OK, last post from me tonight
MNResident,
You have ben preached at quite a bit in the last several posts. All of good advice.
I usually recommend (situation and finances permitting) any new pistolero get a 22 rimfire either before or at the same time as they get their defensive handgun. Both guns should be as similar as you can get. 22 is cheaper to shoot in practice. And EVERYONE needs LOTS of practice to be able to hit what you want when you are in a hurry. Or in the dark. Or startled. Of facing 2 or more threats.
Try this.
Put an orange on top of a table and a basketball directly behind it.. Step back 21 feet. Pick up a couple of 1/2" smooth rocks. Close your eyes and turn around (full rotation, so you are facing the orange again, but cannot know exactly where it is). Start a stopwatch and open your eyes. Try to knock the orange off the table with the rocks.
The orange is the size of a knee. The basketball is the size of a smallish human thorasic cavity.
It is much easier to wound someone in the chest than it is to wound someone in the knee. Aim for the heart, in the heat of battle, you will be lucky to hit an arm or a knee. I think if you perform this (orange and basketball) experiment, you will give up the idea of intentionally wounding someone to stop them. It is simply too likely to fail.
The laws are clear in all 50 states. You can use deadly force only when the death of your adversary is justified by your adversary's threat. If you tell an investigator that you only meant to wound a bad guy, you are telling the prosecutor that you did not feel deadly force was justified and open yourself up to prosecution. Invest in a class that covers deadly force law before you get yourself into trouble (or invest in an hour of a criminal defense lawyer's time). Concealed Carry classes required by most states to get a permit go part of the way to getting you educated. You only have the (legal) right to display, point or shoot a gun at another person if they pose an immediate, credible (and in some jurisdictions) unavoidable threat of (again, depending on jurisdiction) death, grievous bodily harm, rape, etc. Protection of property is in almost all states NOT justification to apply deadly force of any kind. In some jurisdictionss, the burden of proof is on YOU to show the person with the bullet holes (or even near misses) was a threat in order to keep yourself out of jail.
By the way, if you do have a confrontation where any amount of force is used (including just the display of your holstered weapon), you would be well advised to call the police and report it. You NEVER want to be the second one to report to the police. If your bad guy (or even a witness behind curtains) reports a man with a gun, you will meet police who will view YOU as the suspect and it will be up to you to explain all their suspicions away (including why you did not report an attempted robbery). If you are the first to report, you meet the police as the victim rather than the suspect.
Carrying deadly force is serious business.
Despite the tenor of those words above, I do encourage you to be safe, whatever that takes.
By the way, 1,500 feet per second pellet guns are kind of rare. 1,200 fps is rare, but doable. 700 fps to 1,000 fps is common.
Which brings us to sub-lethal self-defense tools. Air and CO2 guns are not.
Mace. But it does not work against dogs.
Pepper spray. Effective against anything that walks and breathes. Also is easier to aim and to hit with. Much cheaper to buy, too. (That is my preferred self-defense weapon of choice in the woods, though it is often acompanied by a .454 Casull)
Tasers and hand-held shocking weapons are currently considered sub-lethal by the law in most places. The civilian version of the Taser is not cheap, though. The hand-held units can supply 40,000 or 50,000 volts or even more and are affordable (under $100).
Martial arts training. (A good idea whether you go armed, or semi-armed or unarmed, as it will help you keep hold of your weapon in case you wind up grappling with an assailant)
Remember, many things you think of as sub-lethal (baseball bat, nunchaku -somtimes vulgarized as "nun-chucks"- and many other striking weapons) are right up alongside the handgun and the knife as lethal weapons for purposes of prosecution.
The good old 4, 5 or 6-cell maglite flashlight is good for finding addresses marked on unlit buildings, blinding attackers with the light and, in a pinch, makes a dandy club. The ones that use C-cell batteries are about the same diameter as the old policeman's billy club, too. It slips into the retainer ring on the police equipment belt (I am told).
Tactics. Imagining scenarios is fine, but they never play out the way you think. Never.
If you saw the movie "Grand Canyon", the scene where Danny Glover talks his way out of the confrontation with the street gang is pure hollywood, but kind of gives you an idea how thin the line is between just meeting someone on the street and spilling blood. You will never out-draw the street criminal if you are carrying concealed. The criminal always has the first move and the best you can do is to be ready with the first counter-measure and responding counter-attack.
Recommended reading. These will not cost you anything but time (if you have a library card).
"No Second Place Winner" by Bill Jordan
"In The Gravest Extreme" or anything else written by Massad Ayoob
The home page of "Cornered Cat" web site. The focus is geared toward armed (and unarmed) women, but everything you find there has application to men. The home page is, to my mind, required reading for anyone, anywhere outside the safety of the womb.
There are many more books I can't think of right now. There was a thread on TFL that named a whole bunch.
The carrying of deadly force is serious. But it is also empowering (though not a free pass to go to stupid places). I think of it like I think of the winch on my truck. It is not there to get me into places. It is there to get me OUT of places I would not have gone into if I knew then what I know now.
By all means, carry if you must. Carry responsibly. Carry knowledgeably. Practice lots (so you can hit what you should hit and don't hit what you shouldn't hit-like innocent bystanders). Keep the mind-set of the peaceful warrior. Alert, aware and non-confrontational. The prize to your eyes is to deliver the pizza and depart with your tip. That is the winning result. Running off a bad guy is not the prize.
Good luck.
Lost Sheep
Never go down wining or sniveling.