The FLIP SIDE to "revolver vs semi" debates

I have little doubt there's a significant difference between civilian self-defense round count and that of LE engagements. The latter appears to typically be a mag dump in the general direction of the target.

One that comes to mind is the hundreds of rounds LAPD expended shooting nearby homes, trees and vehicles while shooting at two newspaper delivery ladies in a pickup that "could possibly have contained" Christian Dorner.

Any time you hear about the use of firearms by the NYPD, it's a similar story. Dozens of citizens injured while these brave, but unskilled public servants unload their guns in the general direction of their target.
 
The handgun, revolver or semi, is just something to use until you can get to a real gun.
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That cliche is SOOOOOOO old.

The reality is the fight will be what the fight will be and you will win,lose or draw with what you have with you.
 
If there were a way to track such things, I believe that it would prove true that a defender is far more likely to fire more than 6 rounds than they are to experience a malfunction during the course of a DGU. I suspect that revolvers are significantly more likely to cease functioning during a DGU than semis are, for this reason alone.
 
I believe that it would prove true that a defender is far more likely to fire more than 6 rounds than they are to experience a malfunction during the course of a DGU. I suspect that revolvers are significantly more likely to cease functioning during a DGU than semis are, for this reason alone.
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I will happily agree that if you shoot your gun dry, no matter if it is 5 shots or 15 that it will cease functioning. I also agree that a person is statistically much more likely to do that than have a malfunction.

I do not, however see the point when comparing autos to revolvers, for personal defensive use.

If you shoot your gun dry, either through inclination or because someone has trained you to "shoot to slide lock", it has little to do with auto or revolver, it has to do with you missing,... a lot.

Available data suggests the vast majority of "defensive gun uses" don't involve the gun being fired at all. Decades of data from actual defensive shootings show that less than 3 shots is the average. Sure, this means many take more, but it also means many only take 1, or none.

Hollywood is (and has been for quite some time) teaching us exactly ALL the WRONG things to do, almost all the time. Sadly, that is all the "training" a lot of people ever get.
 
We can only estimate the number of times per year people draw a gun for self defense. Could be over 100,000 time a year in the U.S.A. This is because shots are seldom fired in these situations, and subsequently, the cops are not called. And yet there are people who want to carry an auto with 18 rounds in the mag like they're going to storm a beach or ward off a horde of Comanche galloping through town.
 
What is a DGU?

The only times my revolvers have ceased functioning is the same reason my AK-47 does, no more ammo.
 
44 AMP said:
If you shoot your gun dry, either through inclination or because someone has trained you to "shoot to slide lock", it has little to do with auto or revolver, it has to do with you missing,... a lot.



Available data suggests the vast majority of "defensive gun uses" don't involve the gun being fired at all. Decades of data from actual defensive shootings show that less than 3 shots is the average. Sure, this means many take more, but it also means many only take 1, or none.



Hollywood is (and has been for quite some time) teaching us exactly ALL the WRONG things to do, almost all the time. Sadly, that is all the "training" a lot of people ever get.
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No. Shooting until empty absolutely does not mean that you are missing. The fact that this myth is perpetuated mystifies me, because we have MANY examples of situations where multiple attackers were involved, or where one attacker simply refused to stop.

Around last summer, a woman emptied a 6 shot revolver into an attacker, getting 5 hits, including two in the head. The attacker walked away, got into a car, and tried to drive to get medical attention.

An officer I know was in a gunfight where he fired 7 shots, scoring 4 hits, and the BG lived. The officer was hit once, and also continued to fight. Had he been carrying a revolver, the officer would have run dry. He didn't shoot seven times because he was missing. He kept shooting because it took multiple hits.

There is also the simple fact that it takes less time to fire than it does for a bad guy to react, because Hollywood is wrong, and BGs don't instantly drop when shot. You keep shooting until they stop. You do not shoot, check for a hit, wait to see what happens, then shoot again.

Please, STOP with this nonsense about only firing X rounds because of misses. It is strictly false.
 
Shooting until empty absolutely does not mean that you are missing.
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I think it does. You may be hitting your attacker, but you have missed stopping them.

I do recognize that there are cases where this is not the shooter's fault. But, you must also recognize that there are also cases where the shooter just blazes away (spray and pray), even some folks in uniform do this. Few, however will admit to it after the fact.

Look, we can both come up with plenty of cases of no rounds fired, and cases of guns being shot dry, reloaded and shot dry again. All exist, and so does everything in between.

Times change, attitudes change. At one time, a double tap, then assess was commonly taught. Today, its not. At one time, cops were "taught" to pick up their brass before firing the next string. That training proved fatally flawed on the street...

I'm not saying how often you should shoot in any given situation, You do what you think best, at the time.
 
44 AMP said:
I think it does. You may be hitting your attacker, but you have missed stopping them.
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Going to touch on some things that should be common knowledge at this point:

1. The overwhelming majority of handgun shootings do not result in death. It is estimated that 1 in 7 people shot with a handgun die. Note: this only speaks to the final outcome. This is NOT "1 in 7 die instantly". It is "1 in 7 die at some point as a result of the injury".

2. A hit ANYWHERE else, including high chest hits, and even hits to the heart do not result in an instant stop. Some of these may cause inability to fight within seconds, but a LOT can happen in seconds, and it is a bad idea to stop fighting to try to figure out if you got this type of hit. MOST non CNS hits take quite awhile to force a stop-- that is, to remove the attacker's ability to continue.

3. Those 0-2 hit DGUs are almost all non fatal. Those generally aren't examples of 'getting fight stopping hits'. They're examples of bad guys having the fight scared out of them.

4. When an attacker is NOT scared out of their activity, and they are shot until they can no longer continue, a defender is very likely to require multiple hits, and is unlikely to expire in less than 1 minute (or even 3 minutes).


All of this is to say that we can not plan on, or assume, that being accurate will result in an immediate incapacitation, unless we're talking about being accurate to a point where we get brain stem hits on a moving target, while we are moving, with adrenaline pumping, while fighting for our lives. If you expect that kind of accuracy, there is really no reason to continue this discussion, because that is about the same as quitting your job because you expect the lottery ticket you just bought to set you up for life.
 
So at the IDPA match a couple of days ago:

1. A national champ managed to get a round stuck under the ejection star of his revolver.

2. A new 625 had several failures to ignite a round. Might be bad primer seating of reloads.

3. A Springfield XD something turned into a single shot pistol - gun or reloads - not determined at the time.

4. On my first stage, my 1911 jammed. Bah - cleared it and it ran like a charm for the next 100 or so rounds.

So everything mechanical can go belly up. My Glock 19 did at a big event. When I bought a SW 19 used - someone had messed with the springs and it was very light on the strike - had to be fixed. Good thing I tested it rather than put it under the pillow.
 
WOW there is a LOT of information in the NYPD statistics. Took a while to even glance through the data, but from a quick gleaning I gathered: With a few exceptions(for grandfathered revolvers) all the NYPD issue and authorized weapons are semi-auto, in all the shootings listed no officer reported any malfunctions of their firearm most police vs. suspect shootings were less than 5 shots, dogs take less shots to stop but are harder to hit. Lots more information in the 2012 report but all the numbers and stats are running together in my mind. However the single best piece of information from the 2012 report, no police officers where killed by gunfire, some were shot and injured but none died. LEO's going home to families at the end of the shift is a good thing.

I cheated on the 2009 data and just looked for malfunctions, 6 officers reported weapons malfunctions, 3 of them were able to clear the malfunction and fire a subsequent round.
 
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RBid,

The neophyte talks of one-shot-stops, accuracy, mythical manstopper bullets, and the like. The initiated doesn't talk much, but when he does it's about about avoiding gunfights and not dying if one can't be avoided.

But cyber gun talk (platform talk for the politically correct crowd) is fun.
 
I understand the OP wanting some statistics on different aspects of defensive gun use but I think the value of such statistics (I'll use the NYPD as an example since that's what we have) is severely degraded without knowing specifics about the people using them.

What do we know about our data? The NYPD is composed primarily of able-bodied men openly carrying SA pistols with at least some semblance of a training schedule. Those who have joined the force since 1994 will be carrying semi-automatic Glock, Sig Sauer P226, and S&W 5946 DAO pistols (date and issued guns are according to wikipedia). This makes the NYPD stats great for guys like us, who are primarily able-bodied men with some semblance of a training schedule and familiarity with semi-autos. But, they're next to useless for someone who falls outside of that norm.

My little sister for example will happily and accurately shoot a 4" .357 magnum in single or double action, but put a semi-automatic 9mm in her hands and it stovepipes every time unless she makes a conscious effort to hold it firmly. On the other hand, I'm pretty good with a single action semi-automatic but a semi or revolver with a long double-action trigger will occasionally trip me up because I'm used to short triggers and I'll let off the trigger before the shot breaks. We also don't have a range nearby so live-fire practice is limited. These are things that wouldn't be taken into account by DGU statistics.

The NYPD statistics provide a lot of information but would not help me or my sister in choosing a defensive weapon type because they primarily measure end results of specific double-action or striker-fired pistols (that my sister and I are not naturally inclined to shoot well anyway). We also behave differently. I can shoot 10 rounds of .45 faster and as accurately as I can 6 of .357. My sister on the other hand shoots slowly. An extra four rounds of .45 would be nice, but her chances of placing up to 6 shots well with the revolver are markedly better than her placing the first 6 well with any semi-automatic in the same time frame. So the short answer for any revolver vs. semi-automatic debate is, it depends on who's shooting it.
 
SansSouci said:
But cyber gun talk (platform talk for the politically correct crowd) is fun.
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SansSouci (from another thread) said:
I can't find a platform store in the phone book. However, we have a few gun stores in our neck of the woods.

I never was much for the politically correct crowd.
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That's the second time I've seen you mistunderstand the term "platform" as being a politically correct term. It has NOTHING to do with being politically correct, it's a term used to describe a general type of gun. For example: An AR-15 is not any one specific gun, it's a core design that many companies build off of, hence the term "platform".

If you don't understand the term, that's fine. But your uninformed sarcasm on this and other subjects in other threads is starting to wear on me.
 
well a 30-06 to the forehead ought to provide that "mythical" one shot stop.
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Context miss. The "mythical one shot stop" language is a slight exaggeration intentionally applied to handgun discussion for the purpose of making a point about the general suck that is handgun stopping ability.
 
I think the difference in reliability of an auto and a revolver at this point is more or less user based. For someone who rarely or never shoots a DA revolver is much easier. Have you ever seen someone load bullets into a revolver backwards?
 
I get so tired of hearing this over and over and over again. It's really not a good idea to rely on this sound to scare away an attacker; that means you're intentionally keeping the chamber empty until the bad guy is close enough to hear it. And at this point he knows where you are and what kind of weapon you have.
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And everytime that saying is used, the people replying seem to misunderstand it. Noone is saying that you should RELY on the sound to scare the attacker off right away. It's just another trick up your sleeve. I keep my shotgun loaded with an empty chamber. If the bad guy decides to continue with his actions, believe me, the next sound coming from that gun will be alot louder and alot more violent than a "cha-chuk". Then again, my house is small enough that any intruder will be pretty well aware of my position regardless of any noises I make.

As for the reliability of autos VS revolvers, I would have to give that to autos as well. Let's be honest here. Any decent quality semi of reasonably recent manufacture will be plenty reliable if you test it with the ammo you plan to use. While a revolver my be slightly less likely to jam up, when they jam, they JAM. And it's pretty much out of commission until you get it back home and sort it out. If a semi jams, tap and rack and you're back in business. No sweat.

Revolvers are fun range toys but for defense, I'll take a bottom-feeder please.
 
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