daliff89, I've thoroughly explained how you may have to take a contact shot, your argument on the matter is becoming circular. However, I will thoroughly explain it one more time:
you are lying on the ground on your back, your elbow is against the ground so you cannot move it backward any further, you forearm is flexed up towards your elbow as far as you can flex it, the only possible ways in which you can move the gun in your hand away from the person on top of you is to move your forearm down, in, or out all of which will change the trajectory of your shot, depending on your position changing the trajectory of your shot may cause your bullet not to strike vital organs. I cannot make it any clearer than that without a visual demonstration, if you still don't understand then I'm afraid I can't help you.
If your opponent pushes your gun away from him,
then your muzzle isn't pointing at him anymore, or at least not at the area of his body you were pointing it at, and you will miss your target (the specific area of his body) when you fire. Simply shooting someone anywhere you can will not necessarily prevent him from stabbing or continuing to stab you, at that point you're relying on pain and psychological factors neither of which are reliable incapacitators.
Firing from inside a pocket may not be a concern to you, but it is to myself and many others. Pocket carry is, in many circumstances, the only practical way for me to conceal a firearm sometimes. Not carrying a spare magazine does not negate the possibility of a lost mag, if fact it exacerbates it. The push-button type magazine release which is most popular on semi-autos marketed in the U.S. is much easier to inadvertently hit, thus dropping the mag, than the European-style heel-clip thought he former is much faster to reload with. A damaged magazine doesn't necessarily manifest itself immediately. Weak magazine springs and damaged followers can cause problems intermittently.
not to mention that if i have to use a weapon with a 33 round magazine, i'm concerned with the fact that a prosecutor may say 'look, there's no reason for all those rounds, he was looking for trouble!!'
it's the same reason i'd never carry a reload...
'look, he spent time measuring the powder and casting the bullet so it did the most damage, he's blood thirsty!!'
do i agree with either of those stances? not at all, but it's something a prosecutor could present...
And a prosecutor could just as easily argue that a pistol carrying 15 rounds suggests that you're a bloodthirsty Rambo-wannabe looking for an excuse to shoot someone. In fact, you can come up with an argument that a prosecutor could make about nearly any conceivable handgun, ammunition, or accessory. You come to a point that fear of not carrying adequate armament must trump fear of a prosecutor lest you carry nothing at all.
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Well I certainly hope that works out for you. However, my circumstances dictate that I'm most likely to be attacked by an individual so large that I may not have the physical strength to get him off of me. Just because you are or are not able to do something doesn't me that I can or cannot do the same thing.
as i said before, if you're most worried about a giant jumping on top of you, perhaps you should look into some training as to how to get the giant off of you
it's not about strength, it's about leverage
poke him in one side, his reflex is to move to the other side to avoid the poking.......that puts him off balance, just keep pushing him and he should roll off, enough to pull the pistol back a short distance at least
Leverage still requires a certain amount of physical strength. There is no way to predict whether an individual will be too large to get off of you. Also, you're assuming that you'll be in a position, or at least able to move into a position, that affords you that leverage, you can make no such guarantee. As far as the poking him in the side thing, there is also a fairly active drug problem in my area, different drugs can affect all sorts of body functions including reflexes and perception/response to pain. Poking someone in the side doesn't do any good if they can't feel it.
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There is no way you can know that because you don't know me, my circumstances, or what situation I may find myself in. I've not tried to tell you or anyone else that they're inadequately armed for all but one specific circumstance, I would suggest that you do likewise.
it doesn't matter what situation you're in
logic, which is something you're apparently adverse to, states that the more tries you have, the more likely you are to succeed once
if i have more tries than you, i'm probably going to get better results than you are
Unless of course you're only got a limited number of "tries" due to constraints of time and/or distance. As I mentioned earlier, the average person can close a 7 yard gap in 1-2 seconds. I cannot, and I would wager that the average person cannot, draw a handgun from concealment and fire more shots that what a revolver or single-stack auto holds in that amount of time. Once your attacker is upon you, the likelihood of a contact shot increases dramatically. If the attacker is at a substantially longer distance than 7 yards, which makes the claim of self-defense much more difficult in court, then
I am still better served with a revolver as
I can shoot one at distance much more accurately than
I can a semi-automatic.
plus, a semi will work just fine in a contact shot, just not one where it's pressed into something soft enough to form around the barrel yet stiff enough to push the slide back
i can push this Sig as hard as i can into this table and my hammer still drops...
Just because the hammer drops, that does not mean it will contact the firing pin correctly and fire the pistol. Also, even if it fires, it is unlikely that it will do so repeatedly at contact distance due to both pressure on the front of the slide and barrel and the close proximity of fire increasing the likelihood that the ejection port will be obstructed thus preventing full extraction/ejection of the spent case.
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While an interesting story, that is nothing more than anecdotal an does not prove or disprove anything. Had your friend simply displayed a firearm of his own, his attackers might have run away, but that doesn't prove that the mere display of a gun will always end an attack.
the point of the story was, you can't always avoid violence, even from large groups of people, and that just because your potential attackers are smaller than you doesn't mean they won't attack you.
My point is that just because it happened to one person, that does not mean it will happen to another. There have also been cases of both civilians and police who couldn't stop an attacker because he was wearing body armor, but that doesn't mean you should automatically trade in your .45 for an FN FiveSeven. You can find examples of nearly any obscure scenario you like if you look hard enough, but you cannot prepare yourself for every single one of them.
offenders are more likely to target a victim that looks like an easy mark, that's true, but that doesn't mean the skinny guy's not going to run up to you at a stop light thinking 'even if that big guy has a gun, he won't be able to get to it before i make him get out of the car'
you're planning on the fact that a bigger guy is going to attack you because you're bigger, and because of that, you want a pistol with more penetration (that makes sense)......but you're admittedly sacrificing things to be able to carry that pistol with more penetration, so if you get attacked by someone who isn't a big person, you've made those sacrifices needlessly
You're forgetting the converses of these. If you carry a high-capacity handgun sacrificing other factors to do so, and you're able to stop a threat in just a few rounds, or no rounds at all, you made those sacrifices needlessly. Likewise, if I don't carry a deep penetrating handgun and I am attacked by a large individual, then I've not made sacrifices that I should have. I'm far more likely to need deep penetration than high-capacity, so that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.
Also, I feel that a revolver is probably the best choice for a 'casual shooter'. This does not apply to most of us here because this is a forum for firearm enthusiasts, but not all or even the majority of the gun owning public is a firearm enthusiast. Even in states where training is mandated prior to receiving a license/permit to carry a gun (and not all states mandate that), proficiency requires both training and practice in order to attain. The inherent simplicity of a revolver makes it easier to use than a semi-automatic when one has not trained intensively with his/her firearm, particularly when in a high-stress situation. You can say that everyone should train intensively with his/her chosen firearm, and I agree with that wholeheartedly. Unfortunately, many people simply will not train intensively with their firearms due to ignorance, laziness, or time/money constraints. For these people, the gun with the simplest possible manual of arms is best and a revolver undoubtedly has a simpler manual of arms than a semi-auto does.
Semi-autos also require more maintenance than a revolver does. If one carries and shoots a semi-automatic regularly, then he or she needs to replace recoil and magazine springs at regular intervals in order to ensure reliability. Also, ammunition should be rotated regularly due to bullet-setback issues from repeated chambering. A revolver, on the other hand, can sit fully loaded for years without a single spring under further compression that if the gun were unloaded. Because they do not have to go through a feeding cycle, revolvers also do not have issue with bullet setback and as such rotation of ammunition is not as crucial as with a semi-automatic.
It has been my experience that just as many, if not more, gun owners fit the definition of a casual shooter as they do a firearms enthusiast, particularly with the boom in gun sales over the past few years. It is for this reason that I disagree about a semi-auto being the best choice for the vast majority of people.
