AAR by CHL holder who stopped robbery

Then again, I doubt I could pull the 11-12# DA trigger pull on a J-frame if hit in the hand. If you can't grip a grip safety enough to pull the trigger, you've got some serious problems already.
All of the talk over being disabled strikes me as a parallel to the discussions that yielded the old "gunman's crouch" as seen in Bill Jordan's book.
 
Good argument for training toward amidexterity, don't you think?

Personally, I recommend (and usually practice) shooting weakhand at least a little bit at every range session.
 
C0untZer0, call me paranoid, but if I carry a revolver, my primary reload is a second revolver.
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Hahaha if carrying a reload in the form of another handgunis deemed paranoid, then color me paranoid also. My primary carry is a S&W 340 in my pocket. As a disabled person it is a real challenge to reload a J-Frame for me. I have practiced reloads using left hand only and my foot with an N-Frame 629, but I don't carry the 629.

Thus my reload is a S&W 3913 in a cross draw configuation using a small camera bag. I can unzip that and draw the 3913 much faster using either hand than I can reload the J-Frame using both hands,

Most of the time I do not carry a reload anyway. I figure if I'm that deep, to where I need a reload, my chance of surviving are pretty much zero anyway.
 
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I just re-read this again the other night and was just impressed with how many important lessons there are in this. And the police photos of the crime scene and follow-up Q&A starting on pages 29 and 30 give you a real feel for what happened. Here are a few more thoughts I had regarding this story:

1. It illustrates the importance of information security in our daily lives. The get-together was targeted because the woman living upstairs informed her new ex-con boyfriend about it (and helped him buy the gun).

2. Both the attacker and the good guy were shot in the hands. Both the attacker and the good guy are extremely lucky to be alive. In the good guy's case, that innocuous chest wound that he didn't even notice missed the subclavian artery by the width of a hair according to doctors. The bad guy had loaded his snubby .38 with Speer Gold Dots; but this normally reliable load failed to expand out of the short barrel. Had they expanded even a little bit and hit the subclavian artery, the good guy would have bled out in 10-15 minutes (according to him the ambulance didn't arrive until 15 minutes).

On the attacker's side, he was hit with both shots from the .45. Once in the hands. The second shot appeared to be a dead center mass shot. If you'd have showed me that shot on a paper silhouette at the range, we'd have probably both laughed and had the "He isn't going anywhere soon!" discussion about how well we shot - except with the angle involved, the shot passed through the bad guy's clothes and never touched him.

Both men's injuries provide a good reminder of the limitations of firearms and great examples of how what look like solid hits in our 2D target practice, turn out to be much less effective than we imagined in the real 3D world.

3. Ultimately, one of the big benefits about this story is it shows how a lot of preconceived ideas about how our particular gunfight is going to go down may be wrong. In this one, the bad guy didn't flee at the first sign of a gun. He didn't immediately succumb to good center mass hits. The bad guy was carrying a quality revolved with Speer Gold Dots loaded and shot it empty in the fight.
 
Scary stuff, all it would've taken was that one Gold Dot expanding and this story would've had a completely different ending :( . I've experienced inconsistent expansion out of my own snub with Short Barrel Gold Dots and won't carry them anymore because of it. Definitely an interesting comparison showing the perps' hand compared to the good guys' hand. :eek:
 
1. It illustrates the importance of information security in our daily lives. The get-together was targeted because the woman living upstairs informed her new ex-con boyfriend about it (and helped him buy the gun).
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Thanks Bart ... Somehow I missed that in my first read of the story ... but it is a real lesson. Sometimes we can't control information, but often we can. Reducing the information flow reduces the chances that it gets into the wrong hands. Just another example of how an ounce of prevention can be worth more than a pound of cure.

Saands
 
I find it disturbing (but I'll get over it) that the attacker was carrying hollowpoints. That goes against the stereotype that I wish I could adopt - that criminals are thoughtless and ill prepared. Well, in some areas of life they are thoughtless but that's a different matter.

His girlfriend helped him get the gun - I'm guessing that's a straw purchase, and she probably received some help at the store to purchase effective rounds for it.

So while I can almost hear someone saying "see! if the girlfriend couldn't purchase the gun then the boyfriend wouldn't have got it". but where there's a will there's a way and someone bent on breaking the law has wider boundaries / resources to draw on. About carry licenses: the attacker was illegally carrying the firearm (if it's true he was an ex-con) and the defender was doing so legally. This is an argument for licensed carry. If concealed firearm licenses were banned the attacker could have used a large knife (also illegal to carry in some places) while the defender might only have folding pocket knife...so long as it wasn't beyond 2.5 or 3 inches or whatever the magic number is.

Sorry to get off topic, preaching to the choir I know. That robber seemed to have thought it through, commanding everyone to lay down on their stomach which would hamper physical movement and vision. Just a bit unsettling.
 
This is not an unfamiliar scenario. Pretty much any convenience store or bank robbery has a propensity to play out like this, as the BG's attempt to control a larger number of citizens. Makes a good case for practicing the draw from the "surrender" position, practicing prone handgun shooting, and perhaps even getting a wallet-holster for a pocket gun, so that you're pulling out your wallet and get the drop on him that way.
 
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