ones you present to your opponent. Most stand up fighters struggle to appreciate this difference and will keep trying to hurt their opponent through force exerted the entire time they’re in contact on the ground – burning through energy all along the way.

A capable fighter I trained with in the Marine Corps was notorious for this. His long arms gave him a reach advantage when we were standing, but whenever we’d end up on the ground, he’d wrap his long legs around me and try to crush my torso with his thighs. Admittedly, I saw some Marines tap out under these conditions, but no one would in a life or death situation (nor would I while training). Sure, getting squeezed made it harder to breath and even made my ribs feel like that might crack… but I knew I could last longer being squeezed than he could squeezing. All he was doing was exerting force for the sake of exerting it — and eventually, I knew that would tire him out.

If you control your breathing and stay calm, you can even outlast most poorly executed choke holds. As long as air is passing into and out of your lungs, you’re still in this fight. (Wikimedia Commons)

Surviving a ground fight is about more than defending yourself and seizing an opportunity — it’s about lasting until the opportunity arises. When you find yourself tied up with your opponent and you feel them struggling to exert force against you, slow down and think about what the outcome of that force may be. Are they just squeezing your torso or are they sinking a submission? If they’re just squeezing, hell, let ‘em squeeze. When you feel their legs start to give, that means an opportunity is on the horizon.

Staying calm when someone’s meddling their way through a sloppy choke or a poorly executed armbar can be tough at first, and like all things, practice will make you better. Even if you don’t have a chance to train patience into yourself, you can improve your chances at surviving a life or death struggle by simply taking a deep breath and slowing yourself down a bit.

In that sort of fight, you’re going to get hurt. You’re going to want to quit. If you can last longer than your opponent though, you’re going to get to walk away.

Featured image: A Japan Ground Self-Defense Force soldier and Lance Cpl. Justin Peterson, an infantry rifleman with 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines, grapple during Exercise Forest Light 16-1 at Camp Aibano, Japan, Sept. 10, 2015. Exercise Forest Light Exercise is a semi-annual exercise designed to enhance to cohesion between U.S. and Japanese forces through bilateral combat training. During the exercise Marines and JGSDF soldiers conducted hand-to-hand combat training exercises such as: Marine Corps martial arts techniques, grappling, pugil sticks and toshu kakuto, which is JGSDF martial arts. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Carlos Cruz Jr./Released)

VA institutes new policy aimed at stopping vets from hiding guns in wheelchairs

For many veterans, the Department of Veterans Affairs can be a source of seemingly limitless frustration. Long wait times, understaffed facilities, and miles of red tape are just some of the barriers between veterans and the care they seek, and as a result, a rash of gun related incidents have plagued VA facilities in recent months. Notably, three veterans shot themselves on VA grounds over the span of just three weeks earlier this year, but it was a different incident that has prompted the newest addition to the VA’s security practices.

From now on, veterans that arrive at VA medical centers in wheelchairs will be required to leave their chair and switch to ones provided by the medical facility. This new policy was adopted as a result of an incident at the West Palm Beach VA Medical Center in Florida in February of this year, in which a double-amputee produced a small hidden firearm from his wheel chair and opened fire in the VA emergency room. One doctor was hit in the neck and at least two other staff members were injured as the patient fired off six rounds from the small pistol. That same doctor, despite his wound, managed to subdue to shooter and separate him from his firearm until law enforcement could arrive.

That same facility also saw a veteran suicide on its grounds that same month.

This new policy is likely going to be one of a number of changes to VA security, following an uptick in veteran suicides on VA campuses along with other violent incidents that even VA officials have acknowledged that they were poorly prepared for.

VA Inspector General Michael Missal released a written statement acknowledging that the “VA failed to develop adequate threat assessments and written policies” for its police, “which contributed to security vulnerabilities.”

“Common challenges identified in these and other OIG reports, such as staffing shortages, the splintering of oversight responsibilities, confusion about roles, and lack of clear guidance can undermine VA’s well-intentioned goals and objectives” for its police, Missal said.

The Department of Veterans Affairs currently employs about 4,200 police officers, which is significantly short of the 4,900 officers the department requires according to its budgeting requests. Under-staffing continues to be an issue nearly across the board for the VA, and is often cited as the reason for issues with timeliness and consistency of care.

Feature image courtesy of the US Marine Corps

Purse Carry: Best Option for Ladies’ Concealed Carry?

One concealed carry option available to women is carrying in one’s purse (I suppose it’s also an option for those trendy “man purses,” if you’re fashion forward enough to sport one…). For ladies like my mother, who can’t imagine going anywhere without one of their helpful handbags glued to their side, purse carry could be an attractive solution. However, there are drawbacks associated to this style of carry that aren’t an issue for on-the-body carry methods.

Pros:

Ladies' Concealed Carry: Purse Carry - TheArmsGuide.com — If you have a spare $4k, you can [almost] buy this bag (shown with Beretta Nano). Image courtesy of designerconcealedcarry.com

The myriad of different options can comfortably facilitate carrying a range of pistol sizes – even full size double stacks. There are already several companies that produce concealed carry handbags ranging from affordable unassuming shoulder bags to designer genuine exotic animal skin purses (with matching “exotic” price tags). These kinds of purses feature holster pouches that are separate from the rest of the purse, both as an additional measure of concealment, and as a measure of protection from negligent discharge. Concealed carrying with a purse provides an inconspicuous carry option for ladies regardless of style of dress.

Cons:

Thieves with an interest in purloining your [potentially expensive] handbag would not only find themselves with whatever belongings and money you were toting, but also a several hundred dollar bonus item: your gun. However, there are some concealed carry bags that attempt to mitigate that risk by utilizing a strap that fits around the body (instead of just on the shoulder). Although, there is still an argument that drawing from a purse is not as speedy as the draw from an on-body holster, such as an in-the-waistband (IWB) or over-the-waistband (OWB) holster.

Final Thoughts

Personally, although I am a female, I do not prefer the purse concealed carry method. For one thing, I don’t always have a handbag on my person. And, when I do, it’s either a backpack-style purse or a minuscule wallet-sized option (less than ideal choices for CCW). However, I know women who seem to be surgically attached to their purses, and who fit about half their worldly possessions within them. If these ladies don’t feel comfortable carrying in any other fashion, or it isn’t feasible to carry in any other manner (e.g., work wardrobe makes on-person carry unfeasible), perhaps purse carry is a reasonable option. What are your thoughts on the purse carry method?

Check out these deals on holster purses

This article was written by Destinee

Destinee is also a vlogger. She publishes videos on weapons, gear, and fitness on her YouTube channel

Featured image courtesy of designerconcealedcarry.com