Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters 5-shot revolver vs. 15-shot auto for carry/defense

Yep,
Just as I thought. The rest of y'all are a bunch of one gunners and there ain't no two gun revolver cowboys left that shoot with both hands at the same time. I reckon folks like us is just about as extinct as the Dodo bird.

Flower Child

It'll never catch on!

Flower Child: No slam intended, the only time I would feel the need for TWO handguns would be in a situation LIKE Doc Holiday, Val Kilmer, in Tombstone facing more than 1 aggressor OR inebriated where I was seeing double. THEN his response would be very appropriate, "I have 2 guns, 1 for each of ya."

"Whatever blows your skirt up", personally when I have 16 rounds in + 30 waiting to pop up, I don't feel the need for 2 guns. JMO

I found a 30 rd clip from ?Marlin Ranch rifle ? that fits & works in my S&W 6906. So I can "load up and shoot all week"!

JWALL
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VEGETARIAN.........Indian Word For Poor Hunter

For me, I'll take a semiauto over a revolver any day, even if mag capacity is the same. Semiautos are almost always narrower and have predominantly flat sides. For me, this makes them more comfortable to carry, easier to conceal, and I think more snag-resistant (or, at least they have the potential to be)... comparing revolvers and pistols of same bbl length, height, and power level. I can reload a semiauto much faster, and like the pistol, a spare loaded magazine is flat; a speedloader isn't. Since the average semiauto bore centerline is usually closer to the grip than the average revolver, I get faster shot recovery. Finally, I like the grip ergonomics of the average semiauto better than the average revolver. I'm likely to shoot a handgun better when the grip feels better.

Well you should have seen the look bad guy's face, when I thumbed back the hammer of the J-frame I had jammed into his ear! When he tried to grab my main pistol.

i find these threads kind of interesting in that i have and carry at various times all kinds of firearms. They are nothing more than a hammer, and different hammers are made for different kinds of nails.
having said that, as the situation allows i would prefer to have a belt fed weapon in some situations in the arizona desert that are possible. My neighbor in town quite a few years ago met three guys kicking in his front door who started shooting at him.
he had a five shot revolver and was down to one bullet when they ran. He was lucky. Many years ago while a deputy another guy and I faced down about ten or so armed very drunk bikers. We had S&W model 19's at the time. I like wheel guns, and feel perfectly at home with them, and i can reload fairly fast too.
having said that i like a baby glock with it's standard mag and a 14 round mag with extenders as a spare mag. And i routinely run in the desert these days with a glock 20 and three spare mags and a rifle. The situation dictates what is carried

Just saw this thread, and thought I'd pitch in my 2 cents. My situation is not typical, whatever that is. I am fairly new to handguns, and am interested mostly in self defense. The main personal factors I considered:

Would have to be usable for my wife and me, recognizing some limitations on likely amounts of training and practice.

Our hands are about the same size, mine being somewhat small.

I am left handed, my wife right.

We are both at an age where our near vision precludes accurate use of iron sights w/o dedicated glasses, and can't put on glasses when grabbing a gun from the night stand, etc. However we can see distances reasonably well with or w/o glasses.

After a couple of false starts, we settled on a Glock 19 with tritium sights, big dot in front, and a J frame snubby and Model 10 both with CT grips. The Glock also has an extended slide release and mag release. My wife shoots the Glock well, but isn't all that comfortable with the controls. We both really like the Model 10, and just got the CTs on it, and they really feel good. For all of these reasons, the Glock and Model 10 will be our main home defense guns, with the Glock and snubby being my carry guns.

Not perfect, and not necessarily someone else's choices, but work well for us.

Paul

When hunting, if you have to have to revert to a handgun (if you're a rifle guy like me) it's very hard to beat a Glock 20 with the 6" barrel & slide, loaded with full-power 200 grainers at 1200 fps (probably faster with the 6" barrel). It's easy to shoot, and it's damned hard to pack as much KE in one magazine as is in the Glock 20 15-round magazine.

JWall,
No offense taken. I was just trying to find out if there were any other two gun shooters. It seems to be a forgotten and untaught skill since the advent of hi-capacity magazines. Just say'n.

Flower Child

I thought those were double action That's how that would have played out for me.....must have been a close call.

Flower Child: I'm very glad you took no offence. I had to go back & re-read my post to see why you MIGHT have thot it. I had no idea of being critical.

I think shooting a gun in each hand at the same time is a KOOL idea. Seriously IF I had thot about it during my handgun heydays, I probably would have tried it.

OTOH, seriously, I have 2 friends that really can't scratch their butts w/their left hands. So there are some people that are so dominant hand oriented that it would be impossible for them to even try.

JWALL
________________

VEGETARIAN..........Indian Word For Poor Hunter

Does anybody have any statistics for civilian gunfights (where guns are used for defense, not LEO/military applications )? How many shots are typically fired, how many people involved etc. I'm not an expert in this stuff but it's always seemed unlikely to me that in a actual gunfight you'd need to keep firing at multiple assailants while they attacked. I would think that when a gun is pulled and certainly after shots are fired, people would be scattering like cockroaches. Most thieves, etc want to take on easy targets, not those that are firing at them.

The distance is less than 10', the duration is around 3 to 4 seconds, and between 2 and 3 rounds are fired.

Which proves a lot of points.

You had better pray to God you get into an "average" fight with "average" bad guys.

For example:

Hundreds of times I have read in type about how the noise a pump shotgun makes when you rack it, chambering a shell, will scare any bad guy away and he will run for his life.

That is supposed to be almost Gospel, according to what you read.

In reality, I have pointed shotguns and various other tools from the tool bag at bad dudes and many times they did not give a flying "F". They were hell bent on their goals and the only way to take them down without killing them was to go hands on, usually resulting in everyone getting bloody.

You may very likely meet the not so average meth head speed freak who soaks up a schit load of .38 rounds and does not even know he is hurt. He may not know he is supposed to fall over and stop his aggression after an average of 3 shots.

Since his pain receptors are completely fried from the methamphetamine, there is also a good chance that until he evenually loses enough fluid to cause his system to begin to go into arrest,he is likely to continue on his warpath since he does not respond to pain in the traditional sense.

I would not rely on average.

Good point. Average usually means a midpoint, with half of the cases above and half below. By itself it doesn't mean a whole lot.

Paul

Well said....

One of my good buddies is a former SF operator and retired SWAT from Denver. In teaching LEO tactics he argues that loss of hydraulics fluid is the best approach and this means putting enough lead into the bad guy that their system can't work regardless of their neurology (as Mackay alluded to).

Two shots per bad guy for the average joe means most people can't defend themselves with pistols well enough to be effective. He argues for semi-auto's for no other reason than statistically people need more ammo to do what a pro could do with a revolver.

And he reminds me that very few pros carry revolvers as their primary weapon.

Oh, mathman where art thou?

Regardless, I get what your saying.

This debate has raged for a loooonnnnng time - My reasoning is as follows. If all I have to fight with is a handgun I am going to be running to get a REAL gun. Having 12 - or more rounds of smaller caliber ammunition to keep their heads down while I get to a safer place where I have a real gun is a good plan. The other problemn is that there may be three or more assailants. I will need more than the five rounds in my Smith .44 special to settle the debate in my favor, even if it is smaller caliber. And finally; carrying two 1911s is just too much weight.

Terry