Category: Carrying / Self-Defense

I thought this was pretty amusing:

I have one of the firearms this woman used to defend herself. I bought it years back during the federal assault weapons ban before I knew any better. I figured it was a few hundred bucks so what the hell. It’s surprisingly reliable, and was reliable enough for this woman to use to defend her home, even though she pretty clearly didn’t take good care of it. It is among the types of firearms made illegal by New York under the SAFE Act, because clearly we can’t have moms in bad neighborhoods having inexpensive firearms to protect themselves. I’d also note that there were three home invaders in this case, one of them had a gun, and she only has ten rounds in the magazine in that hi-point. She had already used what sounds like three of those rounds on warning shots. I’m sure the gun control advocates, none of whom have any experience with firearms, will opine just how easy it is to take down all three with the 7 remaining rounds, if they hadn’t decided that discretion is the better part of valor and run off.

Not making any commentary on OC v. CC, I think in this specific situation it was pretty much guaranteed to lead to trouble. Unrelated to the method of carry, the trouble started here:

Simonsmeier; Danny Price, 32; Shannon Wheeler, 25; and Amanda Zastrow, 26, were arrested at a Turner Street home after they were called to help with a dispute between roommates, said Capt. Greg Hagenbucher of the Wausau Police Department. The incident began when a woman living in the home asked a man, also living in the home, to leave, Hagenbucher said. When he refused, the woman called friends to help.

If a friend called me needing this kind of “help,” I’m going to tell her to call the cops. As armed citizens, we ought to be nobody’s “muscle.” If you have a domestic dispute, that’s a job for the guys who come, as Tam likes to say, dripping with qualified immunity. I mean, you can take guns out of this situation entirely and it’s still just a bad idea. Guns just make things more likely to go from misdemeanor to felony in a hurry.

Though, I will say, I’m not sure that the shotgun was among the equipment OC’d, but anyone showing up to my door wielding a shotgun I’m going to assume is a deadly threat and act accordingly. Just saying.

Exurban Kevin notices that what’s considered to be a good self-defense caliber has been getting ever smaller. When I first started carrying, back in 2002 or so, .380 was considered where self-defense rounds started, but 9mm was the generally popular self-defense caliber. Then everyone said it had to start with a .4 or it wasn’t good enough. The .40S&W became pretty popular, especially among law enforcement. Now we’re back to the smaller calibers being popular again. My guess is because more people are carrying, and it’s just much much easier to carry and conceal smaller firearms. I tend to think anything is better than harsh language. The best caliber is the one you’ll carry. A pocket .380 you have is better than the .40S&W left at home.

Tam notes that the beer goggles are wearing off when it comes to some folks and the R-51. I agree with Tam on this one: I plan to get one just because of the novelty, and because the price is right. I have no plans to carry an R-51 and didn’t think “what an awesome carry gun” when I first saw it.

I’m generally not a big fan of single stacks for carry, because if I’m dressed for being able to conceal something the size of an R51, I’m dressed for being able to conceal a Glock 19, and all things being equal, I’d rather have 16 rounds than 7. The next step down for me is a pocket pistol, for those situations where I can’t dress to conceal a Glock 19, and where it’d be nice to have some option above pepper spray and harsh language.

Robb asks: “I cannot, for the life of me, comprehend the argument against Open Carry that states ‘I prefer the element of surprise’. Not against it being legal, mind you, just the argument about the act of openly carrying.”

For me I’m not sure it’s so much about the surprise part, so much as carrying the sidearm concealed increases my options. Surprise might be one of those options, but it’s just one. As long as the firearm is concealed, I get to choose whether, when and where it comes into the confrontation. If it’s openly carried, the attacker gets to choose that. Most people are offering up the example of the local Stop and Rob, and that’s certainly one possible scenario, but I can think of others. I may not want to introduce deadly force into a confrontation only involving physical force, but that suddenly changes if that person goes for a grab. I don’t really want to be in a situation, before a jury, arguing with a witness or survivor who disputes my claim that he was going for the gun, which is why, ladies and gentleman of the jury, I shot an unarmed man over a potential fist fight. I also generally don’t want to have to worry about a retention situation in a crowd, in line at the store, or any number of other scenarios that can be imagined.

I tend to think anecdotes are of limited value in debates like this. The fact is that most of us are in demographics that are incredibly unlikely to ever need to use a firearm in a self-defense situation, so the sample sets aren’t very representative. Most people who OC will probably do so their whole lives without a problem, and the same goes for people who conceal carry. But for me, I consider the tactical advantages to keeping the firearm concealed to outweigh the advantages of carrying it openly. I think he primary tactical advantage of OC is visual deterrence, but I’ve never wanted to risk the possibility of encountering the type of criminal who is not impressed by the display of a firearm.

UPDATE: More here. Robb notes, “There’s also the great advantage that, should the bodily waste impact the air moving device, you have options to engage / not engage that might not be there with OC (a rare, rare, rare, rare thing, but definitely in the realm of possibility).” I’m not sure that’s so rare. The most likely scenario I think most folks are likely to encounter is an unruly drunk, or some other tough guy, who might decide to start a confrontation before noticing your pistol. I don’t want to be in the situation of having to hope for good judgement on his part as to where the whole thing escalates from there. I’m not sure most confrontations start out as such clear deadly force situations. There’s usually an escalation to deadly force, and I tend to think it’s better to have options at each stage, without necessarily revealing the trump card unless the situation has gotten to that point.

You’d think this should shut up the anti-gunners once and for all, but both you and I know that will never happen:

The purpose of the present study is to determine the effects of state-level assault weapons bans and concealed weapons laws on state-level murder rates. Using data for the period 1980 to 2009 and controlling for state and year fixed effects, the results of the present study suggest that states with restrictions on the carrying of concealed weapons had higher gun-related murder rates than other states. It was also found that assault weapons bans did not significantly affect murder rates at the state level. These results suggest that restrictive concealed weapons laws may cause an increase in gun-related murders at the state level. The results of this study are consistent with some prior research in this area, most notably Lott and Mustard (1997).

You can’t argue with science!

I’m not sure that this is really any kind of lefty conspiracy, so much as a lesson that grieving loved ones really should not form the basis of a public policy discussion. The topic of the article is the recent spate of stories involving self-defense shootings, where the families demand the person defending themselves be prosecuted for doing so.

This is a predictable outcome of the Zimmerman case. Grieving families will seldom want to accept that their loved one might have been engaging in predatory criminal activity which has a high likelihood of placing one on the receiving end of a justifiable homicide. The Zimmerman case playbook offers an easy means to avoid having to deal with the truth of the situation. What’s concerning is that the media chooses to cover it in a sympathetic light, which will only lead to more of it.