I don’t recommend keeping a pistol in a purse, because it’s far too easy for an attacker to get a purse away from a victim before the victim has time to get that pistol out of the purse and use it.
In my (non-professional) opinion, concealed carry should be done on the body, where it would be difficult for a mugger or purse snatcher to actually get the gun off of you.
Carrying in a purse is something that I have not done and won’t consider doing.
Maybe they were limp-wristing it, either involontarily or from fear!
The Desert Eagle is a gas-retarded delayed blowback cycle action. I don’t think limp-wristing (providing an insufficient reaction to allow proper cycling of a recoil operated handgun) will cause it to fail to feed. More than likely it was a dirty gun; a partially clogged port will cause sporadic malfunction of the gas-lock system.
Stranger
I think the gun was faulty. It was brand new and they had a box of factory ammo. I’m not saying all Desert Eagles are this way, though. They are designed to work with ammo within a fairly narrow pressure range and you must use jacketed bullets. If you adhere to that, they are pretty reliable on the whole. Maybe this one straightened out after it was broken in? I can’t say since I haven’t seen those guys again. They also had a very well set up 10/22 with a bull barrel, target stock, target trigger and a nice piece of glass. It gave them a lot more enjoyment than the Deagle that day.
The thing most people don’t realize about guns is that just about the only people who have successfully defended themselves in their homes are people who are very experienced with guns. Now, I have a “varmint” rifle in my home and grew up in a house fill of guns (dad was a policeman.) But chances are, if I actually could get the rifle out and point it at an intruder in time, I don’t even know if I’d have the will to pull the trigger.
My younger brother, on the other hand, is a gun “enthusiast” – owns an impressive collection, loads his own ammunition and spends several hours every week shooting at targets or varmints. He has a double-barrel shotgun (18 1/2 inch barrell) loaded with No. 4 buckshot for home defense. It’s by his bed.
Statistically speaking (can’t provide a cite, I’m sorry) most people who are killed with guns in their homes are killed with their own guns. In order for a gun to be useful to you for self protection in your home, you have to have it with you all the time, be willing and able to use it without even thinking about it, and be pretty good at hitting what you shoot at.
There have been suggestions throughout this thread that non-firearm self protection might be the way to go. And I guess it depends largely on whom you plan to defend yourself against. A burglar looking for jewelry and cash probably isn’t going to come in while you’re home, unless that’s part of the thrill for him. He’ll be easily discouraged by shouting, swinging a club, that kind of thing. A rapist intent on hurting you may be chased off by any physical discomfort, like the kind that results from being poked in the eye by a finger or smashed in the crotch by a knee or club. And anybody who comes through the door already armed has the drop on you.
Bottom line: I’d just reinforce some of the suggestions already made. First, do all you can to prevent unauthorized entry. Failing that, do all you can to chase off the intruder. And failing that, do all you can to survive the attack and provide good witness information to the police later.
I know, it doesn’t sound like much, but it’s information you can live with.
The problem with supposed statistics like this is that they typically conflate genuine accidents, intentional suicides, legitimate defensive acts against abusive members of a household, attackes by adolescent or adult “children” with previous criminal histories, et cetera.
If you don’t know how, don’t want to learn, or don’t have the will to use a firearm in a defensive situation, or your household includes people who are prone to acts of needless violence, then by all means you shouldn’t keep one available for that purpose. This does not equate, however, to the oft-stated universal maxim of “you are more likely to be injured or killed if you have a gun in the house.” If you are willing to invest the time and money into training and put thought into how you’d handle yourself in such a situation, then having a firearm secured but available can manifestly increase your ability to defend yourself from the (admittedly rare) case of an armed intruder. This is just an indeliable bit of logic I’m not sure why it is even subject to debate except for the ill-informed and often emotional objection to firearms ownership.
Stranger
I’m not debating. That’s for another thread altogether. The original questioner asked for thoughts on keeping a gun for self protection in the home. I thought I had some insight I could share, so I did.
I have no objection, emotional or otherwise, to gun ownership. But a lot of people misunderstand the slogan, “Guns don’t kill people …” Any responsible NRA member will tell you that having a gun in the home raises the danger level slightly above that that already exists with combustible petroleum products being ignited for heat, toxic chemicals being stored for cleaning and electricity coursing through the walls. You can die any number of ways in your home; adding a loaded gun to the home just adds to the mix. And yes, suicides and accidents do kill people who otherwise wouldn’t die if the gun hadn’t been in the house in the first place. And that’s why firearm safety is far more important to the lives of ordinary citizens than gun legislation will ever be.
One has to make a choice, and every choice has tradeoffs. If you choose to protect yourself with a gun, you are trading away another kind of safety. Maybe having the gun actually makes you safer, maybe it doesn’t – that’s for each person to decide. But dismissing possible down sides of gun ownership as “emotional opposition to gun ownership” doesn’t add much to the information asked for.
I’ve opened a thread in Great Debates. I don’t think it’s fair that the POV that guns make a more safe go unchallenged, without any stats to back it up, while the POV that guns make a home less safe is dismissed and treated as though it were a debate anyway.