Best handgun for home defense?

In My Humble Opinion
101

Jesus H. Christ, you really don’t get it, do you? Of course I have taught my children not to handle dangerous objects.

I “don’t trust” my children? Where in the hell did you get that? That’s an absolutely ludicrous statement. And really, you expect a 20 month old to be “trained” to 100% compliance? You are hallucinating. Even though I am reasonably assured he wouldn’t, I wouldn’t present the risk. The consequences are too high.

Oh, yeah, thanks for the “warning” about keeping dangerous items out of reach of my (out of control, untrained:rolleyes:) children. Gee, I hadn’t thought of that…:rolleyes: :rolleyes:

Please stop projecting your skewed comprehension of my family into the ether, or at least take a course in reading comprehension first. .:mad:

Plus, I want to make clear that having gun(s) for defense isn’t a problem to me, but I was pointing out that, in certain circumstances, the best gun for defense is none. But given proper situation/training/handling/maintenance/storage, it’s fine with me.

102

A few things that haven’t come up yet:

Always yell at the intruder. Tell him he’s in the wrong house, that you have a gun, and that the cops are coming (even if this is a lie). If you approach him, leave him an exit route.

Giving him a chance to leave peacefully (and good reasons to do so) can save you the hassle of shooting him, will look good if it comes up in the trial, and will reduce your risk of shooting a harmless drunk who honestly thinks this is HIS place.

If he comes at you violently after you’ve said this, well, he must be dangerous, and you have improved your case for shooting him.

Even the Army says “Halt, who goes there?”, rather than just opening fire. :wink:

As Beagle mentions, if the guy gets in your house at all, you’ve already screwed up. Most of the criminals don’t want to work hard at this, and will move along to another house if yours seems too secure or contains too many big dogs.

Even most genuine criminals will not need to be shot. They’re not in this business to get hurt! If you let them know you’re not an easy target, most of them will be willing to go elsewhere.
This is why “any gun is better than no gun”. The important thing is that YOU give the impression of being willing and able to shoot him.

I’m actually more scared of the punk’s lawyer, if the whole business ends up in court later, than I am of the punk himself. So I attempt to “prejudice the jury” in my favor as much as I can:

Personally, I avoid guns that look like something an action hero would carry. No weird black weapons with odd-looking projections on them, no laser sights, etc. When the police and the jury look at my old slightly-scuffed double-barrel (not even sawed-off) they will think “Grandpa’s duck-huntin’ gun” NOT “Soldier of Fortune Kill-Master 3000”.

I’m with the birdshot contingent. Not only for the previously-mentioned reasons, but also because it sounds more innocuous to a jury. “Look at these tiny little pellets! Does this look like the ammo of a guy who wants to hurt people? He just used what he had left over from skeet-shooting!”

My pistol is an old Colt police revolver, .357 Magnum loaded with .38’s. Again, not the choice of a “homicidal gun-nut”, just something the good guys used to carry back in the old days. And my lawyer can always say “Hey, he COULD have used Magnums, but he CHOSE not to! Does this sound like a dangerous guy to you?”

You never know… any of these impressions, in the right mind at the right time, might just make the difference that keeps me out of jail.

103

Excellent advice, Vlad Dracul! Read that post well, folks!

104
      • I concur wholeheartedly. I assume I will have only five shots, because if I have the chance, I figure that I will use the first to put a hole in something right next to the intruder. That way, he can be certain the gun I have is real, and I will grant him a moment or two to look upon that hole and consider his health. Some people thing the sound a gun being cocked is intimidating. I say seeing the hole one makes is even more so! :smiley:
        ~
105

Yep, almost none of them are masochists, they are just doing their job of robbing and stealing, or else they want to rape or whatever, but none of them are doing what they are doing just so they can get shot, be killed or in a lot of pain, and have their internal organs permanently destroyed. Even a criminal does not want to be gut shot, or have his eyes destroyed by bullets and be blind the rest of his life.

Why would anyone want to get shot? Certainly not criminals.

Just a show of a gun, and nearly all of them will want to leave you alone, depart peacfully so they can pick on an unarmed person instead.

106

Good Lord, I’m glad I live in Canada…

Sure we have firearms up here, but we use them for hunting - and we keep them locked up, most people even store the firing pins and ammunition seperatly from the weapon, it’s a TOOL - and a dangerous one. We don’t use them in some vague attempt to stop living in fear - the only thing to fear is fear itself - thinking a gun will make you feel safer is only an illusion leading to more and more fear.

The best thing for home defence is NO firearms at all, with the possible exception of a farmer protecting livestock or something from animals.

I find it very interesting how important everybody seems to find it that you will be able to fire your weapon while still half asleep, and scared. My opinion - if you are not with it enough to figure out how to use a safety you should not be making that life-or-death descision, you’ll probably wind up shooting your own child or possibly a neighbor looking for help. Not to mention how easy it would be for a child to find such a weapon and accidentally kill someone.

Somebody out there mentioned this:
But I do have an FAL 308 battle rifle w/ two full 20-round mags on “standby” at all times. This is for fighting my way off my property in case the place gets assaulted by a group of people…

I’ve never had my home surrounded by an angry mob, so angry in fact that in order to save my life I would have to massacre the lot of them. In fact I’ve never heard of a case where some private individual owned an automatic weapon and it turned out to be a good thing (if anybody out there has heard a newsbroadcast along the lines of - This just in, last night an angry mob surrounded a surburban home, luckily the resident had an assualt rifle and killed them all, God Bless America - let me know). If “Crafter_Man” is worried about the neighbors, maybe he should have a good old fashiod BBQ and get to know them.

I could go on, but I’m sure this message alone will incure enough fearfull responces - but who knows maybe it will reach one person and that one person will stop being afraid.

I’ll leave you with a story about one of my friends.

My buddy does not own any firearms, nor does he live in constant fear of some random person breaking into his home and murdering him in his sleep, in fact he sometimes (like me) forgets to lock his door at night (we never lock during the day if we’re home). One night he awoke in the middle of the night to a dark figure at the foot of his bed, just starting to advance on him. Now if he was a fear-loving man who owned a gun I can think of two things which might have happened here…

  1. BANG, dead intruder.
  2. With gun drawn the lights are turned on (to identify the target) and all hell breaks loose, lots of yelling - possibly the man feels his life is threatened and tries for the gun, maybe he gets shot in doing so - maybe he gets the gun and turns it on my friend.
    Then there’s door #3 - my friend, not having a gun and not generally a jumpy person, just asks “Who are you? What the hell are you doing? Are you drunk?” And you know what - nobody died! It was just some drunken guy who’d stumbled into the wrong house, he left immediatly.

So get some balls, ditch the gun (and ditch your fear, it’ll take some time - but it’ll be worth it. Maybe even try leaving your door unlocked one night). When you’re through with that then get on with your lives. If owning bigger and bigger guns actually makes you feel safer, then you are suffering from Stockholm syndrome.

107

Whatta way to make a positive first impression, BigBadBassBone. I expect you’re going to be highly popular in your short stay here.

108

Actually, BigBadBassBone (BBBB, henceforth) does make a good point about fear.

We Americans (I don’t know enough about other cultures to comment) seem to enjoy scaring ourselves with thoughts of all the horrible things that might happen to us. If our lives aren’t scary enough for us… we watch the news, which often seems to specialize in giving us stuff to scare ourselves with.

We each need to evaluate for ourselves what we ought to worry about and how much we need to worry about it… and we need to do this realistically, rather than depending on rumor, sensationalism, propaganda, and wild speculation.

For example, I live in an area roughly on a par with BBBB’s friend, as far as crime goes. Am I scared? No. But I am prepared… because I know that, sometimes, “safe” places turn out to be not quite so safe.
Still, it’s not like I’m living in, say, downtown Washington DC.

However, it is irrational to impose your own notions of safety on someone else, especially someone who lives under very different circumstances. There ARE people who really DO live in places where dangerous home intruders are a very real and immediate threat. I’ve known several myself.
Neither I nor BBBB are qualified to make their decisions for them.

BBBB also brings up (perhaps unintentionally) the need to be awake, alert, and as calm as possible when using your gun. And his story emphasizes the need to have a secure house, so you don’t have to WORRY about whether you can wake up completely in 2 seconds.

Here in the litigation capital of the universe, I don’t want harmless people in my house, either. If a drunk falls and hurts himself in my house, there’s a fair chance that he’d sue ME for his medical bills, and WIN.

Am I freaking out about this? No, but I DO remember to lock my doors. And if that also keeps me from having to shoot some thug who gets in and inexplicably decides to attack an armed man, then it was worth the effort to turn that little key night after night.

I hope BBBB and his friend continue to be perfectly safe, but I question his assertion that he is qualified to tell the rest of us how safe we are.

109

Don’t overlook the point that he’s from Canada, which hardly compares to the States in violent crime, from what I’ve read.

110

Please read the title of this thread and respond only to the question it asks.

Thank you.

111

Too bad, just when I wanted to comment on the fire extinguisher analogy…

Oh well, as for the OP, I think anything short of a 1920s style death ray isn´t suitable for home defense :slight_smile:

112

A quote attributed to John Dillinger…

“Never trust a woman or an automatic pistol.”

That being said, back in the day when I lived alone in a not so good neighborhood I used to keep a loaded .357 magnum revolver. The first round was a shotshell, not likely to be fatal. The next two rounds were .38 special solid nose and last two were maximum load .357 hollow points because I figured if I ever had to fire more than three times I’d better mean business. I only had to show it once when the guy next door beat up his wife and threatened to kill her.

I don’t have handguns anymore. I sold them all after I had kids.
Plus I live in a much safer area now.

113

Welcome to the boards. I think you’re wrong, but – hard as it may be to imagine – I’ve been wrong before also.

I agree that guns seem to escalate anger management problems into anger management deaths. So do knives, bats, cars, and big stone ashtrays.

OTOH, I’ve known of several people who’ve defended themselves from intruders merely by producing weapons and scaring them off. It’s not that uncommon for people living in the country with a home business to face criminal trespassers.

One guy actually got into a shoot out with five punks who broke into his gun store adjacent to his house. He, um, wounded four and killed one with a Galil fully automatic assault rifle, which he legally owned. Heh. He was subsequently investigated, but not indicted by a grand jury.

Which, given the circumstances, was reasonable – to a crazy American anyway.

114

For some women who might be considering a gun for home or personal self defense, that could easily read:

“Never trust a man or an automatic pistol.”

115
      • Somewhat off-topic, but I have noticed over the last year or so that the employees at the gun range I normally go to all carry sidearms inside the building. This used to not be the case; I have been frequenting the place for at least five or six years now. I haven’t heard of much problems in this regard except in “legendary” L.A., where larger gun shops had concrete tank traps set around them to defeat the 2-vehicle “smash and grabs” (where one vehicle is driven into the front of the store, to smash a hole in it). Have I missed something? …
        ~
116

Lest anyone think I’m blowing smoke out my buttockal region. Note: was AR-15, not a Galil. He also used a handgun, etc. Correct away. Sorry. :smack: I used to shoot at this guy’s range back then. He always packed at least one six gun, cowboy style, as he walked around his shop. Hard to argue with his methods given his history.

DougC, weird. Your post pops up when I preview. Twilight Zone Music

117

I keep a Mossberg 500 12ga pump, with pistol grip and 18.5" barrel, in my bedroom. It’s loaded with 2 3/4", 00 buck, rounds instead of 3" since that gives me room for an extra round in the mag. I go with the shotgun as my primary home (well apartment) defense gun for pretty much the same reasons the rest of the shotgun camp have stated. Less chance of killing my roommate or neighbors with a stray shot, easier to aim a night in a hurry and more stopping power at inside distances than any handgun. However I do keep a round chambered (w/the safety on) because as someone else stated earlier I don’t want to give away my location in a tactical situation before I have to. While the sound of pump action racking can be intimidating it also advertises my location and my armament. On balance I think the sight of a naked, shotgun weilding guy screaming “Freeze Motherfucker!” is just as intimidating as the sound of pump shotgun being racked.

I also keep my 9mm Browning Hi-Power loaded with Hydrashocks and stored in the gun cabinent, which is unlocked unless I’m going out of town, for use as my “daytime” defense gun since the shotgun is not easy to get at if I’m not in bed. I can get to the closet that it lives in and get it out of the cabinent pretty quickly if I need to.

A lot of people have mentioned reliability issues with automatic handguns, but I can honestly say that the only time I’ve ever had the Browning jam on me was when I was firing some cheap-ass surplus ammo that jammed every gun we put it in. Using any sort of decent ammo I’ve never had a problem putting 500 rounds through it at a time. The Hi-Power series by Browning are pretty the exact same design as the Colt 1911A’s that John Browning designed for the US Army back in the day, very simple, elegant design and easy to clean too. It also has the benefit of being difficult to fire if you’re not familar with single action automatics. I’ve handed this gun to friends on the range in various configurations (round chambered, hammer back w/safety on, round chambered hammer down, no round chambered etc…) and asked them to get off a round as fast as possible. No one not already familar with it has been able to get it to fire in anything less than 15 or 20 seconds. That gives me a nice margin of safety in case an intruder manages to take it away from me.

118

Most semi-auto handguns will cheerfully eat any commercial ammunition you feed them, but some are fussy eaters. Anyone who actually follows my (and every other experienced shooter’s) advice about getting LOTS of range time will quickly learn what their particular handgun will swallow. After a couple thousand rounds, if you don’t know what ammunition your weapon will handle, you’re far too casual about the whole business, and probably shouldn’t be using a handgun in the first place.

Any ammunition that gives any kind of problems, you should either have the weapon tuned by a skilled gunsmith, or feed it some other kind of ammunition, or give it up. If a weapon jams consistantly on one or more kinds of ammunition, only a fool continues to use that particular round without fixing the problem.

For those reasons, I don’t consider semi-automatic pistols to be unreliable. If one continues to jam, and the shooter continues to use it without fixing it, then it’s the shooter that’s unreliable.

On my primary handgun, I’ve had failures to feed with one specific type of ammunition. Not having a lot of money for a tuning job, I simply found what it does eat, and since then I haven’t had any trouble, not once, in nearly 10000 rounds. I’m not terribly limited in choice either, as there are many, many different commercial loads for every popular caliber.

119

Another shooter who agrees with good vs bad ammo. I’ve bought some ‘bargain bricks’ and couldn’t wait to finish them up. It’s kinda like running you car on cheap fuel or buying a drink made with bathtub gin-yuck.

In my last post, I failed to comment as other posters have wisely done that the ammo has a large impact (no pun) on the desired outcome. Hydra-Shok™ is an excellent choice for personal protection. I wouldn’t use them for range practice, as they’re pricey, yet won’t fire unjacketed rounds as they contribute to lead fouling.

Perhaps I’ve been blessed, Tranquilis as I also have a S&W 1006 which I understand is also no longer made. :smiley:

120

Are .22s finicky? I’ve bought all kinds of cheap hardball, soft points, Semi-wadcutter, you name it for a cheap mil. spec. .45 I’ve got. It will jam once in a while. .22s, OTOH, it seems in my experience will jam a lot more if they don’t like something. The cheap-as-dirt SKS I bought back in 1990 never jams on anything. Note to self: don’t fight a land war in Asia.