From Morton S: Do you know anything about the knife laws in New York City? There is much confusion about this on the internet.

Answer: I’m not a lawyer but I can tell you that New York City has some of the strictest knife laws in the country. One thing I can tell you is that it’s illegal to poses a knife with a blade length greater than 4 inches. In addition, many of the NYC knife laws don’t specifically address the type of knife but simply makes it illegal to expose a knife in public. For example, it would be illegal to carry a knife clipped to your pants pocket because it would be in open view. Again, I’m not a lawyer but IF I were going to carry a knife it would be small and NEVER out of my pocket unless I was using it.

From Sheldon E: What’s the best way to sharpen and care for my survival knives at home? Is there a sharpener you recommend?

Answer: If you own expensive knives I recommend doing an Internet search for local knife makers. They’re all over the U.S. and will be able to take care of expensive knives the way they should be treated. (Do not go to some large retail store to get this done.) In addition, I would check out the Lansky brand of knife sharpeners. These are inexpensive sharpeners that are great to throw in a bug out bag.

From Brandon G: What do you recommend for a backpack to use as a bug-out bag? I like the 5.11 tactical pack…

Answer: There are tons of different bug out bags on the market but the thing is many of them come from the same manufacturer but just have different branding. 5.11 makes quality gear so I would give them a try. Whenever you buy a bug out bag the first thing you should do when you get it is to load it up with all your gear and go for a walk. You want to test it right away to make sure it will hold all your bug out gear and that the zippers won’t fail or the bag won’t fall apart. Just make sure you buy quality no matter what you do.

From Mike C: I spent considerable time in government working cyber issues as well as in private industry. While a VPN is great for keeping your actual traffic secure from your ISP, using Google to search the web has Google tracking you. Other search engines do the same, such as Bing. What you actually need is a search engine that doesn’t track you. One of the most popular is Duck Duck Go. Getting a browser that doesn’t track you is also important, IE, Safari, Chrome can all track and report as well. Firefox is better but if you want to really stop the trackers, look at Epic browser, which also includes a non-tracking search function. This won’t stop a nation state from tracking you (that would require quite a bit of technical expertise to mitigate) but these recommendations will cut down on the main commercial tracking resources.

A: This is great advice and I appreciate you sharing it. Duck Duck Go is definitely one of the best search engines to use to protect your privacy.