From the Knuckledragger (one of my favorite reads) on some study or other:
“Personally, I think this is full of shit.”
As do I. The title of the piece is: “Let the arguments begin.”
None from me. And this comment alone puts the man squarely into my foxhole:
“And as a side note concerning those folks that didn’t have any spare ammo to shoot with me, if I can’t walk out to my truck right fucking now and find at least a 20 round box of 45 and 357 stashed in there, I’ll kiss your ass.”
A couple months ago I found a loaded 1911 mag in the glove box. I have no idea how long it’s been in there…
My personal guidelines and thoughts:
1) Have a gun. A .25 in hand beats a .45 in the safe.
2) Shot placement trumps performance. A .695 Thumperkiller you can’t hit the broadside of a barn with is pretty useless. Which means you need a gun you can shoot good*, and to shoot good, you need to shoot regularly.
3) But, penetration is also important to get that bullet where it needs to go. Anything that meets the FBI standards through 4 layers of denim will work fine.
*The 1911 shines in this regard, and a 9mm 1911 is petty much easy mode.
Do you have any thoughts on which pistol to use with wildlife, not goblins? After all, shooting snakes and other critters was one of the main uses of pistols.
Kim,
Since the topic of this post is your liking of Knuckledraggin (aka Wirecutter), I thought I’d pass along this bit of news from his corner of the ‘web . . .
https://krcrtv.com/news/shasta-county/police-man-holding-baby-shoots-and-kills-alleged-attacker
My carry is a Colt Mark IV Series 80 in 9×23 WIN. I find it’s small enough to carry completely concealed in the front pocket of my dungarees with easy access for removal should it ever become necessary to draw it, once I pick up the over-hanging shirt with my thumb. Yes, I load my own; Silhouette and small rifle primers are inexpensive, besides which, like Itzhak Perlman, I practice daily.
I took the truck to a detailer for a cleaning.
When it was ready, he handed a bag of loose rounds, about 20, he said were under the seats.
He asked me if I wanted to sell the .357 or any of the speed loaders in the consul.
His point about practice is relevant, the rest not so much. I don’t have a 380, but I would carry one (normal carry piece is 9mm, carry my 45 only rarely). They will do the job more often than not.
The important thing to remember is that the most important thing is to have a freaking pistol with you (yes, even more important than practice). If carrying a little 380, or even 32 or such, will allow carrying when one could not carry a full size, then it is a good choice.
The video and its author? Full of shit, at least after the 8 minute mark, where he goes off into la-la land about .410 revolvers.
The actual data and its author? It seems to validate common wisdom overall.
Which is: handguns suck at stopping power compared to long guns, and some handguns suck more.
Some handguns kill more effectively than others.
If you look at single head-and-torso shots (as opposed to torso-only like Sanow) then generally anything bigger than a .32 has roughly the same effectiveness at stopping an attack.
Hit potential is not covered in his study. We don’t know how many people used small .380 and 9mm guns and missed the target altogether. We don’t know how many people used .357 revolvers and flinched so bad they couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn.
I, on the other hand, know just what I can do with my .380, 9×18, and 9×19 pistols, because I practice.
I think there would have been a lot less butthurt about this video if the data had included .380 with the mouseguns, and if the video author hadn’t gone off into fantasyland about the .410.
He’s “good people”