Bartholomew Roberts
Moderator
According to some admittedly very dated studies, approximately 90% of self-defense uses of a firearm involve no shots fired a d just the display of a firearm.
The very controversial Marshal/Sanow data, which arguably may not even be genuine data, if nothing else seems to suggest that regardless of the caliber used, a single shot deters attack in 60% of the cases that make it past the threshhold above.
So in a very wide swath of self-defense shootings, just having a working firearm of any caliber is sufficient.
Of course, if you happen to be at the extreme ends of the odds, that is probably not much comfort. If you do happen to run in to a dedicated attacker willing to press the attack in the face of death or serious bodily injury, then the list of acceptable firearms and ammo narrows quite a bit.
But do we focus so much on the extreme end of that scale (low probability; but extremely serious consequences) that we leave ourselves vulnerable to more probable scenarios because our FBI-approved service caliber pistol isn't handy when we need it?
The very controversial Marshal/Sanow data, which arguably may not even be genuine data, if nothing else seems to suggest that regardless of the caliber used, a single shot deters attack in 60% of the cases that make it past the threshhold above.
So in a very wide swath of self-defense shootings, just having a working firearm of any caliber is sufficient.
Of course, if you happen to be at the extreme ends of the odds, that is probably not much comfort. If you do happen to run in to a dedicated attacker willing to press the attack in the face of death or serious bodily injury, then the list of acceptable firearms and ammo narrows quite a bit.
But do we focus so much on the extreme end of that scale (low probability; but extremely serious consequences) that we leave ourselves vulnerable to more probable scenarios because our FBI-approved service caliber pistol isn't handy when we need it?