Yes, it is the Glasers I was referring to.
As to my rifle, it was returned to me following the DA’s decision not press charges (Duh!). However, it took just over six months to make the call.
This incident occurred in 1989. The intruders were residents of Mexican descent. Today, the political climate, I believe, is such that the DA would be under pressure by a variety of groups to find otherwise. Don’t think they would have, but it would have stretched out longer than six months.
Have no fear there. The fact that you’re willing to ask questions, and listen to the answers, shows you to be anything but a moron. Like any other hobby, and probably more than most, gun folks LOVE to introduce newbies into the club. (No goats involved, unless you like that sort of thing. :D)
I’d probably not stop in the day before hunting season opens and expect to spend an afternoon chatting with them, but any “off peak” time should get you all the attention, and information that you need.
The other replies above are very good answers. One thing not mentioned is that even though a particular brand/load of round “fits” into your gun, it may not be what your gun “likes” best. Don’t be afraid to try different rounds (matching caliber/type) to see what works best for your needs, your shooting style, and your gun. Experimentation requires more range time, and usually any excuse for range time is a good one for gun enthusiasts… Myself included.
Thanks all! I stopped at a local sporting goods store, and one of the owners helped me find what I needed. She (yes, she) looked over my gun, pointed out some nooks/crannies I could do a better job of cleaning (residual oil left behind and some dirt on the front of the cylinder I never noticed).
I bought two boxes of American Eagle 38 specials for $19 a box. She said they would have noticeably less recoil, but that they were “dirtier” so I updated my cleaning supplies. We talked about personal protection loads and I will stop back for those. Now that I am comfortable shopping there I will probably do more shooting.
I also looked at a 9 mm Glock. I rented one a few years ago at an indoor range, and I liked it. Who knows?
Yep. We got another one.
Come on in friend; the water’s fine.
If he has the gun for personal protection, shouldn’t he use the same rounds for target practice that he’d use in a protection scenario? If there’s someone breaking into your bedroom to murder you in your sleep, or whatever, it seems like that’d be the worst possible time to have your aim thrown off by more recoil than you’re used to.
This is why my home defense weapons are a battered old shotgun and pistol that I have no attachment to. All of my good guns are hidden away; I’ve accepted the fact that if I ever, God forbid, have to ever employ a weapon in an emergency, I would probably never get it back from the police.
Yes, and more importantly, you don’t want to find that your gun won’t feed the blunt-tipped hollowpoints like it did the round-nosed ammo.
I wouldn’t rely on new (to me) type of ammo until I’d fired several boxes of it through that specific gun.
At most “in the home” distances, not enough to really matter. Back 30+ years ago, for “haunted house” shooting competitions, a lot of us practiced using “light loaders”. It replaced your cylinder with a device that projected a light beam down the barrel. You could then scatter special targets that would show the hit and then “fade it back to black” around the house and practice to your hearts content. Going from it to real rounds, your point of impact would change but not very much.
My father was a gun dealer and we had three shooting ranges at our house (rifle, skeet, and pistol). We always had at least 20 guns in the house and many more in our store to choose from to borrow and I could shoot them any time I wanted to. I chose my personal guns to be a pair of .22 rifles, a pair of 30.06 rifles and a Colt King Cobra .357 magnum.
I will shoot any gun at least six times in a row but the high powered rounds are not good for developing real firearm proficiency. They are expensive to shoot for starters but the high recoil and excessive noise can cause someone to develop trigger flinching and jerking which is a terrible thing for true marksmanship. That is why .22 rifles are so popular as teaching firearms and I usually chose those to do basic rifle work. You can plink away all day long without losing your hearing or getting a sore shoulder.
The .357 magnum is a little different. A .38 round is a very real handgun round roughly on par with a 9mm but it is much easier and cheaper to shoot than a .357 round. I don’t think most people can shoot round after round of a .357 magnum cartridge for an hour and not feel exhausted at the end of it. Target shooting with the most powerful round available is what I call stunt shooting and I don’t think it is a responsible way to gain firearm proficiency. Treating a self-defense firearm as a cool hand-cannon is not the idea when you can scale down the load and practice much more easily.
A couple issues with .357 Mag in a self-defense situation you should be aware of are;
the round is a high-velocity round, FMJ/Ball (jacketed solid-point) rounds have a nasty tendency to overpenetrate, go through the target and retain enough energy to still be dangerous, an expanding hollow-point bullet will reduce, but not eliminate, this possibility
full-power .357 Mag rounds are LOUD, REALLY LOUD, especially in an indoor environment***…
Pain threshhold - 140 dB
.357 Magnum - 164.3 dB (a deep BOOM and a supersonic CRACK, with a palpable muzzle-blast)
.38 Spl - 156.3 dB
9mm - 159.8 dB(a sharp supersonic CRACK)
.45 ACP - 157 dB (a low, throaty BOOM)
as a comparison, a 12-gauge round from the standard 28" barrel; 151.50dB
the .357 Mag is one of the loudest cartridges in common use, if you have to fire one in self defense without hearing protection, it’s highly probable you will suffer some amount of PERMANENT hearing loss, even just one round, and we haven’t even dealt with the bright muzzleflash from a revolver with a 4" or shorter barrel
the .357 is an awesome round, no doubt, but it’s overkill for many home-defense situations, my preferred HD/SD cartridge is a .45 ACP with Speer Gold Dot hollow points (thank Og I haven’t had to use it for defensive purposes, and I hope I never have to)
depending on where you live, and the firearm laws in your area, you may or may not need a firearms ID card, I live in Maine, I can simply walk into any store in Maine or NH and buy whatever ammo I need with no need to show any form of ID, and there’s no state limitations on how many boxes/cases I can purchase, unlike my neighbors in the firearm-hating state of Nannychusets, errr…Massachusets…
*** the damage caused by one shot from a .357 magnum pistol, which can expose a shooter to 165 dB for 2msec, is equivalent to over 40 hours in a noisy workplace.
Sorry - I’m having a slow brain day. You are very correct for automatics; with the combination of caliber and maker (Smith) I’ve been working from the assumption that the OP was about a revolver. Should have probably asked but from the other posts I’m thinking it was a revolver.
It’s either a revolver or a Desert Eagle, and S&W doesn’t make the Desert Eagle. It is definitely a revolver, which doesn’t have feeding issues barring a catastrophic failure of the cylinder or the rotating mechanism (both of which are entirely possible).
I’ve shot a variety of handgun cartridges in my life. I hate shooting the .357. Every shot stings the hand. A very unpleasant experience.
It all depends on what weapon you have, I guess. I have a Ruger SP101 with a lighter mainspring and an aftermarket Hogue monogrip. I can fire artillery shells out of that weapon one-handed all day long.
Of course, it’s much heavier than most weapons with a 2 1/4" barrel, so that tames the recoil. I wouldn’t want to do the same with a S&W Airweight all day, no matter how much more comfortable it is to carry.
I’ve been meaning to ask (sorry OP for the slight hijack):
What is everyone’s opinion of the best weapon to keep in the home for protection? Shotgun or pistol? I have two young sons, and I worry about keeping a weapon in the house with them around. I don’t see the sense in having one for home protection unless it’s loaded though, unfettered by trigger locks and such.
I’m leaning towards shotgun, because it’s probably difficult for a 4 or 7 year old to work the slide even if they manage to figure out how to turn off the safety.
My limited experience in shooting is mostly from the Army, M-16A2’s. I have shot a shotgun a few times and also a couple 9mm pistols. What would the SDMBers recommend?
I recently shot a Mossberg 500 and I liked it. Anyone want to fill me in on a cheap but good quality line of weapons? I’d probably only have about $300-400 to spend, so even a good condition used weapon is fine with me.
Thanks!
Shotguns are good for home defense and some types of hunting as well as skeet shooting. You can get a good one in your price range. The Remington 870 12 gauge is a popular choice and a good value. A Mossberg 500 is another good one.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=291739&highlight=shotgun
The general consensus is a shotgun in that it disperses rapidly and thus is less likely to go out of the room or through a wall, it covers a very wide area, and close up it is devastating in its effects.
That said, I do not own a shotgun so I defy the conventional wisdom and go with a handgun loaded with hollow-points on the heavy end of the range, no smaller than 9mm and no bigger than 10mm.
The handgun requires more precision, but it’s easier to wield in tight quarters than a longarm.
Still, you can’t really go wrong with a shotgun, and they don’t cost a lot of money for a reliable, utilitarian, new-in-box weapon (the Mossberg 500 and Remington 870 are the standards in this regard).
I shoot a Ruger GP100 with a 6” barrel. It has the stock rubber and rosewood grip (it’s an older model, they don’t offer that any more). While the .357 does sting a little bit, I don’t find it an uncomfortable round to shoot. Though I would say that this is way more revolver than I would want to use as a CCW weapon. It’s heavy.
I do like to be able to practice with the calmer .38sp. Still a very respectable and less expensive round.
Over penetration is not an issue where I live.
It is loud. When banging pots and pans together will not scare a bear away, the .357 always does.
We’ve been over this in IMHO. There’s a general consensus that the shotgun is the best home defense weapon for most people.