velocette wrote:
I carry homeowners insurance, Car insurance, Health insurance, Dive accident insurance, Insurance on my underwater camera gear & firearms insurance.
Exactly. The backup gun is nothing other than an insurance policy for the primary should something go wrong. Carrying a primary and a backup, you are not carrying 2 guns, in my opinion - you are carrying one with a little certainty or reassurance attached to it.
BigBang wrote:
For the average person carrying more than one gun is pure paranoia.
A rather histrionic characterization of BUG carriers. Unsupportable, entirely subjective, and therefore, meaningless. Given that "paranoia" is defined by the New Oxford American Dictionary as "suspicion and mistrust of people or their actions without evidence or justification", it should be clear that we all must be paranoid even if carrying only one gun, since the presence of any weapon at all indicates the acknowedgment of danger. That's where paranoia, if any, enters into the equation, and if such an acknowedgment of danger equals being paranoid, then you must admit we're all guilty of it, whether we carry one weapon or several.
After the possibility of needing a weapon has been established, the question merely becomes one of preparedness. How prepared do you wish to be?
The chances that you'll ever need just one gun are very small. The chances that you'll need to shoot that gun are even smaller.
Yes, I agree. On track so far.
The chances that the gun will malfunction that one time you need it are Infinitesimally small.
Oops, the train just de-railed, I think.
First of all, though the chances of actually needing a weapon to save one's bacon are small, once hostilities have commenced in whatever form they happen to take on the particular day if/when you win the lottery, I think some surprises will be in store for you. When things go wrong, they tend to go wrong in big bunches. To attempt to predict the exact cause of having to resort to a BUG is simply naive. Aside from mechanical failures of the weapon, there are a number of other reasons why a second gun is an excellent idea. A couple big ones are
1) if your primary is taken from you in a close quarters situation where contact is inevitable
2) if your primary is not accessible due to the physical position of your body at the time, but backup is
I happen to think that, once those 1 in 10,000,000 odds of having to use your gun have caught up with you, the odds of some other nasty and undesirable things happening during the fight will drastically improve. Infinitesmally small odds? Maybe of a pure mechanical malfunction, but not of having something else happen to the primary.
ooreach said:
(explain that on your next traffic stop 'officer I have a CCW license and I have a weapon in a strong side IWB holster.......oh and I've got another in my ankle holster and oh a knife in my right pocket with my spare ammo.
ghalleen said:
I also don't want to be the guy sitting before a jury hoping to convince them that I wasn't "looking for a fight" with my 2 guns, a knife, tactical light, spare ammo, and an assault rifle in the car. Can you say "convicted"?
What? "Looking for a fight"?
If you ever have to deal with people so irrational as to consider the carrying of multiple weapons as an indication of hostile intent, guess what? Those are the same people who are going to blame you for carrying a single weapon, too. If the jury has a scrap of common sense or honesty, you will be fine in the end. If not, then you're finished anyway. To tailor your carry habits - which are supposed to help you survive a potentially lethal attack - around what may happen after the attack is a disordering of priorities.
When I think of someone carrying a primary and BUG, extra magazines, a folding knife, etc., I think "There goes somebody who is serious about his protection, somebody who probably trains periodically, invests in good equipment and has a healthy attitude about the real world and its dangers". I do not think "There goes a punk looking for a fight". I think other honest, logical people, whether they have anything to do with guns or not, would think something along the same lines. And as I said above, if they're not honest, then forget about it, there's no hope anyway.
The image that comes to mind of someone "looking for a fight" is that of a gangbanger with a single gun stuck in a waistband of some falling-down jeans.
Both the stereotypes mentioned above are, of course, just that. Stereotypes. There are serious, well-equipped and -trained bad guys and inept, lackadaisical good guys carrying guns. But we're talking about how the impression that certain practices would create on a rational jury. In my opinion, provided the person who defended herself did so properly and explained her actions clearly, a fair jury would acquit in a heartbeat regardless of the involvement of one gun or several on the part of the carrier.
Simply put, a BUG is an option. Some of us are able and willing to provided ourselves with such an option, and choose to do so out of a desire to be as prepared as possible.
I am a LEO and I will acknowledge the wisdom of carrying a BUG if you are entering a situation where you can REASONABLY expect to use it, like uniformed patrol or an arrest situation. When going out on an arrest, I routinely carry some form of backup (second handgun, or long gun and primary handgun) as well as pepper spray, a vest, cuffs, etc. A CCW holder isn't in the same situation, however. The big difference is that LEO's are supposed to continue on with the fight until the bad guy is in custody or otherwise neutralized, 'cause the public pays us to keep them safe. A CCW holder has no such responsibility, and as such the chances of his engaging in an extended armed incounter are miniscule.
