That man gave you all kinds of wrong advice. In fact, virtually all of it was wrong. I sugest you buy yourself a copy of this book and read it closely, for starters.
Maybe in your state, but not in mine. There have been many cases of people in Texas not having charges filed against them for killing an intruder.
YEs, indeedy. Massachusetts has some pretty unique attitudes about that kind of thing. If I told a typical gun-toting Texan what I had to go through to get my License to Carry Concealed, they would probably turn inside-out with horror.
: shrug :
Everyone pretty much summed it up, but here are my thoughts.
Shaky hands? Forget pistols, of any type. They are hard enough to use accurately in controlled condition on a range. In a stressed combat situation + your hand tremors, you’d be lucky to hit the walls of your house.
A shotgun is your best bet for home defense, bar none. Even mobility isn’t much of an issue if you shorten the barrel and get a pistol-grip. These modifications may or may not be exactly legal, depending on where you live. IMHO, if it’s strictly a home defense weapon, I could’t care less about the legality. If I ever had to use it, then it’s already a situation where I’d rather be tried by 12 than carried by 6.
Sorry, but virtually everything your instructor told you was wrong. First of all, regardless of the load, when you point and fire a firearm at someone, that is considered use of lethal force; if you’ve just escalated a conflict from, say, an unarmed aggressor to one that can now ostensibly justify drawing a weapon, it will be you who is at fault. In any case, rock salt in the face could do permanent damage and at very close range could still be deadly.
Second, you don’t want to use any kind of custom load; “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the defendant clearly intended to harm someone; his use of specially loaded ammunition loaded with toxic chemicals like sodium chloride clearly indicate his intention to do bodily harm.” Stick with factory standard loads. For handguns, select a standard hollowpoint round used by law enforcement, like the Federal Hydra-Shok or Winchester SXT.
Third, any modern “double barrel shotgun”–an over-and-under configuration, as side-by-side guns have become the provence of collectors–is going to be a heavy, long barreled arm designed specifically for hunting or trap and skeet; definitely not ideal for home defense, the lack of firepower notwithstanding.
Fourth, firing any gun, including a shotgun, requires both some modicum of skill and an effort at accuracy. Despite what you see on the televisor–some tyro picking up a MAC-10 and expertly gunning down half a dozen bad guys, for instance–you do have to learn how to handle and aim a gun, and proper trigger technique.
Fifth, the aforementioned nugget (“If you shoot shoot and kill someone, regardless of the circumstances, you will do time in prison”) is totally wrong; if you shoot a perpetrator in justifiable self-defense you have explicit legal protection against prosecution. What qualifies as “justifiable” differs from state to state, which is why it is imperative that a potential defender understand the applicable statutes, and an overzealous prosecutor could elect to press forward with charges, but by and large juries are prone to sympathy for someone defending their home. The civil liability–to the target, if he survives, or his heirs if he does not–is of greater concern; there exists no small number of cases in which someone has been exonerated from criminal culpability only to be subject to civil liability for a shooting, stemming from the difference in standards of evidence between civil and criminal law.
With regard to the issue of “racking the slide” on a shotgun or handgun: I have to weigh in with those who consider this to be both tactically erroneous and likely to contribute to mechanical jamming. As a defender who feels one’s self to be in peril of a threat to life and otherwise meeting the applicable statutes for the application of lethal force, the only thing you need do, if you feel compelled to give the intruder notice of your intentions, is simply say, “I’m armed; get out of my house.” Making additional noise, waving a flashlight around in an eponymous shooting position, or otherwise giving evidence to your position is ill-advised. Drawing a bead on someone is a measure of last resort, when you’ve reasonably exhausted all other alteratives and feel your life, or the lives of your family, to be in mortal danger. Once you drop the hammer on an aggressor, you have to accept the consequences of killing him…regardless of whether your gun is loaded with #00 buck or rock salt. You’ve exercised lethal force, and you’d best be prepared to justify that decision. Drawing a firearm on a person under any other circumstance is both legally and ethically indefensible.
Mr. Krebbs mentions the AR-15; while it’s true that a softpoint .223Rem shows less over penetration than a 9mmP (thus adoption by a number of Special Tactics teams), the AR-15 is politically indefensible as a home protection firearm in many areas. You have to be conscious of not only the technical aspects of a weapon or ammunition choice but also what a non-technical, easily-swayed jury will think. The AR-15 is evil, hyper-powerful, virtually unstoppable military assault weapon that can only be used to knock down 747 and slaughter playgrounds full of kindergardeners, et cetera ad nausum, whereas a wood-stocked Remington 870 looks like something Grandpa keeps in the hall closet for phesant season. Stupid but true.
Stranger
Unless you reload your own shotgun shells, I don’t know how you could load a shotgun with rock salt anyway.
You can buy non-lethal rounds for shotguns, loaded with rubber balls or bean bags. I personally have a Mossberg 500 that is our home defense weapon and the first shell is a bean bag round. Every shell after that is buckshot.
Assuming “tranger” in the thread title = “stranger”, I don’t know how much advice we should be giving Ringo, unless it’s along the lines of “Go get some counseling”. That’s a pretty blatant display of disregard for human life.
I don’t really disagree with you, wanted to respond to a couple of your points :
People use the term “Prison” and “Jail” interchangably when they aren’t equivalent, and I suspect Winston Smith might have been doing that here. If you shoot someone, even in self defense, odds are extremely likely that you will spend that night in jail. This is simple procedure for the cops - until you are cleared by a judge, they have to regard you as a potential criminal. That said, cops are human, and you’ll hear plenty of stories about self defense shootings where the cops chose not to bring the shooter in. But you should not count on this being the case.
Further, Stranger, you mention “…by and large juries are prone to sympathy for someone defending their home.” True, but there are always exceptions. Part of the psychological preparation in gun ownership should include accepting the fact that use of the weapon can land you in prison, rightly or wrongly.
Totally agree. One of the problems I have with the “racking the slide will scare them off” theory is that it leaves the impression that once you rack the slide you won’t have to shoot. No gun owner should ever believe this - a burgular or attacker has already demonstrated he’s not intimidated by the thought of sneaking in to your house and attacking you. Why will he suddenly become intimidated by a sound? Once you rack that slide, you’d better be prepared to use it.
Well, assuming that “tranger” = “stranger,” I gotta disagree. If you are going to shoot someone, it should definitely be a stranger.
You avoid the emotional issues involved in shooting a friend or loved one, and it also avoids awkward, embarrasing moments at Holiday gatherings.
“Have some more turkey, Fred.”
“Fuck you, you son-of-a-bitch! You shot me last summer!”
:awkward silence:
“Dressing, anyone?”
I agree with the idea that racking the slide to scare off an intruder is a stupid idea - my brand of wait apparently didn’t convey properly when I posted about it earlier. But racking a pistol slide? Who does this, even in movies for the purpose of intimidation? I’ve never heard of it. It’s not a particularly loud noise, and varies significantly from gun to gun.
Regarding the whole racking the slide thing, everyone who disagrees with doing it is correct. You want a shell already in the chamber. If you don’t have kids, the firearm is in an appropriate position (ie, nothing is going to fall on it, bump into it inadvertantly and you access without inappropriate groping), and finally if you’re comfortable doing so, you can even leave the safety off.
It happens all the freakin’ time. My husband pointed one out yesterday in an episode of Alias (season 4, DVD). The camera panned down to a bad guy holding a weapon at his side. That stupid sound effect played, even though the guy only had one hand on the weapon and it was nowhere near the barrel. I’ve also seen the characters (even cops and military) do it, several times even. I think one show that’s more consistently accurate than others is 24. I don’t notice Jack making that mistake too often.
I’m afraid a lot of people (especially Foley artists, apparently) may not honestly realize what the actual purpose of doing it is for. For those who genuinely don’t know, it’s to put a bullet or shell into the chamber. It takes a bullet from the clip and makes it so you can shoot it. If you rack the slide again, you eject a shell and another bullet is loaded into the chamber. Keep doing it, and all your ammo will be laying, unspent, on the floor, and you’re left with a club.
(Our shotgun is a 20 gauge, single-shot, breech (breach?) loader. I still haven’t decided whether grabbing that or the Beretta .22 is the better option if someone ever breaks in. All our guns are loaded, with one in the chamber. If children visit, the guns get unloaded, put out of reach, and the ammo is placed in a separate area, also out of reach.)
Since we’re into technicalities here, it takes a bullet from the magazine. Clips are these things; more commonly called stripper clips. They are used to load magazines (stripper clips are kind of going out of style, as military rifles are using detachable mags which are not all that difficult to load without them).
Just because no one else in the thread is doing it, I’ll chime in with my non-gun solution. This isn’t meant to offend anyone or spark a debate - if the options are a handgun vs a shotgun, this is just another option.
I have a louisville slugger next to my bed, and some training in hand to hand combat. I have no fear of any intruder carrying any weapon other than a gun. I don’t live in a particularly dangerous area, and I believe keeping a weapon (especially an unlocked weapon with ammo in the chamber) would increase my level of danger far more than just not having a gun. I believe this because I’m inherently forgetful and can be clumsy at times (especially on waking up in the middle of the night,) and those are bad characteristics to combine with a loaded gun. If I lived in a more dangerous area, or had less faith in my ability to defend myself, I might get a gun. But I’ve lived in some pretty dangerous areas and never felt the need. I recommend this approach highly - I’ve used the louisville slugger on an intruder once, and found it worked very effectively. I find it a lot more personally empowering than a gun (I have shot plenty of guns,) and it requires none of the maintenance, upkeep or legal headaches.
I see guns much the same way I see motorcycles - I ride a motorcycle, but I don’t think everyone should. You should evaluate your situation and honestly assess your abilities to handle either a gun or a bike, and if it isn’t for you, or if another option exists, then feel no shame about not riding or carrying. Peer pressure saying that you should carry a gun, or that they aren’t dangerous, is wildly misplaced.
Statistics show that a lot of people who ride motorcycles are the last people who should be riding motorcycles - the typical bike fatality is drunk, untrained, and driving far in excess of the speed limit. Statistics also show that many gun owners shouldn’t have guns - you’ve all heard the statistics millions of times, so I won’t bother repeating them. What the statistics don’t indicate that there are plenty of responsible and capable motorcyclists and gun owners. If you aren’t determined to be one of them you have no business with either. Get a louisville slugger or a can of mace.
FTR - I am not anti gun. If something in this post sparks your need for debate, please start another thread on it and I’ll join. I’d hate to hijack this thread completely.
Thank you for that information, Mr. Krebbs, though I respectfully disagree that my usage isn’t also correct. Both dictionary.com and m-w.com define a clip as
“3. A cartridge clip.” (dictionary.com def)
“a device to hold cartridges for charging the magazines of some rifles; also : a magazine from which ammunition is fed into the chamber of a firearm.” (m-w.com def)
Leviosaurus makes the good point that others have said in this thread as well: Get Training!!! Guns in the hands of the untrained are Bad Things. If you are trained in the proper use of your selected weapon, then what you choose is up to you. We all here are just touting our favorites. But get trained before you ever bring a gun into the house.
Loaded stripper clip: http://www.fabten.com/StripperGuide_clip24.gif A cartridge clip is not the same thing as a magazine.
I’m not going to disagree that “clip” is becoming an accepted term for a magazine, but I will tell you that using “clip” to describe a magazine when talking to a firearms aficionado is just about the equivalent of using “ain’t” when writing a paper for your English teacher. It makes you sound “gangsta,” and thus, less credible.
Also, I would consider a dictionary about as authoritative on firearms as the New York Times.
Fair enough. I’ll readily admit that my expertise is very limited and concede the point to you.
Weird. I’ve never noticed it. Dumb question: I assume you are actually talking about racking the slide, and not cocking the hammer when it doesn’t need to be cocked? I’ve noticed that theme abused frequently on TV.
**
Mr. Krebbs**:
I think the clip vs. magazine debate should be counted along with “people who drive slow in the fast lane”, cell phones and “disciplining other people’s children” as those SDMB subjects we agree to disgree on. 