If concealed carry is allowed starting tomorrow, what pistol do you choose?
- Thread starter Mere_Mortal
- Start date
Have you actually carried?
You know, I mis-spoke. In my post I said "10 is already more than you need", and I should have said, more than I think I need. If @rdavidson feels like he needs more rounds in his gun to feel safe where he is, who am I to argue?
That said, I don't imagine I will need more than 10 rounds in any situation I might ever be in. I expect if I'm ever in a situation in public where shots are fired that after the first few seconds anyone who isn't already dead will be running in opposite directions, or at least, hiding behind something. I currently have 15 rounds in my X-Compact but I think I'd be just fine with a smaller and lighter 10 round P365. I'd even be perfectly OK with a six shooter.
On the other hand in a home invasion situation I think I might want a lot more. I might face multiple armed attackers in the middle of the night. Hopefully I've grabbed my pistol off the night stand or wherever, but I probably haven't grabbed a spare mag, might not have anywhere to carry it, and might not have anywhere I can escape to if the bad guys are coming up the stairs. In that case I want as many rounds as I can get to hold them off until 911 brings the cavalry. Plus in that situation I can have a full size pistol, since the night stand won't complain about the size or weight of it! I might even be able to get to my AR15, which is in the closet, loaded, with 30 rounds in the mag.
So I'm very much against magazine limits, because of the home defense scenario, even though for a carry gun I don't really think I need more than 6, and I can get 10 in a very small gun.
10 rounds may seem like a lot, but numerous studies of police shootings show that a whole magazine can empty without the shooter being aware they've pulled the trigger that many times, and considering the stress of such situations this is scarcely surprising. Now think about how few of those shots are actually hitting the intended target. The same stress level/adrenaline are going to make it difficult for most of us to place hits accurately behind a couple of metres. Not all - there are always exceptions who can nail every single shot, and those who only shoot once then stop if the bullet has done the job. But for many, perhaps most, these won't apply, and that's when a second magazine may be wanted.
And then there are magazine-caused malfunctions. Unusual, but anyone who's spent significant time with pistols knows that they do happen now and then, especially with metal feed lips which can become slightly distorted in handling/dropping, resulting in mis-feeds. Dropping a full or nearly full magazine and being able to cram in a fresh one during a life-or-death encounter could make the difference between survival for you, or for the bad guy. I've encountered a fairly large number of very experienced firearms folks' talks and writing where they say to ALWAYS have at least 1 backup magazine for this reason. With auto-loaders one just never knows for sure.
Yes, but, I also suspect that after the 5th or 6th round the rest of those rounds aren't making much of a difference--the contest has already been decided and if after 5-6 shots you're still shooting (i.e., not dead) then the other guy is either dead, or running. Everything here is caveated by "probably", as obviously, anything can happen.
Your point about having a spare mag is a good one, they do jam, but you will start with a tap/rack/bang, not dumping a mag, and by the time you tap/rack/bang, find out that didn't help, dump the mag, and rerack--is there still a gun fight? As for carrying a gun with more rounds, if it were free to carry a gun with a 15 or 17 round magazine, why not? But the thing is, it's not free. My 15 round X-Compact is pretty damn heavy, so heavy that I often decide I don't really want to carry it around in my waistband. And, you know what I think is better than a 15 round gun? A ten round gun I actually have with me...
Actually the reliability concerns bring up another point. Maybe the best thing to carry, if that's your concern, is a 6-shot revolver.
Semis ARE complicated, and when they jam, fixing it is complicated. Especially in a stressful situation. You're going to have to cycle the slide, maybe clear a jam, tap the magazine, maybe rack the slide again--making sure not to short cycle it. And hope one of those things fixes whatever the complicated problem is. That is, assuming you remembered to flip off the safety.
With a revolver, if you need to clear a malfunction, you just pull the trigger again. Even if you got a squib most revolvers are built strong enough that the result of pulling the trigger again is TWO rounds go down range (and you get a massive recoil). In the same scenario your autoloader is a pipe bomb and all those complex bits of machinery--extractors, magazines, slides, and such--will be flying off in every direction.
Semis ARE complicated, and when they jam, fixing it is complicated. Especially in a stressful situation. You're going to have to cycle the slide, maybe clear a jam, tap the magazine, maybe rack the slide again--making sure not to short cycle it. And hope one of those things fixes whatever the complicated problem is. That is, assuming you remembered to flip off the safety.
With a revolver, if you need to clear a malfunction, you just pull the trigger again. Even if you got a squib most revolvers are built strong enough that the result of pulling the trigger again is TWO rounds go down range (and you get a massive recoil). In the same scenario your autoloader is a pipe bomb and all those complex bits of machinery--extractors, magazines, slides, and such--will be flying off in every direction.
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Or heck, a 6-round gun you actually have with you, like one of those nifty little sub-compacts you can put in the pocket of a pair of shorts with an elastic waistband and not have the shorts fall down. Those are cool. Not ideal in terms of handling reliability especially in larger hands, and the capacity might make some nervous, but of course it's as you say, better to have something at least. Paul Harrell says this often in his videos, most recently in his two-part Pandemic/Survival gun series - better the gun you have than no gun at all. It's along similar lines to 'better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6.' Can't say I'd want to carry a revolver though... or maybe I just haven't seen an ultra-light one yet. But even then, revolvers are fat, and the whole aesthetic doesn't appeal to me.
For my part, I'd not be interested much in carrying a double-stack magazine type pistol, just because the grip width would bother me. Prefer a deeper grip for proper shape of my longer fingers across the front of the grip and the trigger, rather than feeling like I'm holding something much too thick for stability. And of course the slimmer grip profile would conceal better, as per the thread's subject line. Seems 10 rounds would be fine, generally, as a decent compromise between utility in a 'shootout' and total package weight, along with grip shape/size. Of course a 2-shot Derringer type thing could be neat too... maybe in 9mm with stainless steel barrels, all internals including springs stainless, in a carbon fibre body. Something like that could go for a jog or even a swim and remain viable while not weighing garments down significantly. That's getting into 'In The Line Of Duty' territory a little bit. Still, many a life has been protected with single or double barrel guns, so not entirely impractical. Hence the roaring market in Europe and the USA in the 1800's for pocket pistols of various clever designs.
For my part, I'd not be interested much in carrying a double-stack magazine type pistol, just because the grip width would bother me. Prefer a deeper grip for proper shape of my longer fingers across the front of the grip and the trigger, rather than feeling like I'm holding something much too thick for stability. And of course the slimmer grip profile would conceal better, as per the thread's subject line. Seems 10 rounds would be fine, generally, as a decent compromise between utility in a 'shootout' and total package weight, along with grip shape/size. Of course a 2-shot Derringer type thing could be neat too... maybe in 9mm with stainless steel barrels, all internals including springs stainless, in a carbon fibre body. Something like that could go for a jog or even a swim and remain viable while not weighing garments down significantly. That's getting into 'In The Line Of Duty' territory a little bit. Still, many a life has been protected with single or double barrel guns, so not entirely impractical. Hence the roaring market in Europe and the USA in the 1800's for pocket pistols of various clever designs.
#1bcshooter
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- North Of The DMZ (US border)
Not very easy to carry a Cooey single shot 22 concealed .
If we are lucky enough to be able to still own one soon
If we are lucky enough to be able to still own one soon
I mentioned something along those lines as part of a short (for me) 2-paragraph comment under a CBC News story a while back. Comment was deleted in 2 hours. Posting it again got it deleted in half an hour. Apparently even the most careful mention of anything which might be construed as a suggestion that citizens might have been better able to defend themselves had the RCMP given some meaningful warning was tantamount to terrorism, or at least too much like mansplaining for the moderators at the CBC. God forbid a person should even WANT to protect themselves from a murderer, much less actually DO something about it! That would make a person into... shudder... basically an American, right? Only Americans want to live in the face of a violent attack. Canadians should just lay down and wait for the RCMP. Surely they'll help, right? I mean, eh?
I'm confused about this twisting of human nature which has become policy and law and social norm all at once. How did we get to such a place, where a person must second-guess the basic instinct to survive? Or to protect one's own child? Damned if I'd lay down for an invader, uniform or no. Someone comes in my door with a gun drawn they'd better shoot first, 'cause I'm going to be running for the trigger lock and ammunition can lock. Guess they'll probably win that race, should it come down to it... as sadly, criminals don't have to use trigger locks and separate storage for ammo. I wonder why that is? Maybe because laws only apply to non-criminals? What a country.
My interactions with Mother Corp have been few and far between.
However, it has been exceedingly rare that a comment to any news org has been removed, or for the “this isn’t America” theme to follow.
Why?
Well, when one references Canadian law to make the point, the teeth of that particular nonsense have been pulled.
Nova Scotia is particularly poignant as the ability of police, even if highly skilled, to find and stop the killer is minimal.
This one was stopped the third time officers stumbled upon him.
Now, consider the law.
Had any of the innocents who were murdered applied for authorization to carry, they most certainly would have been denied.
Denied because, “You don’t need a handgun, you have police to protect you.”
Section 20, and the regulations pursuant thereto, virtually demand that the CFO deny authorization.
And yet, what honest man can say that those innocents didn’t need a handgun, or that the police protected them?
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vanderkalin
CGN frequent flyer
- Location
- Kimberley BC
I have had only one time where I felt I wished I had a pistol, but if I was allowed I wouldn’t leave the house without it. Probably a sub compact Glock 9 with a couple of mags, as per Nutnfancy.
vanderkalin
CGN frequent flyer
- Location
- Kimberley BC
You do know that if your guns are in a safe they don’t need to be trigger locked right? And that the magazines can be loaded as long as they are not in the gun?
I've had a couple of interactions during which a pistol might have made the outcome being in my favour significantly more likely, but on those occasions I was able to resolve matters without recourse to a weapon, and in one case without physical contact. The other time involved putting a guy who came at me in the dark with a metal object aimed at my head, and owing to sheer luck and youthful speed I as able to take him to the ground and restrain and disarm him, while his girlfriend screamed at him to kill me... it was a really messed up thing involving me having rejected her advances. Poor guy was just trying to make his insane girlfriend stop yelling at him. He died of an OD some short time later and I carved him a small grave marker of some nice stone.
The other time involved a guy who was quite obviously psychotic who mistook my having looked at him the wrong way in a bar as being aggressive. He'd been yelling violently at another patron in the Cambie in Vancouver's Gastown while I was trying to enjoy a veggie burger and a beer, and the noise made me look over. A while later when I left with my bag of tools (I'd been building a shipping crate for a large carving for a nearby store earlier) he came at me with a fist dagger. Nasty shiny thing gripped tight as he moved across the wide sidewalk from his Trans Am. I did a quick mental inventory of my tool bag and settled on the hammer laying across the top as my backup plan, but then launched into a fast and very clearly worded explanation of a) how many witnesses there were behind the very large windows just behind me, b) how he'd spent at minimum 4 years in a federal prison, and c) how whatever offence he imagined I'd committed by glancing at him, the satisfaction of taking my life paled in comparative value to his own freedom. Managed to get all that out in about 10... maybe 15 seconds, freezing him about half way towards me. If he'd come inside 6 feet I was going to grab the hammer and the battle would be on. I knew that would likely result in me getting cut, but I was pretty good with a hammer back then, so... As it turned out he was maybe sober enough, maybe sane enough to do the math and ended up agreeing and tossing the knife back into his car, muttering something about "ever happens again you're a f*****g dead man." As soon as his back was turned I sprinted a couple of blocks. Never saw that guy again, but it took me about an hour to get my heart rate back to normal.
Would I want a pistol in either case or anything similar? Sure. It would be great to have that option, as the first happened in a dark basement as I came home from a walk around midnight, the second happened on a mostly empty Cambie Street after sunset and I'm pretty sure that bit about witnesses was nonsense, nobody was thinking about anything but beer inside that bar and I doubt witnesses would do a lot of good. In either case had I not effectively ended the threat I'd have been dead. Police coming around to take pictures and notes wouldn't have done me any good. Same for the 22 in Nova Scotia. Same for that idiot rapper in Toronto the other day getting gunned down in the street. Same for the woman they just found in a car in Minneapolis, apparently killed during the riots, when police had all driven away for their own safety. Same for almost 100% of violent incidents. Police are not here to protect us, period. They are here to threaten to punish those who violate statutes, the threat of violence upon, or incarceration of criminals being the 'protection' they offer for the rest of us who are not criminals. Just ask Ian Thomson. Even after his acquittal, the National Post was still misrepresenting the truth, that he fired in a safe direction over their heads and to one side as a gesture intending to have his attackers leave his property - no, according to the NP he was "shooting at his attackers." A complete lie, but consistent with the way police, RCMP, and our governments treat law abiding citizens who try to protect themselves from those who would harm or kill us.
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/ma...e-acquits-man-who-defended-himself-with-a-gun
But would I have drawn a pistol on the above-described occasions, had I had one? Probably not. The first incident was too fast. The guy was basically on top of me the instant I opened the basement door. Nowhere to go as there were stairs behind me and he was pushing me down. Only thing I knew to do was sweep his legs and pin him, which happened to work. Drawing a pistol would not likely be possible in this instance. The second time there would have been an adequate interval... but my instinct told me to leave the weapon at hand, a hammer, where it lay until verbal efforts failed to stop the advance. I'd have done the same with a pistol. And yeah, there's the 21 foot rule... whatever, a drawn and fired pistol will still be useful after a knife has inflicted one or two cuts in most instances, as a knife attack only rarely results in fatality and almost never results in immediate disabling of the victim. Not ideal of course, but having the option of a shot or three even while being stabbed would certainly be better than trying to beat the guy with a hammer in the same circumstance, and a close-contact shot would be unlikely to miss.
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Yeah I know, problem being we live in a rather small (about 850 square feet) upper two floors of an old house with minimal storage space, and danged if I could figure out where a safe might squeeze into this mess. So trigger and ammunition box locks are the rule for me until I work some magic and find a place for a safe.
I'm using a Kimber Micro 9 for concealed EDC with a Desantis pocket holster fitting nicely either in front or rear pant pocket. Carried a Ruger LCP for many years the same way.
Kimber is not much bigger and carries nicely in pocket.
Kimber is not much bigger and carries nicely in pocket.
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