Tactical Pens

Hi Ferfal, I really appreciate your advice, because it’s so practical.
I travel by air a lot, and I can’t carry a knife if I have no checked
luggage, so I recently bought a Tao Tactical Pen by CRKT. I can take
it with my other pens, in my satchel, through security and onto a
plane. A number of other knifemakers now offer these self-defense pens
- Benchmade, Uzi, S&W, etc.
Twice in my life I have bluffed attackers into leaving me alone, by
threatening them with a “weapon” that I pulled out of my pocket. Now
I’ll have something that will give me a bit more confidence in a
dangerous situation in another city. (In my home city I can carry a
more serious self-defense weapon with me.)
Personally, I think some of the tactical pens available have too sharp
a point, so they look like a weapon and could be confiscated by
airport security.
Your thoughts?
Victor


“Weapon” is anything that increases your efficiency for defense or attack. By this definition a gun is a weapon but so is a knife, a baseball bat, a screwdriver or in this case a pen. Of course some weapons are more efficient than others, but sometimes as in the situation you explain we have to cope as best as we can.

I agree with you, some tactical pens may be too tactical for their own good.
There’s several steel non-tactical pens that can be used as stabbing or impact weapons. The classic Cross goes with me on planes often. The brushed steel Parker can be used to do some damage too.
The advantage I see in dedicated tactical pens is that a)they are usually very solid given their intended use b)Many have more or less efficient slip proof designs that allow different grips and more control.
Avoid aggressive looking designs or very obvious narrow tips because there’s a greater chance of them being confiscated at security checkpoints, especially airports.

I think that of the most well known designs, I like S&W pens the best, especially their  M&P gen2.


Smith and Wesson  M and P 2nd Generation Tactical Pen, Black
If you use the pen often, it does make sense to me to have a tough pen that can be used for defense as well. It goes along the Modern Survival philosophy of multiple uses per item.

Don’t forget that there are other politically correct defensive tools as well. I’ve boarded planes with a MTE MC-G33 tactical fashlight with a strike bezel that is more than capable of causing deep lacerations as well as being used as impact weapon and stunning attackers with 1000 lumens.

FerFAL