RSWC #152 Alex Sansone – Riding Shotgun With Charlie

Riding Shotgun With Charlie
#152
Alex Sansone
The Suited Shootist

At the NRAAM in Houston this year, I got to co-emcee the Concealed Carry Fashion show presented by RealizeFAC with Amanda Suffecool. She and I have hosted these all around the country. We use models who are influencers, instructors, and activists in the firearm community. One of the models at NRAAM was Alex Sansone, The Suited Shootist. Amanda said I needed to have him on the show, so after a quick intro back and forth, he said he would be able to make it happen while we were in Houston. We filmed the show on a Sunday morning and there were barely any protesters!

Alex grew up in the DC area with a ‘gun agnostic’ family, which only had a shotgun for trap shooting. He did do some .22 rifle shooting during summer camp, but it wasn’t a regular thing his family did. September 11, 2001 changed things for his family and his father became interested in firearms for self defense and personal protection. David Yamane calls these folks, myself included, called Gun Culture 2.0. Alex always had an interest in firearms going back to watching Air Force One on VHS and seeing an MP5 sliding across the floor.

During his college years, he became more interested in personal protection, after he noticed that many students didn’t have situational awareness. Later he moved to Texas and started working at a gun store and started some training. After a few years of ‘turning ammunition into expensive noise’, some friends turned him onto some of the well known trainers, including Massad Ayoob (RSWC #045). Currently, he’s got about 400 hours of training under his belt.

After meeting the woman who became his wife, he realized that he needed to start dressing better. He admits that he was the guy you’d see who had an attractive wife and you’d wonder why she was with him.. Alex was ‘that guy’ and realized that reflected poorly on his wife. So he made some changes in the way he dressed.

After doing some YouTube research, he found Tanner Guzy who runs Masculine Style. Guzy says there’s 3 style archetypes: rugged, refined, and rakish. And at some level, every man is a little of each. While working a white collar job and wearing only dark suits, he still wanted to carry. Alex discovered that he needed to find a way to be able to carry but not get bigger clothes as is often suggested to folks who carry. Claude Werner (RSWC #086) taught Alex that bigger clothes makes folks you see regularly take a closer look at what you’re wearing and gets them thinking that maybe you aren’t losing weight, which can also draw attention from them.

At one point while Alex was carrying at work and against company policy and was at a job. He talks about how making the decision to be armed at work vs working and being unarmed isn’t always an easy career choice because you still have to work and make money.

All of this led him to being outspoken about this issue and starting a YouTube channel called The Suited Shootist. After a year of writing a blog and someone telling him more than 500 words should be a video, Alex had to learn about video and editing and YouTubing. On the channel, he gets into lots of topics about carrying and making your carry gear disappear and the pros and cons of several methods all while keeping it fashionable and looking good.

I really enjoyed having Alex on the show. I appreciate that he was able to squeeze in a car ride with a stranger and that I’m able to expand my circle of friends.

Favorite quotes:

“The kids that are just leaving their valuable stuff out…seem to be the ones suffering these consequences.”

“A lot of the style influencers were not delving too deeply into the why’s and the how’s.”

“I’ve been in environments where going armed is somewhere between unusual and unacceptable.”

“We’re going to have to live with the gun a whole lot more than we’re going to have to use the gun.”

Timestamp

00:00 Intro

01:22 Alex Sansone

02:22 Background

03:49 Air Force One

04:55 College years

06:25 Training bug