I kinda want to get something small like this (Ruger LCR .22 LR) for concealed carry. I've never owned a gun before, and based on my reading revolvers sound more reliable (plus I've always thought they looked cool). Went with 22 because of that time ammo got super expensive and 9mm was ridiculous compared to what you could get going for .22.
But is this gun stupid? Is concealed carry stupid? It's okay if I'm dumb, I know very little about guns other than like the last few nights I've spent trying to research a good, small concealed carry.
Ignore everybody saying that a .22 caliber round can't be used for self defense. More people are killed from .22 caliber rounds in the US than rounds of any other caliber - this is due both to how common they are, and also how common the belief that the round is non-lethal is.
If you're looking for the most effective self defense firearm, the answer is the one that you will carry with you and practice with. A small concealed pistol is great for that purpose, and choosing one with the price of ammo in mind is perfectly valid - as long as you go to the next step of actually buying a ton of ammo and practicing with it. You don't have to be Lyudmila Pavlichenko, and with a small pistol you won't be, but the level of proficiency you need to have is to be able to draw the gun quickly and operate it without thinking about the process.
On the topic of revolvers versus semiautos, a semiauto is just better. A hundred years ago there was a legitimate debate between the reliability of a revolver and the increased magazine size of a semiauto, but the magazines are so reliable now that it doesn't exist anymore beyond the imaginations of gun forum people. The most effective overall buy for self defense is a compact double-stacked pistol with nothing extraneous attached to it, because the added shots will make you basically 100% deadly at short ranges.
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Seconding 9mm. I was about to post this post
I don't disagree that a bigger bullet is better, I disagree that a bigger bullet is necessary.
This guy did a study of 1800 real-world shootings over ten years, and found that there were relatively small differences between handgun calibers in terms of ability to stop an attacker. Most self defense shootings result in the attacker breaking off from shock and pain regardless of the caliber, and the only way to have a greater than 50% chance of physically stopping an attacker in one shot is to use a shotgun or a rifle.
Is it so important to you that your attacker is dead before they hit the ground? If so then the .357 magnum is the only viable handgun choice, but you should really be carrying a shotgun. If all you care about is personal protection, then .22 is fine.
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He talks about the "one shot stop" percentage in a follow up article and concludes that other calibers are more likely to have higher rates of fire than the average .22, allowing the shooter to squeeze more rounds off before the attacker even knows they're being shot at and skewing the stats. In any event I was not basing my comment on that percentage, I was basing it on the overall findings of this and other surveys into real world self defense uses of handguns.
You seem to have misunderstood the "failure rate" in that article. The "% of people who were not incapacitated" is not a measurement of the percentage of people who carried on attacking their victim despite being shot, it's people who didn't fall to the ground within five feet of where they were standing when they were shot, meaning that about twice as many people hit with low caliber rounds run away from the person with a gun.
I defy you to find an example of someone who carries on attacking after being shot when the shooter isn't a cop or a troop. It just doesn't happen unless a person is really desperate - a mugger or home invader will always flee from gunshots.
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You are being dense on purpose. There is no reason to believe that his definition for "incapacitation" changes between categories - if he defines incapacitation as stopping your attack or falling within five feet of where you were shot, then that also means that those not being incapacitated didn't do those things.
This thread is going nowhere. Look at this -> :countdown:
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I said
he said
I know I didn't quote him directly, but you have to either be a dumbass or an asshole to not realize that that was what i was talking about.
Enough talking about this old as dirt article, here's a more recent one that demonstrates my point.
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