Do you agree or Disagree?

Kleanbore said:

How can what you may need to defend your self, if you do, have anything whatsoever with the assessment of likelihood of occurrence as assessed before the fact?

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It isn’t a single likelihood or a single risk. It’s a single tool.

Each risk has a likelihood of occurrence, and the tool has different likelihoods of success for each risk.

Let’s shift this away from firearms for a moment and consider fires. In our day to day lives we face risk of fire from multiple sources, in multiple environments, with multiple potential outcomes. Many of the fire risks we’re exposed to are completely beyond the capabilities of any fire extinguisher we’re likely to buy at a hardware store and keep in our homes. Even within a particular type of fire risk, a given fire extinguisher has only the potential to put out a particular fire, if caught in specific circumstances.

The fact that the biggest fire extinguisher you could physically lift cannot put out a fully engaged house fire doesn’t mean a fire extinguisher isn’t worth owning. Even the smallest fire extinguisher....even a wet rag...gives a person a chance to keep their house from burning down. What is the optimal size (and type) of fire extinguisher? That depends.

Same with carry guns. A given gun/shooter combination is going to have a range of likelihoods of success depending on the specific risk scenario. There will always be scenarios where the likelihood of success is basically zero. There will always be scenarios where the likelihood of success is above zero. A different gun may increase the number of scenarios where the chances of success are above zero, but (just like a wet rag) even a BB gun has some scenarios where they deliver non-zero likelihoods.

The goal is to choose a tool that makes as many of the scenarios you are likely to encounter as possible non-zero. Picking a tool based on scenarios you’ll never actually encounter (dinosaur attacks or whatever) is obviously silly, but how about scenarios you are vanishingly unlikely to encounter?

That is the point. Folks keep thinking that a gun fight in a nice neighborhood will be a nice gun fight. The assailants will be weaker and easier to incapacitate in a nice neighborhood as compared to those in the 'hood'. They will less vicious in the nice neighborhood store than in the bodega.

You will be a better shot under stress in the nice store than in a bad neighborhood.

It may be the case that a critical incident is less likely in a 'nice' neighborhood but once you are in a critical incident, the idea that it will be less intense doesn't make sense.

The risk calculations are that for convenience, you are OK with what is described as basically a one opponent gun or a lesser time in the fight gun. Even with one opponent, a 5 shot gun may not suffice once you are in the fight.

I can shoot a snubby pretty well and they don't tear up my hands. I prefer if I can, to have a belt gun with significantly more rounds and extra, easier loaded ammo for a critical incident that may actually have shots fired.

Mowing the lawn make be a lower risk of an incident but I doubt a store robbery scenario is nicer in a nice neighborhood.

Kleanbore said:

Let's narrow the analysis to the risk of a violent criminal attack by one or perhaps two or three, humans requiring the use of deadly force for self preservation.

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That still leaves us with myriad scenarios.

For example, a real world self defense scenario involving one person attacking someone I personally know: Every day the defender would leave for work, and, as soon as he was gone, his wife would start noticing things around the house that scared her. Footprints outside the windows, noises. Gave her bad vibes. This repeated for a few days, so he called in sick, sent his wife to visit her parents, and stayed home in bed. Note that he didn’t know what was going on, and was fully expecting it to be a dog wandering the neighborhood or something. Next thing he knows there is a guy with a knife coming through their bedroom window. He lifts his trusty Ruger MkI from under the covers and puts 10rds of .22LR through the guys face. The attacker stops mid-step and drops to the floor. Instant stop.

Is that a likely scenario? Well, it happened, so yes, but it isn’t likely for most people. It requires certain factors that most people don’t have. Was it a scenario for which the chosen weapon was likely to succeed? Oh yeah, basically guaranteed. The guy had a 50rd a day habit with that Ruger and could reliably put 10rd into a 1” circle faster than many people could get off one shot. Would the same weapon be effective in other self defense scenarios? No, not at all, it’s a poor choice in general and not something I’d recommend. Would other weapons have been effective in this scenario? Yep. There are literally thousands of weapons that would have been as effective, and many may have required less skill.

There are other scenarios that have varying degrees of likelihood. A particular handgun will generally range from mediocre to awful depending on the scenario. The goal is to choose a handgun that is on the better end of that spectrum for the subset of scenarios you are most likely to face.

Which brings you face to face takes with one of the nicer thing about the real world: it is fuzzy and chaotic. Do your best to make a smart decision, but keep in mind that the simplifications we make to analyze problems are just that, simplifications, and the underlying complexity doesn’t go away. You may face scenarios that are unlikely for you, or never face one at all.

Neither the likelihood of occurrence nor the location nor what the defender had been planning to do will have a thing to do with what will be needed for defense once the risk has materialized.

Again, that is very fundamental.

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Fundamentally oversimplified.

GEM said:

That is the point. Folks keep thinking that a gun fight in a nice neighborhood will be a nice gun fight. The assailants will be weaker and easier to incapacitate in a nice neighborhood as compared to those in the 'hood'. They will less vicious in the nice neighborhood store than in the bodega.

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Nah, that’s a straw man, that is.

No, that is a constant refrain, going to get milk, there may be less likelihood of a threat. However, a threat isn't lesser in actual magnitude when it occurs. The lack of logic is just what I said.

A guy was once attacked by two leopards. He managed to catch one by the tail and swing it around to bop both in their respective heads and they fled. So what. That a 10 rounds from a 22 LR worked for him is all well and good. Perhaps if he practiced 50 rounds a day with a 9mm, he could stop the guy also.

My comment is a strawman if you choose to ignore the reality of what was being said.

Kleanbore said:

What does that have to do with the discussion?

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It speaks to the essence of your point.

You lump a bunch of things together and say, “this is a mitigation for all of these, which I label The Risk.” Someone else creates two collections based on their likelihood in different locales and says “X is a remediation for risk collection A, Y is a remediation for risk collection B”, you come back and say “The Risk is the same everywhere!” No, your risk model is the same everywhere because you’ve simplified your analysis, the actual risks vary.

Then it gets into you saying things that only make sense from a single-risk point of view, like, “How can what you may need to defend your self, if you do, have anything whatsoever with the assessment of likelihood of occurrence as assessed before the fact?” Easy. Two (or more) risks, two (or more) likelihoods. What you may need will vary depending on your specific risk exposure at that moment.

Someone may come out from behind a car or a gas pump, or around the corner of a building.

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Someone may have body armor.

None of that is at all predicable, and one would not assign different likelihoods to any of them.

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Then one is bad at risk management.

Risks always vary. The likelihood of needing to defend yourself against a mob, or people in body armor, was higher last week than last month. A year ago today you wouldn’t have thought twice about visiting a friend in a nursing home, but today you need to weigh the very real risk that you might bring a virus along that will kill a bunch of the residents.

I’ll tell you, over the past six months my carry choices have evolved. Why? In general terms, my risks evolved. I went from working in a fairly anti-gun office and needing deep concealment to mitigate the risks of carry discovery, to working from a home office where I control what anyone can see. Then in March we started seeing local signs of the breakdown of civil order, and that has only gotten worse. And I don’t mind telling you that if your risks are the same today as they were six months ago you are a very lucky person.

This isn’t “I’m suddenly aware of the risks that were always there.” I lived in the Los Angeles area during the ‘92 riots and I know first hand about risks that to most people are purely hypothetical. This is a change in the likelihoods of risks due to external factors.

GEM said:

No, that is a constant refrain, going to get milk, there may be less likelihood of a threat. However, a threat isn't lesser in actual magnitude when it occurs. The lack of logic is just what I said.

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First, as to your premise: The magnitude may well be higher or lower in different situations. I have bought groceries at stores that were later hit by thieves with body armor and rifles. Not hyperbole, fact. So I think I’m justified in saying that a grocery store is a higher risk location than the used bookstore I pop into from time to time. And you know what? For someone else that may be totally different. Maybe other people don’t do their grocery shopping in stores that are known to sell high-value diamond jewelry as well. They don’t need to be wrong for me to be right.

That a 10 rounds from a 22 LR worked for him is all well and good. Perhaps if he practiced 50 rounds a day with a 9mm, he could stop the guy also.

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I have no doubt he could have. But the rule is, “bring enough gun,” and he clearly did. What-ifs and speculation about other scenarios are pointless. We know the .22 worked.

My comment is a strawman if you choose to ignore the reality of what was being said.

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Nah, it’s just a straw man.

Kleanbore said:

Of course.

We are discussing risks that can reasonably be mitigated by a concealable handgun.

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Indeed we were. Where “reasonably” means “you go from zero to non-zero chance of mitigation.”

Again, that effectively limits the scenarios to those involving the risk of a violent criminal attack by one or perhaps two or three, humans requiring the use of deadly force for self preservation.

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You set your scenarios you are willing to consider, I get it. I’m just pointing out that life doesn’t really give you a choice of scenarios. It’s up to you to identify risks and mitigate them as best you can, and while focusing on a single risk is comforting, it doesn’t change your actual exposure.

For some folks, that means figuring out their 60% risks, lumping them into one category, mitigating it simply as possible, and choosing to dismiss anything outside of that One Risk and One Solution.

For others, the risk analysis is more refined and situational. That’s more work but they might get to 80% coverage that way.

A service-type semi-auto wouldn't be much use, would it?

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Huh. Maybe Ruger was prescient when they Released their 5.7 pistol recently. I know my old .22 1911 is seeming like less of a curiosity/range toy than it was. Something about a 40gr JHP going 2000+ FPS seems to speak to the current situation.

Frank Ettin said:

Well, the future is unpredictable, and improbable things happen all the time. If something goes awry and you can deal with it using whatever knowledge, skills, and tools you've brought, that's goos. But if you knowledge, skills, and tools aren't up to the task, you won't be happy with the outcome.

This thread is about the tools, not training, so let's take that off the table. That makes the tool you have with you the limiting factor. If one choose to take along a two round, .22 lr derringer, if that won't do the job, he'll be out of luck.

But a .22 derringer really can't be counted on to do much. Maybe one can reasonably expect that it will be sufficient for some problems, but one can also envision many possible problems it will be inadequate for. But it'll be his choice, and he's welcome to it.

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So here’s the problem I have with “2 shot derringer” examples: I am not aware of any 2 shot derringers, including .22 models, that are actually much smaller/more concealable than for example a small .32 or .380 pistol. Many of the larger derringers are bigger and heavier than a 12+1 9mm pistol I’ve carried.

Therefore, I’m forced to conclude that someone who chooses a .22lr or a derringer is doing so for reasons other than concealment/convenience. And since the reason isn’t concealment, arguments based on convincing someone that they could actually conceal a bigger gun are missing the mark. That’s not the factor that drove the choice. Unless you know the actual factor, you aren’t solving a problem for them.

As I see it, there are three general types of people who use less-than-9mm concealed carry guns: People who have a specific concealment challenges and have weighed the options and concluded that guns in smaller calibers fill a need. People who have some other issue they are trying to address (e.g. the countries that don’t allow civilians to use “military” cartridges, recoil sensitivity, sharing ammo, or whatever... this isn’t me so I don’t know). And people who don’t know much about guns and just bought what the gun store (or maybe an “advisor” friend) was selling. Some folks on THR love to assume everyone who chooses anything below their own minimum is in the third category, but that’s just silly.

A larger caliber, compact or medium size handgun with more ammunition could be expected to be adequate for a wider variety of situations. So when you don't know what's might happen, that seems like a better choice.

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Well, as I said early in this thread, I’m far more likely to carry a larger pistol for a trip to buy some milk or whatever. I’m not going to lug about a FNX-45T, but anything from a CCO to a g20 is easy to conceal well enough for groceries. The caliber isn’t really the concern. As I said to Kleanbore, a .22 is looking like a it might be a good option right about now. Not a rimfire .22, mind you, but still a .22.

But that’s me, and I don’t assume that my truth is The Truth.

Ed Ames said:

The likelihood of needing to defend yourself against a mob, or people in body armor, was higher last week than last month. A year ago today you wouldn’t have thought twice about visiting a friend in a nursing home, but today you need to weigh the very real risk that you might bring a virus along that will kill a bunch of the residents.
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I lived in the Los Angeles area during the ‘92 riots and I know first hand about risks that to most people are purely hypothetical. This is a change in the likelihoods of risks due to external factors.

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I agree with this, from personal experience also. Besides the '92 riots I experienced the Watts Riots in the mid-60's. (And I'm extremely grateful to have been able to leave California two years ago.)

That said, when rioting is occurring, it seems to me that going outside to the location of the riot is pretty much the golden example of "going to stupid places". If the rioters come to break into your house, absolutely defend yourself (and in your house you can use your AR, helping your odds considerably compared to a handgun), but don't go out looking for trouble unless you're a first responder and it's your job. (In which case you'll be a lot better equipped than a normal concealed carrier.)

Except that it is quite possible that one might have no choice b/c they work in (or have to travel through) an area so afflicted.

Terry G said:

"If I'm just going to the store for a gallon of milk I just drop my .22 Deringer, Ruger LCP, or similiar small caliber pistol in my pocket." Good idea? Bad idea? I always thought and taught when you go armed, no matter where, you go armed. That means your EDC.

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I would not consider an LCP as a small caliber pistol.

I would not consider a derringer of any kind to be a suitable CC firearm.

JMNSHO.

bdickens said:

Except that it is quite possible that one might have no choice b/c they work in (or have to travel through) an area so afflicted.

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I guess some businesses stay open during riots, although the company I was working for at the time of the '92 ones told everybody to stay home. During Watts I went to work but where I worked was far enough away from where the rioting was occurring that it wasn't really terribly risky.

But yes, you might work somewhere like a hospital that has to be open 24/7, and in that case you need to do whatever you can to protect yourself. Other measures in addition to arming yourself shouldn't be overlooked in such a case, for example maybe doing your commute together with co-workers, and skipping stopping anywhere on the way there or back.

Re traveling through, first idea is take a different route, even if it takes much longer, better to lose an hour or two every day for the duration if that can keep you alive.

old lady new shooter said:

That said, when rioting is occurring, it seems to me that going outside to the location of the riot is pretty much the golden example of "going to stupid places". If the rioters come to break into your house, absolutely defend yourself (and in your house you can use your AR, helping your odds considerably compared to a handgun), but don't go out looking for trouble unless you're a first responder and it's your job. (In which case you'll be a lot better equipped than a normal concealed carrier.)

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I was recently speaking with a friend who - like us - was in LA in ‘92. They observed that this time is different in large part because - while the intensity was lower - it was both more widespread and harder to predict. It hit more of the suburbs, among other things.

I’m going to borrow a page from Frank and end with a little quote, which about as funny as a joke about expecting trouble but more apropos to the times we’re in:

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.
— Frederick Douglass

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Anyone who has any illusions about that can just watch the news over the past week for a lesson in what Mr. Douglass was warning us about.

drobs said:

This is what I picture my use of a LCP380 would look like:


That being said Missouri more or less has a "Stand Your Ground Law" allowing armed citizens to protect others with our firearms.

A person may, subject to the provisions of subsection 2 of this section, use physical force upon another person when and to the extent he or she reasonably believes such force to be necessary to defend himself or herself or a third person from what he or she reasonably believes to be the use or imminent use of unlawful force by such other person,


Defending another person, in my book - is going on the offense.

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Did any of the shots actually hit? Looks the perp is trying to rob the store no matter what, including having two people shooting at him.

Let’s face it, the majority of the time a single shot pistol is enough to end the conflict.
If you take into account the amount times a gun is seen, not even fired, and the bad guys suddenly change their minds as run off. Also sometimes when producing the gun doesn’t work the first shot, or sometimes the sound of it, will work.

Let’s also face it, more gun will always be better, period and sometimes not having enough gun will get you killed.


I have carried everything from a .22 to a .45

All that said, I carry what I want when I want and not to be rude but I don’t care what anyone thinks about it.... I suggest you do the same, it it’s a .22 short NAA Mini fine, if it’s a .50 cal desert eagle with 5 extended mags also fine, it’s your life and a (relatively) free country.

Terry G said:

"If I'm just going to the store for a gallon of milk I just drop my .22 Deringer, Ruger LCP, or similiar small caliber pistol in my pocket." Good idea? Bad idea? I always thought and taught when you go armed, no matter where, you go armed. That means your EDC.

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Many years ago, I bought a NAA .22LR mini-revolver (1 1/8” barrel, 5 shots) for just such use. Then after carrying it a bit, the thought crossed my mind that if I ever found myself in a threatening situation against an armed attacker who wasn’t immediately focused on me, I didn’t have enough confidence in its ballistics or rate of fire to be confident of using it effectively even with well-placed center-mass shots. Even as a snake gun, the one and only time I shot a small snake with CCI rat shot, the snake shrugged it off and proceeded about its business, As a range toy, it was great fun, and surprisingly accurate, and a great example of craftsmanship, but it was not confidence-inspiring as a defensive tool.

I feel somewhat the same way about everyday carry of an LCP or similar. I can carry a 3913 single-stack 9mm in shorts and a T-shirt, so about the only time I have use for a micro-pistol is bike riding or running, when body movement or positioning make a 9mm less practical. The micro .380s are really neat, and I would actually have some confidence in one in a pinch, but when I can comfortably carry a slightly larger gun I can draw and shoot better, I prefer to.

benEzra said:

Many years ago, I bought a NAA .22LR mini-revolver (1 1/8” barrel, 5 shots) for just such use. Then after carrying it a bit, the thought crossed my mind that if I ever found myself in a threatening situation against an armed attacker who wasn’t immediately focused on me, I didn’t have enough confidence in its ballistics or rate of fire to be confident of using it effectively even with well-placed center-mass shots. Even as a snake gun, the one and only time I shot a small snake with CCI rat shot, the snake shrugged it off and proceeded about its business, As a range toy, it was great fun, and surprisingly accurate, and a great example of craftsmanship, but it was not confidence-inspiring as a defensive tool.

I feel somewhat the same way about everyday carry of an LCP or similar. I can carry a 3913 single-stack 9mm in shorts and a T-shirt, so about the only time I have use for a micro-pistol is bike riding or running, when body movement or positioning make a 9mm less practical. The micro .380s are really neat, and I would actually have some confidence in one in a pinch, but when I can comfortably carry a slightly larger gun I can draw and shoot better, I prefer to.

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Those types of handguns are close to contact range only. There is good reason they are often referred to as belly guns. 22 LR ratshot or snakeshot is misnamed and should be called mouseshot as they only useful for killing mice.

Axis II said:

Still don’t get why everyone lives in so much fear they can’t walk to the mailbox or mow the lawn without being armed. If that’s your thing go for it but it’s overkill.

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I've told this story before, I walked out of my house one night on my way to work not 20 feet from the front door to my car and in that time somebody tried to rob me.

My mailbox was farther away.

Nicky Santoro said:

more likely it will be some punk who will crap his pants and run when your "mouse gun" is pointed at his face.

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A surprising number of those punks have had other people besides you point guns at them. Some of them have even been shot at or shot before.

It's very likely that your FIRST time dealing with one of them is their HUNDREDTH time dealing with someone like you.

They're far more likely to dare you to shoot them than crap their pants and run away. Guess how I know.

Trunk Monkey said:

I've told this story before ...

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I may have told this story before: decades ago, I was in a car returning home and something didn’t seem right. Nothing to put fingers on, but alarm bells were jingling so we drove on, looped around, and approached again from the other direction. The extra drive was probably 2 minutes. When we got back, a neighbor was sitting on the ground about 15 feet from our front door, blood coming from his forehead, after having been mugged. Whole thing happened in the time it took us to drive around a block and come back.

When I exit the residence, I am armed. Also I'm not in to the carry gun rotation concept. A semiautomatic 9x19mm is either going to be good enough or it isn't but that's the way its going to be, if I fail in avoidance of stupid people, places and things.