Having a Good Belt
No, I'm not talking "belt" as in booze, or as in hitting somebody. Honest.Let's back up for a second.
A recent student of mine writes (the links are mine): I like the political stuff on your blog and website, realio-trulio, but what I really find most interesting, as somebody still very new to carrying a handgun in public are the practical, day-to-day things. Could I possibly prevail on you to do more of those? Sure. I do spend a fair amount of time on such things, but I don't mind spending more. Particularly for those new to carrying, there's lots of issues that aren't easy to sort out.
It's not the big, important ones. It's easy to figure out that using a handgun to intimidate a rude waiter would be a very bad idea, and I don't know of anybody eager -- or willing, for that matter -- to try the experiment just to be sure. It's easy -- particularly after all the time we spend on it in class -- to decide that, even in the direst extreme, the use of lethal force isn't going to be a fun thing, even if legally justified and utterly necessary. The big things are easy: avoiding trouble in person -- walking away -- is pretty obvious, although we do spend a fair amount of time on it in class.
And a lot of the rest comes down to common sense and consensus: concealment, even though not legally required in Minnesota, is still a good idea, most of the time; the heavier a gun is, the more of a pain it'll be to carry around, and all of the stuff that I go into in great detail in the book.
But some things are a matter of personal preference, and that varies a whole lot.
Take this,
for example: a belt.
Now, I know that people who haven't carried a handgun around for awhile are going to be thinking something like, what's all this about a belt? but trust me: the belt is a big deal, as a practical matter. Ordinary, thin, stretchy dress belts are just fine when all the weight it -- and you -- have to bear on a daily basis is that of the pants, plus maybe a wallet and some keys, but when you add the weight of a gun, and a holster, it not only can get heavy by the end of the day, but you don't want it flopping around, for obvious reasons, and not just to avoid the clankskitterskitterskitter that I talk about in class.
Lots of good choices; this is one.
It's smooth and modestly shiny, and doesn't really look like typical military web gear, in part because it doesn't have the grommets that might was well shout out "military belt"! Upon close examination, I guess it looks a bit militaryish, but when was the last time you gave a real close examination to some (other?) man's belt?
I didn't think so. In fact, Donnie Larson has been wearing the Wilderness belt on a daily basis for five years, and it's yet to wear out or draw any attention. I guess it could be a little obtrusive with a suit and tie, but I avoid suits and ties. (As my mother used to say, "people born to be hanged don't like to wear anything around their necks prematurely.") So I got one, and just to make the belt a bit better of a test, I went for the 1.75 inch belt, and have been wearing it on a daily basis for a couple of weeks.
Unsurprisingly, nobody noticed. Also unsurprisingly, its stiffness and width holds things up really very well, and the thinness of the belt makes getting a holster on and off a lot easier than it is with even a thin leather belt.
I like it.