Quote:
Originally Posted by Por_sha911
We are on the same page as far as more firepower being better. We should always encourage folks to carry the most rounds in the highest caliber they can handle.
My concern is that I feel that you are standing too firm with an 'all or nothing' posture. That little powder-puff .380 will help me in a 2-3 yard situation with a few well placed shots to the face when I am unable to carry a reasonably sized pistol.
As far as the much suggested meth-head attacker is concerned, statistically you are way out of range. What about if the attacker has body armor and hand grenades?
BTW, Bic lighter? John Wick can get it done with a pencil.  |
We all have our mental image of how this might play out. I would implore anyone who harbors any such to spend some time watching how it actually does play out, in real life. It's never how we imagine it might go.
That includes shooting someone in the face. I've watched literally dozens and dozens (maybe hundreds) of real life defensive shootings captured on surveillance cameras. In not one single instance - not one - was anyone able to shoot the other guy in the face. Not one. Not even when "highly trained" police officers are involved. The situations unfold too rapidly, things are way too dynamic and rushed. At 2-3 yards, believe it or not, many manage to miss the entire torso. Thinking you will be able to shoot anyone in the face is simply unrealistic. You aren't good enough. I guarantee it. No one is. Not even John Wick. And, by the way, wasn't that the Joker? Didn't he slam the guy's head down on the pencil?
And, yeah, let's talk about that meth head. You might meet him, but you probably will not. What you absolutely
will meet under these circumstances is far, far worse - an opponent jacked up on adrenaline. And you will be too. It will have an affect on both of you that will help determine the outcome of the fight. It will make him, for all intents and purposes "bullet proof".
Again, like our meth head, nothing short of a "critical" hit - central nervous system or heart - will immediately stop him. You must destroy one or the other, or he keeps fighting. Even a few seconds of "keeps fighting" can change the outcome for you. It doesn't matter if you have scored a fatal hit. He can die hours later in the hospital, or even minutes later right there in front of you. Doesn't matter. What matters is how long he can continue the fight after he is mortally wounded. In big game hunting, we refer to this as "stopping power". Make that god damned thing stop
now - kill him later. There is a difference.
Back to adrenaline and how it affects you. Back to that "just shoot him in the face". Good luck with that. Like I said, I have
never seen
anyone succeed. You will be surprised how easy it is to miss when you are pumped full of the stuff. Fine motor skills simply vanish. You will be lucky to score non-fatal hits anywhere on the other guy, even at 2-3 yards.
We all owe it to ourselves, if we choose to do this, to educate ourselves. This plays out far, far differently than any of us imagine. We live in an age where we can actually watch how it plays out for others. Take advantage of that. I have said it has changed my outlook.
I went from thinking I was "armed" with a 19th century Single Action in .45 Colt - a substantial caliber even by modern standards (I've killed elk with it for God's sake), carrying only five rounds, to a much, much more realistic assessment of all of this. I was the "victim" of my own romantic fantasies of old west gunfights. I shoot those things intuitively, like an extension of my own hand. I thought I could handle any number of assailants, up to five anyway. I know better now. And I know enough to understand that some little pocket gun, with less than 200 ft lbs of energy available, is simple laughable as a self defense gun.
Bad guys, whether on meth or just adrenaline, simply shrug off anything less than spinal cord or brain hits from these puny little calibers. Either one, in a quickly unfolding defensive situation, will be impossible to hit from a pure marksmanship point of view anyway. Now add the inability of the underpowered, inadequate round to even penetrate that deep if by some stroke of luck you actually do send a shot that way, and we have a recipe for failure.