 Hey everyone, Dylan Schumacher, Citadel Defense. Let's talk about pistols. So at this point in the American Minuteman Gear series, it seemed appropriate to discuss pistols. I've been thinking about this for a while and I guess I have a couple thoughts on this. One, I have removed my pistol from my main battle rattle. As you can see here, here is the right side of my battle rattle and there is no pistol here. Now to some people, and to me initially right, that idea is anathema. How could you possibly not have a pistol on your gear? I mean, good God, is this America? What are we doing? And as I thought about it, again, mission drives the gear. So when considering your pistol, I've come up with a couple different thoughts. The first consideration is conceal carry. I know that might sound silly in the context of American Minuteman Gear because I thought we're talking about when China invades Dylan and what are we gonna do then? Well, first of all, if you're gonna claim to be an American Minuteman and you're not conceal carrying every day, I don't know what you're doing but you should probably give me that crown back. So you need to conceal carry every day. That's something you need to do. And ideally, that would be the same gun that then goes on your battle rattle. If you're a pocket carrying a P365 from six hour every day, but your main battle gun is a Heckler and Koch MK245, the huge pistol. That's a little weird, right? Like it should be the same, ideally. So if you're gonna conceal carry a G19 every day, that should be the gun or maybe a G17 should be on your battle rattle. Those are the guns you should go to. So you have consistency across the board and so you're not burning money on extra pieces you don't necessarily need. The second consideration is as a American Minuteman when China invades and it's red dawn, you might have to do more covert spy type operation stuff and all of those concealed carry skills that you're garnering now will be a lot of use then. Being able to conceal your pistol well would serve you very well in kind of spy-y covert operations type stuff. And so having a pistol would be an extremely beneficial thing then. The third consideration is does it belong on your main battle rattle or not? Well again, mission drives the gear train that depends on what you're doing. If your plan is to go out with 20 of your closest friends then I don't know if you necessarily need a pistol on your main battle rattle because that's what you have 20 of your closest friends for. You're able to go out and you're able to have friends and maybe you're gonna be doing a lot of walking. If you ask military guys who've been in full on gunfights and combat and all that stuff, how often they use their pistol? The answer you're gonna get back is little to none. Rarely do pistols come into play. The primary reason people do wear pistols on the battle rattle, like here, is if you're doing some kind of CQB, urban room clearing type stuff because then if I'm in a room and a guy is four yards away and my rifle goes down, it's nice to be able to immediately transition to that pistol to finish the job, right? That's the idea and that's why we started carrying pistols again. But when you're out in the rural fields and you're moving and walking and doing all that stuff, a pistol becomes more of a liability than it does an asset. I know that might sound crazy. It sounded crazy to me. However, that's the current situation. I don't make the rules, I just report reality. So those are some different considerations for your pistol. I think that we all, as Americans, default to slapping a pistol on that gear no matter what and hey, I get it, I can admire that. However, I think there are some deeper thoughts and considerations we need to think about when considering the role of a pistol. What is it that we are doing and how is that pistol gonna serve us? If we're primarily, again, in a rural, moving, patrolling, wrecky type environment slash mission, then a pistol probably isn't the best thing to bring along and it's mostly just gonna be dead weight. If you're moving into a more direct action, urban, CQB type thing or we're in and around vehicles, again, there a pistol might serve you better because you're gonna be in closer contact, closer quarters and a pistol will more likely, although still not likely, your primary is called your primary for a reason, a pistol will more likely be able to help you rather than hurt you. So I hope those are some helpful thoughts when considering a pistol. Do you carry a pistol on your gear? I'm assuming you do. If you don't, would love to hear why and if you do, have you thought about what that pistol is there for? I wanna prevent us from simply just copying whatever the latest global war on terror slash SWAT magazine says and really think about why it is that we have the gear that we have. Be a thinker, do brave deeds and endure.