If you are going to shoot someone, the bigger the bullet, the more damage you’ll do. Lots of folks survive being shot with a .22. A lot fewer survive being hit by a Dirty Harry gun. However, you also have to consider that the kick from a bigger gun is bigger (I know… duh). If you get yourself a really huge pistol with more kick than you can handle, you’re going to be putting holes in the cieling instead of in the bad guy.
Hand guns aren’t very accurate to start with, and most folks haven’t had a whole lot of training with them either, and very few people outside of the military have been trained to shoot at another human being. I’ve heard it said that if a bad guy pulls a gun on you, just take off running and zig zag a bit as you go. In a stressful situation, someone shooting at you with an inaccurate gun who hasn’t been trained to shoot at a moving target has a very small chance of hitting you with a fatal shot.
Likewise, if the bad guy sees your Dirty Harry super duper make you pooper kind of gun and takes off running, you aren’t likely to hit him either. You are even less likely to hit him if the pistol you are shooting has too much kick for you to easily control.
I’ve seen two videos (on TV, and you can probably find them on the net somewhere) that are interesting. Both take place when a convenient store/gas station or some such is robbed, and in both cases the clerk takes out a gun and shoots back at the bad guy. In the first one, both the clerk and the bad guy are screaming bloody murder, and despite the fact that they both pretty much empty their guns at each other, neither one of them hits the other. They both walk (or run) away from the situation without a scratch (at least one change of underwear was probably required though). In the second, they both hit each other. The clerk ends up paralized for life, and the bad guy, despite having no difficutly running out the door, ends up dying later.
People buy guns thinking that they are going to be the big hero and save the day, but once the bullets start flying, it rarely ends like a Hollywood movie.
True … although if you look at a video like this it might have behooved the owner to have a gun, but given how pathetic the entire family and staff was physically against one robber who basically shrugged all them off, if the owner had a gun it would probably have been taken away from him unless he got off a killing shot first.
It’s amazing how panicky, weak, cowardly and ineffective some people are in emergencies. One store employee has a clear shot to bash the robber over the head with extinguisher, but decides to hide in another room instead.
It is trivial to reload a cartridge that has been used. It is incredibly simple to make a mold, pour a lead bullet, pack powder, and make a bullet, ready to go. Thus, putting serials on ammunition is… less than an optimal solution.
The per-unit cost of munitions is a matter of the base cost of the materilas, which in turn depends on the volume of business. Highly specialised rounds that have limited markets aren’t buffered by the savings accorded high/mass-volume business.
As for the really big handguns, some are for pure fun, some for hunting and some for target shooting.
There is a segment of the market that does, out of sheer enthusiasm and curiousity, to see how extreme these pistols can get.
Trivia question: in the movie City Heat starring Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood, Reynold’s character pulls out a very large handgun (as if to say “look what I got!”), only to have Eastwood’s character pull out an even bigger one. Were these just prop department fakes or were they real guns (albeit with custom extra-size barrels)?
I used to have an LAR Grizzley, in 45 Win Mag, which is a pretty massive handgun. I bought it because I had the money and it was fun. If I was looking to defend my home it would have been passed over for my 357 revolver. It was toy, nothing more, and never intended to be anything more than a toy. Some toys are dangerous as well.
Agreed, even some of the crappiest guns made still shoot far more consistently than the person holding it. I used to shoot IPSC stock class with a Glock19, IIRC 2.5 inch barrel. Many people would mock its accuracy yet amazingly I hit targets pretty consistently.
A lot of shooters around here look at the S&W .500 and go “Why???”
Of course, handgun hunting and owning guns for self-defence is illegal here, and the biggest guns you can legally own are the .45 calibres (.45 LC, .45ACP, .455 Webley, 45/70 Government), but even so, a .500 calibre handgun seems… excessive, unless your house is routinely attacked by Zulu Warriors of an evening.
Since the threads going all over the place, I’ll throw out two different opinions.
I don’t see the large pistols as anything more than something to brag about at the shooting range and try to impress everyone. Most visits to the shooting range involve comparisons much the same way custom car shows generate comparisons between participants. “I’ve got a rail on my AR and have a laser sight attached to it” or “My Red Dot scope make getting on target really easy”. I can see the guy firing these things at the range getting plenty of comments and watchers as he fires it. You might not want to own a Harley but someone riding one still looks cool and you might feel a twinge of envy. Being a cheap person myself, when someone in the next lane starts bragging about his $1500 - $2000 AR, I mention that my AK cost $350 and while it may not always be as accurate, I’ll go for cheap and reliable before buying something more expensive than a big screen TV.
As for handguns and defense, I see them as my preferred defense weapon in one place only, my car. In my house I have a 12 gauge pump and in any situation involving distance I have rifles. My shotgun or rifles won’t work in the confines of a car so I go with the handguns. One is a .45 and one is a .40 and I won’t go smaller than those except for target practice. I figure if shots are exchanged, most likely the majority of shots will not hit the target so the one or two that hit a moving target that is shooting at me MUST be either kills or disabling shots. I’m certainly not going to trust that to a .22 so I can later brag about my fine shooting skills. My goal is to simply put down the person shooting at me. I’m sure as shit not going to end up like Reginald Denny did during the King riots.
Side note, since Katrina every gun show in New Orleans has been packed to the point of not being able to walk down the aisles. Another hurricane hits and I expect World War III to erupt.
I used to be a big fan of shotguns for home defense until I found myself having to search apartments with them when I worked security many years ago. Shotguns, even the shortest ones legal, leave too much sticking out in front of you when your investigating a noise at 2 in the morning. You have to chose between having the gun barrel enter the room before you, in which case someone can grab it, or having the gun pointed up or down in which case if you’re jumped from around a corner you wont be able to get the gun level before someone can do terrible things to you. a hand gun held close to the body is much safer and more effective.
I have a shotgun, but my first choice is my .40 cal berreta 96
Uh, seriously, why not? Britain used to have a similar situation to the US (even less regulation, “like your handgun sir, move right along”) in, say, 1900, but from then it’s been changed to having some of the strictest gun laws in the world. Most Britons will never even see a gun except in the hands of a uniformed offficial. I admit it would be a slow process, complicated by the fact that the USA has big land borders, but, ignoring political considerations, wouldn’t it be possible to outlaw gun ownership and slowly work to confiscate all guns?
For the cops and military, not necessarily for everyone. Does everyone need an RPG ?
First, as pointed out earlier, Britain did it.
Second, where do you think criminals get their guns ? From homes, that’s where. It’s rather easier than stealing them from the Marines.
Third, you’re at least as likely to kill you and your own by accident, probably more so.
Fourth, the criminal will likely win any such confrontation, since he’ll shoot you first, or from behind. Why do you think the cops are so careful around someone they think might be armed ?
And if he’d been murderously violent, he’d have shot first; criminals do that sort of thing. Better if he had no access to guns; you can outrun a guy with a knife, but not a bullet.
For you, or the people whom you might accidentally shoot by accident if you get startled ? Walking around with the gun pointed level and ready to shoot sounds like a good way to shoot your wife/daughter/husband/son when they get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom.
As far as the OP goes, I also vote “penis extension”. Either that, or “it’s cool !”; the difference is, the second catagory of buyer are more likely to admit that’s why they got it. Some of the people in this thread did, after all.
I just wanted to add that, until the mid -1920s, Gentlemen in the UK were expected to carry handguns with which to defend themselves from ruffians, scoundrels, and ne’er-do-wells.
It wasn’t until more restrictive arms laws were passed in the 1920s (during a Communist scare) that it was suddenly illegal to carry a handgun on your person or own a Lewis Gun simply because you felt like it.
Webley & Scott made their last revolver (the Webley Mk IV in .38/200) in 1978, and have now effectively disowned their firearms making heritage- they still make airguns, however.