Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns What you REALLY need from a personal protection handgun

I'm just curious. Do you consider Jim Cirillo's experiences to be something other than anecdotal?

Because if you weren't there with him, they certainly weren't personal.

If I knew English my friend would still be alive. He was bitten by a rattlesnake, and I didn't know the difference between anecdote and antidote.
***Ron White

....missed my point completely....probably my fault.....Jim's experiences seem to be polar opposites of those related by Doc....and your .22 yielding Green Beret's experiences are antithetical to just about everyone's whose ever been in armed conflict. As Raisuli said, logic (as well as science and math) have to enter the argument somewhere because you'll ALWAYS be able to find some example to prove any point that you desire to make. David killed Goliath with a sling--sure enough someone, somewhere is going to argue the lethality of rocks as major caliber ammunition.

Cirillo had a system (interesting one at that) that worked for him (quite obviously). Others have had systems that worked for them. Point shooting, aimed fire, revolvers, autos, low capacity, high capacity. For each �system� you�ll find a high profile proponent, and interesting anecdotal evidence to support said system.

Now, for US mere mortals�

We need to pick a system that we think (after some SOUND CRITICAL THINKING) will work for us, for our individual situations; and then train. Because regardless of �system� all of these guys have one thing in common: training!

It doesn�t matter which system you choose. If you can do it well, you�re better off. If you can�t do it well, it does you no good. I�m not going to say which system is best, because �best� is a subjective term. �Best� for one guy wouldn�t work for the next guy. If everyone could shoot like Ed Mc Givern, we�d have very little to worry about. But not everyone has the time, energy, or talent to be Ed Mc Givern�come to think of it; there has only been ONE Ed Mc Givern�so much for THAT system.

Pick a weapon that works well for YOU and train with it; simple as that. Still, there are no guarantees.

I use revolvers and semi auto's, mostly 1911's. The one thing that they all have in common is that they start with a 4 and end with a number larger than ZERO.

I like both revolver and semi auto, but use the 1911 mostly for a personal defensive weapon.The safety on the 1911 is automatic to me because I have used one for over 3 decades.

Hi gmoats,

It's the logical fallacy of relying upon an exception to disprove a rule. I'm sure someone somewhere has used a single-shot .22LR to stop a bear's charge. But should such an incident have occurred, it would be fallacy to conclude a .22LR is sufficient for bear defense.


Take care,

R

gmoats, just to clarify... the examples I posted were not intended as the norm in shooting scenarios, in fact if we did a statistical analysis they'd all be more than two standard deviations outside of the mean, whereas shootings resolved with only one shot would be well inside two standard deviations.

I brought them up solely to prove the point that if you plan only for the statistically most likely scenario, you may find yourself SOL when the flag goes up.

Let's face it: the chance that any civilian is going to need to fire his pistol to protect his/her life is infinitesimal. At that point, you're already so far outside the realms of statistical probability you have to expect other aspects of the scenario are also going to fall outside the realms of likelihood. As such, carrying adequate amounts of spare ammo is a wise hedge against an improbable bet.

This is where critical thinking needs to intervene. It's incumbent upon ALL who choose to arm themselves with a firearm to apply such critical thinking and decide how best to employ said weapon.

Quite the contrary from Take_A_Knee�s advice of training with a similar weapons (systems), which is pretty sound advice; that didn�t fit MY situation.

When I was doing bodyguard work, often I would somewhat unexpectedly find myself going somewhere that required me to leave my gun behind (un-planned trip on an aircraft), and have to use what someone gave me when I arrived at my destination. I�ve been armed with a wide array of handguns and a few times, rifles or shotguns.

Therefore, my training regimen was to train with every different gun I could get my hands on. Often I�d have people just randomly place a gun in front of me while I was blind folded and I would figure out the manual of arms by feel, typically in less than about 5 seconds. The relevance was that I familiarized myself with all systems so when someone handed me a gun, I could quietly walk away, and do a few dry snaps, function check the weapon, and get my brain tuned to what I was carrying. It can be done, but you have to keep your brain in the game.

This was the application of MY critical thinking; but I strongly doubt my experience is right for everyone else. I have confidence that I can make any handgun perform in my hands and that�s a nice thing. But it doesn�t mean diddly-squat to others; only me. My critical thinking had me do what was right for ME.

Each must go through this same process, but I expect each person will arrive at a very different solution than I did.

This is the most sound advice that can be given to anyone on the matter of carrying a weapon for personal defense.

Doc...

The problem with your (very sound) logic here� You�re applying your threat assessment to his world; and you don�t necessarily know his world. He talks a LOT about not just gangs, but very well organized gangs. Perhaps he�s a former DEA officer. Or perhaps he�s just a little old man living in a bad neighborhood who�s so paranoid he�s convinced himself that everyone around him is a highly trained psychotic killer�two extreme examples. But both extremes would make someone have such a viewpoint. Your world view is probably more in line with most people, but this is precisely my point. Each has a different threat assessment.

Some who are not well versed at making a proper threat assessment will make the classic rookie mistake of vastly over-estimating the threat. Others will lull themselves into a false sense of security by thinking anyone but a licensed concealed carrier is an un-trained thug. Reality for most falls somewhere in-between. But it�s up to the individual to make that assessment, and no one else can do it for him.

I certainly wouldn't argue against you on this, KG. When it comes to armed personal defense, you pays yer money and you takes yer chances, and if/when the SHTF, it's all on yer own nut.

Which might explain why I've spent at least 10 times as much money on training as I have on guns.

Ohhh does Kevin ever fit that description...LOL

I you are under the age of 60 i have been shooting a lot longer than you and you need to learn to keep you finger of the trigger until the weapon is clear of the holster and then you want be afraid of shooting yourself.

Yeah, that's what a SWAT cop buddy of mine used to say, right up until he shot himself in the ass, literally, with a 1911. Dude the technique of the modern pistol has been around for 30 or so years, this shouldn't be news but I guess it is to some.

I guess it hard to argue with a expert. I guess i will have to wait until my Glock, XD, and Kahr is out of the holster to take the safety off also so i won't shoot myself in the ass. I'm sorry the 1911 scares you.

I gotta agree with ya. I carried a 1911 for several years on and off duty, and the safety was always swept off as the gun cleared the holster. If the situation demanded a pistol be pointed at someone, with the safety on, it got re engaged.

Yeah, that simply means, however, that it's not to the satisfaction of scientists. So what? Wisdom about practical matters has passed down from one generation to the next in that manner for untold thousands of years?

My P7 PSP is a cool, ingenious design. Simple enough that I could probably remember to just squeeze the grip to fire it. Very accurate, too.

That said, I vote .45 cal 1911. Why?

- among major caliber handguns it gives me the best combo of speed & accuracy.
- reliability among the good ones is completely satisfactory.
- Among guns that hold more shots, they either aren't .45's, or they don't fit my hand, or I just don't shoot them that well.

If I KNEW someone bad was about to come in the house, like T Lee said, they would likely be met by .30 cal projectiles...

Very true.

Doc:

A common problem I see recurring is a tendency for some people to look at a few scenarios, find them unappealing and dismiss them as being merely anecdotal.

Other scenarios, more appealing for one reason or another, are not merely anecdotal, for reasons that are never explained.

"Anecdotal" thus becomes a pejorative term, and wrongly so.

The example I gave above in this thread was clearly out of the norm. It's anecdotal, but so is every other scenario on this thread.

Your point about statistically likely scenarios is well made. Few of us will ever sit a stakeout in an inner city liquor store, and no one is ever going to be allowed to duplicate Jim Cirillo's shootings on prisoners in order to achieve peer review.

The best that any of us can do is consider a wide range of anecdotally based scenarios - there is no other kind - and draw our own conclusions about what we should do.