I have long been an advocate of carrying a gun that holds more than five or six rounds and in a caliber that everyone agrees would do some damage. When I speak on this subject it’s from more than just a personal preference but from the point of view of an instructor who has some personal experience, but who has also thrown his life into studying everything he could get his hands on. Often, I’m simply ignored. “The guy at the gun store told me this would be enough gun,” seems to be the common response. I sure hope the guys at MY gun store didn’t tell you that!
I decided to aggregate in one place some of the incidents that have shaped my thinking so that my readers can understand it’s not just me that’s saying it. Let’s look at some real-life incidents and see what conclusions can be drawn from them
Incident 1:
August 25, 2008, Officer Tim Grammis of the Skokie, IL Police Department found himself engaged in a firefight with a fleeing bank robber, who did not want to go back to prison. In the ensuing gun battle, Officer Grammis emptied two magazines of .45 ACP from his Glock 21 at the robber and was on his third when the robber, Raymond Maddox, stopped shooting. Reconstruction of the episode revealed that 54 rounds had been fired during the incident, 33 from Officer Grammis. Autopsy results revealed that 17 of Grammis’ 230 Grain Speer Gold Dot Jacketed Hollow Points had struck Maddox. Some had struck extremities but Maddox had also been hit in one kidney, both lungs and his heart. The last three rounds that Grammis fired had hit Maddox in the head, but two were in the face. Only the last had pierced his brain and ended the fight. Arguments that he was on drugs and that’s why he didn’t succumb easily when shot were nullified when autopsy results revealed he was totally drug-free at the time of the incident. You may deduce from this incident that if even the big gun wouldn’t stop this guy, why carry one? I would argue differently. My thoughts on it are if it’s this hard to stop somebody, I need to start with something that might have chance instead of something that would just irritate him.
Incident 2:
Tammy Sexton, age 47, was shot in the head with a .380 by her estranged husband. The bullet struck her square in the forehead and exited the back of her head. Sheriff Mike Byrd of Jackson County, MS said, “When a sheriff’s deputy responding to a disturbance call arrived, she met him at the door holding a rag on her head and talking. She was conscious, but she was confused about what had happened,” he said. “She had made herself some tea and offered the officer something to drink.” Byrd said the bullet passed through the lobes of the woman’s brain without causing major damage.
Incident 3:
January 8, 2013 – Melinda Herman was working at home when a man began to ring the doorbell. She called her husband at work, who told her to gather their 9-year-old twins, a boy and a girl, and go hide. All three of them went to an upstairs crawl space, and Melinda brought along a .38 caliber handgun to the hiding place.
The man broke into the house and rummaged around before making his way to the crawl space, where he found the mother and children hiding. Melinda shot the intruder five times, hitting him in the face and neck. She told the man if he moved she would shoot him again, although she had run out of bullets. The intruder, who police identified as 32-year-old Paul Slater, managed to get to his car and as he tried to flee, crashed into a tree. That’s five times in the face, folks, and now the gun is empty, but the guy is still on his feet!
Incident 4:
October of 1997 – Jacksonville, Florida officer Pete Soulis made contact with a suspicious driver, Joseph McGrotha, at a gas station. McGrotha produced a 9mm handgun, firing one round into Soulis’ chest (it was stopped by his armor). Before it was over Soulis was shot three more times while shooting McGrotha 22 times, 17 of which were described as “center mass.” It would take McGrotha as long as 4 minutes to die after the last shot was fired. Officer Soulis service weapon was chambered in .40 S&W, Winchester Ranger SXT rounds.
I’ve been aware of various studies about what happens in real-life scenarios, including the one by Tom Givens of Rangemaster Training in Memphis, who has been able to track graduates who have been involved in shootings over a twenty-five year period and whose findings I’ve quoted in some of my training. The results of Tom’s research indicate that encounters involving firearms are usually 3 shots within 3 seconds from 3 yards or less, with the success rate from pocket guns being something like 50%, meaning the good guy lost about 50% of the time. Not very good odds in my book.
I recently came across another study conducted in central Texas by Karl Rein of KR Training in which he put students to the test with pocket guns and with medium to full-size guns. It’s an interesting study that you can read about here at usconcealedcarry.com/is-a-pocket-gun-enough. If you don’t have the time or inclination to read it, here is his conclusions:
Data analysis indicates that a five-shot .38 probably holds enough ammunition to handle 70 percent of all likely situations. In the hands of a “low skill” shooter (anyone lacking training beyond the CHL level), the odds of getting acceptable hits are poor; that group averaged 57 percent on the test. When those two probabilities are multiplied to calculate total probability, the result is 40 percent, which isn’t great, but is better than 0 percent (no gun).
What’s interesting to me is that the majority of the comments following Karl’s article are justifying anything from .32 to .380 to .38 caliber guns and basically telling him his research is full of it.
I want my loved ones, my students and myself to have a much better success ration than 40% if we’re ever involved in an armed encounter where we are fighting for our life. For this reason, I do my best to teach people to shoot and carry handguns that are at least 9mm with 10-12 rounds of ammo or more. Keep that pocket gun around as a backup for when you’ve run your fighting gun dry.
The Taurus PT111 is just one of many choices for a decent-sized, affordable carry gun in a caliber (9mm) and with a capacity (13 rounds) that should provide adequate protection in almost any civilian armed encounter imaginable. If you’d put this gun up side-by-side with most of the popular pocket guns you’d have a hard time making the argument that you could carry one, but not the other.
g and aiming my pistol multiple times a day, no matter what I’m carrying. While doing these drills with the CZ-P07, I found it darn near as comfortable as my 1911. Knowing this was probably just a subjective observation, I decided to do a little testing.
The original CZ-75s are all steel. They have several models such as the 75, 85, Compact, and others with differing features such as size, finish, capacity, caliber, etc. The one that I felt I just had to own is the CZ-P07. As you might surmise, the “P” stands for Polymer and I’m guessing the ’07’ means it’s a James Bond gun. Oh, wait, not enough zeroes. Okay I think the 07 has something to do with size, since I know the P09 is bigger and maybe the P05 and P06 are smaller. We gun guys can’t know everything.
Kind of look alike, don’t they? It really is hard to tell them apart, but one does hold six rounds and the other seven. Up to a point, they both shoot the same types of ammunition. They both shoot .32 S&W Short, .32 S&W Long, .32 H&R Magnum, but only one of them, the Single Seven, also shoots .327 Federal Magnum.
loves it. I don’t like getting in her vehicle and she doesn’t like getting in mine. We don’t particularly enjoy driving each others’ vehicles, either. Why? The seating and mirror adjustments are off, the controls are different, the accelerators require a different touch – they’re just different. But they’re both excellent vehicles and they are up to the tasks we expect them to perform.
I’m all for selling guns. I’m in the business. And like any business owner, I’ve got rent to pay, suppliers to keep happy and employees I want to take care of. I can’t do all of that without selling guns, along with the ammunition, accessories and training to go along with them. But to me, it’s not about selling merchandise as much as it is about helping people. You see, deep down in my heart of hearts I believe people should be able to defend themselves. I believe they should be able to stand up against a tyrannical government, if it becomes necessary. And I believe people in a free country should be able to responsibly own guns because they’re cool, they’re fun to shoot and frankly, just because they want them.
I want you to think about something. What kind and size of guns do the police carry? What kind and size of guns to the LTC instructors you may know carry? You don’t find them carrying little guns. You don’t find them carrying small calibers. Or, if you do, I can almost guarantee you they are new to the business. Those of us who have really studied what goes on in the real world, those of us who have shot a lot of different guns, those of us who have studied real-world ballistics, rather than the fancy headlines in magazines and advertisements, are pretty careful about what guns we carry. Those of us who are instructors and who sell guns, have totally different perspective on what we recommend than does a typical gun salesman in a retail establishment.
I like night sights. All of my defensive guns don’t have them, but most do. It’s not just for shooting if the light is low. I like them because if I need to locate the gun quickly when startled awake at night, or if the lights go out, the sights beckon me.
For a 1911 type gun I like a checkered front strap and back strap. I’m not sure why, but they just feel better in my hand. One of my favorite guns, a Colt Commander, doesn’t have a checkered front strap, though the back strap is. I love the gun, but I find myself wishing the front strap was checkered. There is an aftermarket solution I tried for a while, but it didn’t stay in place well. I may try again with some type of adhesive.
On my 1911s I like a an ambidextrous safety and I like the over-sized ones. Why? For a reason that may not be applicable to many people, but I carry my defensive pistol in an inside the waistband (IWB) holster worn at the three o’clock position. With the gun in that position, the safety is against my body so it’s not really easy for me to check, as I periodically do, to make sure the safety is still on. With a safety on the right side of the gun also, it’s very easy to check the safety to make sure the motion of my body hasn’t pushed it off.
Rails – should your gun have a rail or not? I think that one depends on where you’re going to use the gun. I have an M&P in the bedroom with a Streamlight flashlight/laser combination, so the fact that gun has a rail makes it work. Some of my carry guns have rails and all they are good for as far as I’m concerned is making me choose a different holster. I personally will not have a light on a carry gun because I don’t intend to open carry and having a concealed carry rig big enough for a light or laser on the rail just isn’t feasible. Besides, I don’t anticipate the need in a defensive gun that I carry.
I could cover many more details that people either like or don’t like about guns, but I’ll stop with just one more. It’s something the writers usually call “undercut” and it applies to the trigger guard. The purpose is to allow you to get a higher grip on the frame which mitigates some of the recoil. I was reading about some of the new Sig Sauers the other day and the writer was talking about how they had an undercut trigger guard which was an improvement over earlier models. I started looking at my Sigs – an SP2022, a P226 and an M-11, which is really a P228 in military dress, and a couple of 1911s. All of them except the 1911s have an undercut to some degree or the other. The picture I’ve used as an undercut example here is actually on a Glock, but it’s not stock. It’s a gunsmith enhancement and you may notice, it was done by cutting a way a significant portion of the stock trigger guard. I’m for anything that mitigates recoil, so I’ll say that’s a good thing, but I’ll also tell you have guns I love to shoot that don’t have that undercut.
I became a .45 believer some years ago. It was a combination of things: talking with some people who had been shot with various caliber handguns and studying the charts mostly. I figure I need all the help I can get. But my wife isn’t going to shoot a .45 and frankly she’d rather carry a revolver than a semi-automatic. She has a good 9mm semi-automatic and that’s her bedside gun, but when she’s out and about she wants a revolver.
One of the reason’s I turned to the .327 Magnum when looking for a good self-defense revolver is that most of the guns built for that particular round hold six rounds of ammo, where the smaller .357s hold only five. Another cool thing about it is you can shoot .32 S&W Short, .32 S&W Long, .32 H&R Magnum, or .327 Federal Magnum cartridges. Some of these are pretty soft shooting for practice, whereas the H&R Magnum or the Federal Magnum cartridges are pretty serious self-defense rounds.
It’s a great shooting little revolver with sights I can see well and in perfect size for a console gun.
or either back up or as your primary handgun and don’t want the heavy recoil of a .357 Magnum or .44 Magnum, you might consider the .327 Federal Magnum.
David Freeman 