Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Did personal defense change?

This very reason, I love revolvers and will always have them, but 16 rounds of 40 S&W on tap with another 3-15 round mags in your pocket feels really secure.

Gunner

Thanks, Doc. I was trying to decide how to respond to RJM's post.
For a number of years, LAPD was the recognized champ at surviving gunfights. They did it by hitting the other guy first using their front sights. Stacey C. Koon survived a gunfight against a guy armed with an AK-47 due to his training and temperment. Unfortunately, due to their insistance in hiring the types of people they hire now, this apparently is no longer is the case.
Your point in teaching and renforcing confidence is spot on. One must believe that he will prevail. That's one of the major reasons why we practice so much. But the other is simply attitude.
BTW, since everybody is so busy talking about statistics, I'll give you a couple that LAPD found when they analized their shootings.
He who fires first, wins 50% of the time. The only other significant factor is the fact that the guy who empties his gun first also tends to loose. But not as decisivly.
So, if you want to survive, you must shoot first to have a real chance. But, of course, you have to hit something when you do so. E

I am 61, when I was 14 I intervened in a pit bull attack on my 5 year old brother.
It ripped me to shreds.
47 years later, if I see a pit bull, I get my hand on the gun for a quick draw.
I can't say I have been attacked by people.

What advantage does a revolver give you over a modern autoloading pistol?

If you have a revolver already but no auto, by all means, carry it. But arguing that a revolver is just as good is just silly.

I understand and respect your reasoning. But I have to ask, what in the heck would you need with 61 rounds other than to shoot up a building, or rob a bank?



I think that discussion is a whisker out of scope of this thread.
However to me, in short, a revolver has the following aspects that I consider advantages against an auto:
Reliability
Size (Not weight or dimensions, but size in your hand in a scuffle)
Leverage (In a scuffle)
It is more difficult to stop a revolver from firing than an automatic in a scuffle.
Classiness, but I know this isn't a true factor



"But arguing that a revolver is just as good is just silly." I can see how you would draw that conclusion. However if you look at how most self defense situations are resolved the capacity does not come into play. Simply put training, reliability, and luck-of-the-draw are more key factors. As Hawkeye has mentioned most self defense situations which are resolved with a pistol are measured in feet, not in yards. They will be over in a few seconds, involving just a few rounds, if any are fired. In that case which would encompass the overwhelming majority of self defense shootings I would rather have a revolver. To me hitting or knocking an automatic out of battery, or 'grabbing' them so as to achieve the same effect is the single most damning element in their usage. Both categories work very well, but the scuffle element is what gets me.

Expecting to get into a grappling match, but NOT expecting to encounter multiple assailants is asinine in modern America. I wouldn't even consider 5 or 6 shots a comfortable amount for -one- bad guy, under stress, especially from a tiny gun with a heavy trigger and bad sights. It's also inconsistent with your full-size autoloading pistols.

You talk about training but don't address weapon retention positions and how to minimize BG's ability to touch your weapon at all.

To me the dynamics all changed when the Glock 26 replaced the J frame and the Glock 19 replaced the K frame. You get my drift.

Sounds like a pretty accurate assessment!! The brown wave is certainly moving North......seems like in that area(west side of the I-17) anything South of Glendale has been or is being browned out.

It seems that trends in crime have changed, self defense has not? The advancement of "reliable" semi autos make revolvers old technology. New age gunfighting is a semi auto game for sure! The new craze of mass shootings, the fact that crimes usually involving two or more people, and that bad guys are increasing wearing body armor are all reasons why semis dominate revolvers and make more sense. Handguns are notoriously under powered to begin with to reliably stop a threat 100 percent of the time with one round. Under stress fine motor skills deteriorate along with other physiological factors which reduce the ability to place an accurate shot which is seen in most shootings of bullets fired compared to hits and good hits at that. You have to reload a revolver which takes more time and skill than a semi. I would say revolvers are outdated but can still be used however there is now a better choice.

We moved back here about thirteen years ago. We live in a very rural area in a predominately rural state. You usually have the normal "rural" type crime around here. Poaching, meth, Mary-Jane growers, etc. I don't have to spend much time in KC, Wichita or Tulsa. Numbers rule and you have to prepare for the most likely scenario with the best weapons for it. That said, my bank in a town of about 300 (guessing) in a county of about 8000, has been robbed two or three times in that time period. One of the robberies was last week and the thieves shot it out with the cops.

Stuff like that makes me think that a high cap is not a bad choice. I also like the flatness of an auto. More comfortable.

FWIW in response to Safariman...I don't think a 10mm is going to punch through much more modern body armor than a 9mm or lots of other pistol rounds.

A 10 pound trigger pull in a 14-20 ounce revolver ain't for all, you shooting against a dude armed with a Glock 19 or 17 at 10 feet he is going to perforate your ass 3-4 times before he goes down.

Still begs the question, why did autos replace revolvers in all sections of the martial profession? AND NOBOSY said HI-Caps are the end be all in self defense. To think a revolver is better is just, silly.

Still begs the question why anyone here - ANYONE - should feel so overwhelmingly pumped in their own abilities such that their milquetoast day to day routine, along with whatever they carry and their own sense of hyped-up self-worth will be so successful in overcoming every unaccounted for situation that they would question any type of carry to other dissimilar folks.



Has to be the stupidest self projecting statement I have ever seen. And don't say you were just curious, otherwise you wouldn't have stapled the innuendo to the end of the question.

I wish I could find the old news clip, happened in the early 90's outside Detroit, where deputies & troopers were in a gun fight with a drug gang on the highway and one of the officers was running out of 12 gauge buckshot. A passerby that was driven into the ditch during the felony stop slid over to the trooper with his deer gun and buckshot - whereby he passed off his weapon to the officer, and reloaded his weapon while the officer let fly with the deer gun. Cycle repeated - long enough for reinforcements to arrive.

I am sure that the hunter didn't ask himself why he needed 3 or 4 boxes (or more) of fuggin buckshot in his truck.

Betcha the officer wasn't asking why either.

Unexpected.

It's after all - unexpected.....

Again, we all do our own PERSONAL threat analysis and plan accordingly. For those who wear a gun, they do so because it�s comforting. If someone requires 100 rounds on their person to be comforted, that�s their business. I personally can see such a thing fitting in my world, but that�s my world.

100? isn't there a word for that? (Hyperbole). I'm comfortable with 15 or even ten. jorge

I git it, yer just funnin', right?

Gunner

No, it ain't. I've tested Level IIIa vests with everything from 357 Mag, 357 SIG, thru 10mm, thru 41 Mag and 44 Mag. None of them "punch through". Projectile velocities have to get up over 2000-2500 fps to penetrate.

Back briefly to the topic of threat changes, I do think the threat has changed. In south Texas we have Mexican Mafia and the Zetas competing for territory, and sometimes the violence spills over the edges into "nicer" areas. These guys are heavily armed and armored. This didn't use to be the case.

Also, I'm told by my instructor, that a lot of the individual assailants are tied to the two groups - out for pocket money, I guess...

I wonder what the groups think of the shooter when one of theirs is ventilated by an upright citizen, and that definitely didn't use to be the case.

In the instance of personal defense - that may depend on WHERE you're defending from.. If I have 4-6 amped up druggies bangin' down my door I'd be using this:



Obviously not a 'carry' option, but very effective for home defense.. I imagine for the vast majority of personal defenses on the street, one might only have to defend against 1-2 thugs. However, in various parts of larger cities one can run into a little pack of perps bent on givin' ya a fatal lesson in victimeze.. A revolver with six available might not stop 'em all. And then that slow reload's gonna do ya in unless you're mighty practiced and have the option to put some room between you and the action - FAST - while unpacking the speedloaders... However, one thing that may help (re: revolvers - and correct me if (good chance) I'm wrong) is that a few perps on the receiving end of a snubbie in .357M might take flight just from the sheer NOISE that, if they're even halfway human, should scare the chit outta 'em..

Well, I wouldn't go so far as say it's asinine, but such a position does raise my eyebrows.

The few times I've felt threatened enough to even think about going for my concealed handgun in the past 15 years, there have been 3 or more threats to come up with a targetting solution for. The FBI's UCR summaries don't give enough info to allow us to say whether multiple assailants are more common, but it sure feels that way to me, and I'm not alone in LE and the training community in that sense.



I took my first active force-on-force handgun retention training more years ago than I care to think about, and I've done more or less regular refresher courses ever since. I hate defensive tactics training... I hate scuffling, wrenching, twisting, and so forth. I always get scrapes and bruises. But I do it because it's a vitally important skill.

I wish more defensive training schools would teach this stuff. But most civilians, especially women, hate the idea of scuffling with another person even worse than I do. Virtually every civilian defensive handgun class at the intro level has ZERO defensive tactics training, and even those who do teach it, like Mas Ayoob, don't do so until their second-tier training, which is typically taken by much more switched-on/dedicated people, i.e., warriors.

About 8 years ago I took some very good training from a former special forces guy from South Africa who is now heavily involved in training our SF guys. His extreme CQB techniques are geared exactly toward what you've described, i.e., keeping him from even touching your gun. This involves learning how to fight with the support hand/arm while simultaneously shooting from a retention position with the domininant hand. It's not easy stuff, but I've found it the most intuitive and potentially effective "handgun retention" training I've ever done. I say "potetially" because, while I've done it with a live partner and a Blue Gun, and I've done it with live ammo and a dummy adversary, I've never done it with a live partner and live ammo... but guys I know who have used this training in the real world tell me it works real well, and it beats hell out of getting into a ground-fight.