Lohman446 said:
I have made the argument that my skill set limits the amount of ammunition that is useful to me. I have acknowledged I may have miscalculated and such may result in my demise. I have simply noted my demise is ultimately unavoidable and outside of some close people it would impact a few decades difference in my demise is not of import to the greater society.
I'll agree that you've never said that less was better -- and also that your argument was YOUR plan, and yours alone -- and not proposed for anyone else. You seem to have spent a good deal of thought refining your likely course of action in a self-defense situation and its justification.
The part of your rationale and justification I find difficult to grasp, however, is that you seem to think that your skill set (whatever that may be) is likely to be effective in situations where only a relatively few shots will ever be fired and the whole event will never take more than a few minutes. Is that realistic?
What if an armed attacker with a handgun is a poor shot, is nervous, backs away and then reengages, is impaired (drugs or liquor), or the event takes place over a longer period of time because the surroundings offer cover but few escape routes? What if you can make it to cover? It might not take more rounds than you carry, but it might take a lot longer to get out of harm's way.
Time and the rounds available are not necessarily a fixed ratio. That said, I'll agree that most recorded civilian self-defense events seem to be 1-4 rounds over an unknown time frame. There can be exceptions -- but it's the exceptions -- like being attacked in the first place -- that we're all trying to address.)
Some very poorly-skilled people have survived very perilous situations simply because they were determined to live, didn't give up, and just continued the fight.
Lohman446 said:
Ever watch martial arts training for a knife attack? Its laughably scripted and inspires dangerous self confidence. Very easy for training to model unrealistic scenarios based on the bias of the trainer.
Unlike the training offered for most of the martial arts, most handgun trainees get their training very irregularly or infrequently. And there is really little way to TEST whether the trainee has mastered the skills being taught (and can demonstrate them a day or week later.) To make matters worse, there also isn't a really consistent body of basic skills being taught -- content can vary greatly from one instructor to the next.
This discussion and the one about wound ballistics titled "A gel expert explains" on The High Road forum have caused me to rethink my planned use of a small .380 pistol for daily carry. I had spent time and money improving the gun with after-market parts, and practiced enough to become somewhat proficient and comfortable with the gun at the range. I'd argue that this particular gun is about as effective as a true .380 pocket gun can be.
Over the past week, after reading a lot of the links in the
The High Road discussion, I have come to understand that I was unconsciously assuming that any of my shots that DID NOT miss (which could be just one or two hits, given the chaos of such battles) -- even if they were not
Central Nervous System (
CNS) hits -- were likely to deter or stop most attackers. That probably is NOT going to be the case.
I now believe that most center-fire rounds are unlikely to stop an attacker quickly without a
CNS hit, but that 9mm or or higher caliber rounds will likely to do a better job of slowing down or stopping an attacker than a small .380. (I also acknowledge that most of these small pocket guns are harder to shoot accurately if only because of so-so triggers and marginal sights.)
I've now rethought my rationale and my unconscious justifications for it, and I now think I'll almost always be carrying a slightly larger higher-caliber gun with bit more capacity. Why? I want to be able to be ready for more of those exceptions.