I've seen Claude's article.
He is a very good person, but I place little or no credence on The Armed Citizen reports. Vey few, if any involve rapidly unfolding violent encounters--in fact in many cases, defenders had time to go elsewhere and retrieve their weapons.
The idea that most people would refrain from deciding to fire until an attacker is almost within arms length, and still stop the attacker successfully, makes no sense. Projectiles do not stop people instantly.
The defenders are invariably successful. The data are select.
The fact that most of the incidents occur within highly defensible property may enter into it. The evidentiary threshold for a reasonable belief that an imminent threat exists is lower.
And while the defenders reportedly always get attaboys, at least some of the reports are of incidents in which legal experts argue that the defenders' actions were likely unlawful. They were lucky.
I have stopped three home invaders and one would-be robber in a tore. No shots fired.
But if someone were to come around a gas pump at five meters per second, I know how unlikely it would be for two shots to hit anything critical, and I know that I would be most unlikely to be able to recognize the fact of an effective stop immediately upon the firing of the shot that stopped. I am trained to fire three to five shots very rapidly after moving. And that certainly may not be adequate.
The few data that have been posted here over the years indicate that if one is attacked, there are as likely to be two or more assailants as one. Common sense supports that. It enters into the risk equation,
Any hit will wound, but it is unlikely to stop. And fatalities are not the objective.
He is a very good person, but I place little or no credence on The Armed Citizen reports. Vey few, if any involve rapidly unfolding violent encounters--in fact in many cases, defenders had time to go elsewhere and retrieve their weapons.
The idea that most people would refrain from deciding to fire until an attacker is almost within arms length, and still stop the attacker successfully, makes no sense. Projectiles do not stop people instantly.
The defenders are invariably successful. The data are select.
The fact that most of the incidents occur within highly defensible property may enter into it. The evidentiary threshold for a reasonable belief that an imminent threat exists is lower.
And while the defenders reportedly always get attaboys, at least some of the reports are of incidents in which legal experts argue that the defenders' actions were likely unlawful. They were lucky.
I have stopped three home invaders and one would-be robber in a tore. No shots fired.
But if someone were to come around a gas pump at five meters per second, I know how unlikely it would be for two shots to hit anything critical, and I know that I would be most unlikely to be able to recognize the fact of an effective stop immediately upon the firing of the shot that stopped. I am trained to fire three to five shots very rapidly after moving. And that certainly may not be adequate.
The few data that have been posted here over the years indicate that if one is attacked, there are as likely to be two or more assailants as one. Common sense supports that. It enters into the risk equation,
Any hit will wound, but it is unlikely to stop. And fatalities are not the objective.