The pistol in the illustration below is identical to mine. It even has that same scratch in the finish right behind the trigger guard and just forward of the magazine release button. The slide lock pin makes it when you replace it after disassembling for field-stripping.

I never used it because I never carry outside the house, and if I ever have to in some potential apocalyptic scenario, I won’t be making any effort to conceal it. Eventually, I gave the holster away to a friend who actually had a use for it.

The Commander is a short-barrel version of the 1911 Government Model, but it’s still a big, bulky piece. It is pretty much impossible to conceal unless you are wearing a big, bulky jacket over the holster, which is not likely in the Florida climate. I’m too big and bulky myself to be able to conceal the rig under a sport coat or suit jacket–neither of which I own anyway. I have a side carry belt holster for when I go to the range or plinking in the bush. When I carry in the car on long trips, I put it in the glove box in a little leather zipper shaving kit where it just fits, satisfying the requirements of Florida law that a weapon in a vehicle must be stored out of easy reach of the driver and where two separate motions must be made to use it ( 1. take out the kit from the glove box, 2. open the kit and remove the gun). We have road pirates here.

Still, the Safariland was quite ingenious, and infinitely adjustable so that the gun and clips hung comfortably and well-balanced. The weapon rode under the L armpit. However, if I ever needed a shoulder holster for that pistol, I think I would prefer the GI version issued to aviators in WWII. It carries the piece closer to the front of the body, it is more accessible but makes no effort to conceal it.

Here

Fashion and style are capitalist exploitations of the masses, a dodge to sell them things they don’t want, don’t need and can’t use at prices they can’t afford with money they haven’t earned yet.

My man-purse recycles an existing item to a new use, thereby rejecting this vicious cycle of economic serfdom and freeing resources for productive use. I plan to donate the money I’ve saved to the ACLU.

Besides, it looks cool.

You do what you’re trained to do. Lightning quick, no indecision, with the reflexes of A Boy Named Sue, you swing your purse at the poor guy, who doesn’t expect it to contain an arsenal. An autopsy later reveals the barrel of the .45 crushed the little guy’s medulla oblongata, instantly killing him.

Would that fatality be considered the result of a concealed firearm? Would the mugger have attacked if this apparition had the .45 on a hip, clear, plain for all to see? What if the little guy were black, would that affect matters? Could you be said to be trying to lure someone into mugging you?

Can you see how that purse complicates things? How it muddles the issue, goes against 250 years of American manhood, and cost a poor mother her only son, only child, the light of her life, heir, her only chance for progeny, effectively terminating that line, that lineage, her chance to live on in the genes of grandchildren, great-grandchildren?

What next? Ruffled collars, codpieces, shoes with turned up toes, tu-tus? Alas and alack, woe is us, the end is near, the final collapse, Pat Robertson is right, so is Jerry Falwell.

I cant sea th scren for te teers in my eeys. i hav to close

I don’t really have the need to haul my “possibles” around with me a lot except when I’m travelling on vacations and such, and I’ve got suitcases then. I do stuff a lot of crap into my old Thinkpad laptop case.

I use a couple of small cases for writing samples and other things at writing conferences, but I don’t go to a lot of those either.

I have a couple of old laptop cases, for the old laptops so big that the cases make serviceable briefcases. Then there’s the small handtools toolbox; automative tools toolbox; hard suitcase for the Dremel Moto-tool and the x-acto knives; a small toolbox with tiny paintbrushes and small bottles of paint (a model-building phase). And lots of little cheap plastic “briefcases” and totes, handouts from tradeshows.

Used to have a couple of those fancy aluminum suitcases, too. Those were sweet, but over the years I learned to appreciate the virtues of soft-sided bags, especially as air travel grew more crowded, and more and more I resorted to carry on bags only.

I’d call this a snapshot of the current state of what may well be humanity’s oldest technology. Hands were never enough for an acquisitive and mobile articulated ape.