Expert advice on selecting a handgun

[NineseveN]

dialog!!!
AWESOME!

No, capacity isn't everything. But when I can have it, without needing to really trade anything pertinent off...then I want it.

Me too, which I why I carry a 2011.

[synergy]

It's completely possible that when your time comes to be assailed by 3 or more thugs, they'll all be incompetent or impaired to the extent that allows you to overcome a severe deficit in odds, but that goes back to what I said about acts of god, freak mishaps and luck. If your roll of the dice lands you buffoons instead of seasoned killers, that's just a stroke of luck that ended up in your favor. Neither training nor capacity can really influence that. I don't think resistance is useless, only that the odds are not in your favor. The odds in blackjack aren't really in your favor either, but some people end up taking the house anyway. Most people don't, most people can't, hell most can't even afford to play, but some can. Unless you know that you're one of those people, it's probably best to focus on how to avoid playing the game in the first place than trying to learn how to be a better card player (although that doesn't hurt, it just doesn't as help as much as the former IMHO).





Well sure, I guess there are people who are betting on the Cincinnati Bengals to win the Superbowl next year too.

In all seriousness, I can't dispute where you'd decide to put your money, it's a guess and there's nothing empirical out there to counter it. To me, it seems like common sense that one would have to be extraordinary to move faster than 3 or more people can pull a trigger, dodge multiple shots per second, present their own weapon and fire at 3 or more targets while moving that are likely to be moving by that time as well...all the while, this is occurring at or near contact distances. If the scenario were 3 armed thugs 15-25 yards away, then yes, I'd put my money on any good marksman with an accurate weapon of substantial quality. As the distance decreases, the required skill to hit with speed decreases and the chances that one will score a lucky hit increase dramatically. Anyone can manage to put a few basketballs through a hoop quickly if the hoop is 3 feet or less away (lay-ups). But as you move that distance out, it starts to require a great level of skill to do that consistently (beyond the free-throw or 3 point line).





But to what extent?


This affects you more than it does them. Your gun needs to function 100%, theirs don't. If your gun malfunctions, it's game over for you. It would require all of their guns to malfunction at the same time for it to be an automatic game over for them. Against 3 thugs, it would still take 2 different guns to malfunction to put you at level odds since you're already behind the curve.



Unless you're thinking that a high percentage of thugs carry 1911's, capacity works in their favor even more than it does yours. You have 18 shots in your Glock, they have 54 shots between the 3 Glocks they have. True, some thugs have been known to carry little .22's and Ravens or Lorcins, but Glocks are easy to come by on the street these days. The cheap guns are throw-away pieces. To my knowledge, they're used for premeditated murders more often than outbursts of gang violence (which means they carry their Glocks for daily duty, but when they set out to put someone specific in the dirt, they take the Saturday Night Specials with them so they can toss them and not have a gun with a body on it in their possession). I knew a gang banger once that had a collection of Sig Sauer pistols that would make many on this forum cream their pants, but he also had a Lorcin or two stashed away for special circumstances (or so he said).


Some thugs see more combat than some of our own military troops. This is one of those things you can't control for them. Now, it helps you tremendously to have these skills, but it's not enough, IMHO, to negate the inequity of 3 guns firing at you for every 1 time you can fire yours at 3 different targets in 3 different places moving at 3 different speeds, possibly in 3 different directions.


Again, this matters more for you than them. They only need an 11% hit rate to hit you as many times as you hit each of them (if you can manage a 100% hit rate). Assuming equal speed, by the time you fire 3 shots at three targets, you're looking at 9 shots incoming (unless you get lucky enough to score CNS hits or otherwise get a one shot stop), one hit on you out of 9 shots is 11%. If they manage a 33% hit rate (each of them hits you once and misses twice), that's a 300% disparity in force. Now, maybe you're 3 times as fast at hammering the trigger as they are...you get three shots off where they each get off one. You're now only equaling their force, and it requires you to be 100% to hit each of them once, at that speed. Only one of them needs a hit to injure you. I mean, we can game this out as far as we want, but if we're assuming contact distances, by the time you get 18 shots off, again assuming you're 3 times as fast as they are, you're still taking roughly the same amount of rounds incoming between the 3 of them (again, barring a CNS hit or someone tucking tail and running). There are a lot of ways this can go, but there aren't many of them that I would consider in the single man's favor. At best, you might come close to evening the odds, but with 3 or more shooters, I don't see you putting them into your favor by having more capacity in your gun. In fact, barring close cover combined with sufficiently fast feet, eyes, hands and mind, I don't see it occurring without a great deal of luck.


This helps, if there is cover and you can get to it. There are many places and situations where cover might not be immediately available. Concealment is more likely than cover in some places, and concealment isn't so much of a game changer in the situations I'm thinking of. Capacity doesn't necessarily help you get to cover when we're talking contact distances.


This is the number one game changer IMHO, but only if it is used to keep you out of the gun fight in the first place (which negates the criticisms I had of jcabin's thoughts). The only gun fight you can surely win is the one you avoid.


This affects you more than it does them. Your gun needs to function 100%, theirs don't. If your gun malfunctions once, you're out of the fight until you clear the malfunction. It would require all of their guns to malfunction at the same time for them to be in a similar situation.




At 7 yards or less, with a 3 to 1 show of force in their favor, they don't even need to be half as good as you are to put 3 times as many rounds into you as you put into each of them (or manage a 1:1 ratio).

Not to get too carried away, but I don't think the 3:1 gunfight is lost from the start either. We're not talking about 3 guys with their guns already on you...but maybe 1 dude with a knife/ gun and 2 lookouts/ helpers.

The name of the game for multiple attackers is to use one of the attackers as cover from the others. Circle and put their buddies in their own way.

In doing so, you have stacked your targets on top of each other...and the rear threat now has to shoot through around his buddy to hit you. So he'll either help you stop target #1, or be dead in the water until he changes his line of attack. You now face 2 immediate threats, who have just gone from thugs thinking they're gonna score some loot, to prey getting shot at....all but battle hardened vets are gonna have a good "oh shit!!!" moment, and will now be reacting to an unforeseen consequence. You're resetting their OODA loop as soon as you break leather and start moving off of their lines.

Also, getting shot doesn't mean you're dead.

You start pounding rounds at folks who just thought they picked an easy target, you now have the initiative. Violence of action is a key principle of small teams engaging known threats for a reason...it works. Keep your enemy on their heels, and they can't fight as well.

FWIW, I'm reading through Paul Howe's - Leadership and Training for the Fight, right now.....GREAT reading. Those interested in the current direction of this thread would probably like it.

[NineseveN]

Not to get too carried away, but I don't think the 3:1 gunfight is lost from the start either.

I don't think I said that. The odds being against you and lost from the start are two totally different things. In the case of three guys with guns already on you, the odds are so against you that it might as well be completely lost from the start, but nothing is impossible (even if we'd still term it functionally impossible).

We're not talking about 3 guys with their guns already on you...but maybe 1 dude with a knife/ gun and 2 lookouts/ helpers.

Why aren't we?

The name of the game for multiple attackers is to use one of the attackers as cover from the others. Circle and put their buddies in their own way.

Right, an effective defense, but you're seriously underestimating the thugs if you think that their strategies aren't in place to avoid this or make it more difficult for you. Their entire approach is designed to put you where they want you, not the other way around. If you move to counter that, they adjust. At some point, they either recognize that you're not the kind of prey they want to tangle with (making capacity irrelevant) or they pull their guns. When one draws, the rest of them are on their way to. Once it escalates to that point, there's no reason for the others to keep their guns concealed and too many benefits in the show of force and the ability to apply it for them to remain in your 'one guy with a gun/knife and two guys standing around doing other things' scenario. Not that the latter doesn't occur, but again, that's a strong-arm robbery, which is a different scenario than I'm discussing. Once you respond with force, you are going to put them on their heels, how much and for how long (and how effective that will be) are determined by a number of factors, many of them are not in your control.

Also, getting shot doesn't mean you're dead.

That works both ways...and I still consider it a highly undesirable event. If your odds include getting shot in the process, it's hard to argue that you're playing on “good” odds.

[Carnes]

I didn't say that you should reduce yourself into a quivering, begging mass of manpuss.

Okay, so what you are saying is focus every reasonable effort on avoiding the situation in the first place, then if the situation is unavoidable fight the good fight and hope that luck is on your side? If so, I agree 100%

However, I still think that a well trained shooter has a higher survivability rate overall than you seem to be giving credit for.

You successfully knocked down or at least showed how each of the 'variables' from my earlier post could only hope to even the odds at best. I don't dispute any of the reasoning you used. I think it might help to think of the variables as Combat Multipliers. Independently, any one of those variables will not have a significant impact on success, but as you start stacking the variables your survivability increases by orders of magnitude. The more variables that you have the advantage with, the more dramatically your chances of survival grow.

Naturally there is nothing saying that the BGs don't have a number of combat multipliers stacked in their favor, but if you are training while they are out selling crack there is some hope for ya.

The variables I listed are really only a handful of the many. One of the very important ones I left out that you mentioned is 'distance'. Unfortunately distance is a hard variable to control when the attacker frequently gets to decide when to reveal that s/he is a threat. (being in a group is a combat multiplier too, but I was taking that one for granted)

At 7 yards or less, with a 3 to 1 show of force in their favor, they don't even need to be half as good as you are to put 3 times as many rounds into you as you put into each of them (or manage a 1:1 ratio).

At 7 yards or less, it is very likely that three completely unarmed assailants could kill a well trained and armed defender. I'm confident that at least one of the attackers would go down with the defender, but that doesn't help much.

OTOH, if I were walking down the street, saw a shady looking group and I crossed to walk down the other side of the street, then they showed interest in me. Next I walk the other way to evade, but they pursue making verbal threats. I draw my weapon, create distance and move toward cover. None of the 10-12 of them want to look weak in front of their friends, so they try to call the bluff and continue to advance, one is drawing a weapon. As I fire at the threat all but three of them turn tail and run. The three draw and begin to return fire. I feel that if I am well trained and disciplined, I have a better chance of surviving the fight than they do. However, if the defender does not have many combat multipliers built up in his favor, by means of previous training and analysis, then the 3:1 ratio will likely be the end of him.

If the ratio goes to 4:1 the defender had really better have his ducks in a row, and hope the attackers don't. 5:1? Things are getting really bad now. As the size of the group increases, the survivability of the defender is reduced exponentially.

A 2:1 fight is an order of magnitude more hazardous to the defender than a 1:1, but that does not mean that by taking advantage of combat multipliers the defender cannot dominate the conflict. Same with 3:1, but now it gets another order of magnitude harder. There is a limit to the combat multipliers that a civilian can reasonably take advantage of, otherwise we would be talking about people being able to survive 31:1 through calling indirect fires or other such combat multipliers that most of us don't have access to. I'm just saying that I can think of a number of situations where the average person, armed with decent combat multipliers, would be reasonably likely to survive a 3:1 struggle.

[synergy]

I don't think I said that. The odds being against you and lost from the start are two totally different things. In the case of three guys with guns already on you, the odds are so against you that it might as well be completely lost from the start, but nothing is impossible (even if we'd still term it functionally impossible).



Why aren't we?



Right, an effective defense, but you're seriously underestimating the thugs if you think that their strategies aren't in place to avoid this or make it more difficult for you. Their entire approach is designed to put you where they want you, not the other way around. If you move to counter that, they adjust. At some point, they either recognize that you're not the kind of prey they want to tangle with (making capacity irrelevant) or they pull their guns. When one draws, the rest of them are on their way to. Once it escalates to that point, there's no reason for the others to keep their guns concealed and too many benefits in the show of force and the ability to apply it for them to remain in your 'one guy with a gun/knife and two guys standing around doing other things' scenario. Not that the latter doesn't occur, but again, that's a strong-arm robbery, which is a different scenario than I'm discussing. Once you respond with force, you are going to put them on their heels, how much and for how long (and how effective that will be) are determined by a number of factors, many of them are not in your control.




That works both ways...and I still consider it a highly undesirable event. If your odds include getting shot in the process, it's hard to argue that you're playing on “good” odds.

I wasn't disagreeing so much as giving my thoughts, after something you said struck a chord with me.

I don't really differ that much from what you're saying.

[JoeWilliams]

I think people who limit themselves to 5 to 7 rounds are handicapping themselves. Theres many situations where you won't need more than that. If ever you needed more why be limited? Atleast in my experience people don't generally attack me by themselves, nor do I think a lone criminal would select me to be his target. For me having the capacity to react and stop the threat of more than 1 attacker is a necessity.

Since when does having 6 rounds give me the capacity to deal with only 1 threat? That gives me capacity to deal with 3-6 threats, while moving to cover, before reloading. If you are looking to dump 5-7 rounds in every bad guy (or, given the spray and pray mentality gun fight results with hi-cap handguns are showing, at every bad guy) you aren't going to survive a multiple assailant incident anyway.

[jcabin]

Since when does having 6 rounds give me the capacity to deal with only 1 threat? That gives me capacity to deal with 3-6 threats, while moving to cover, before reloading. If you are looking to dump 5-7 rounds in every bad guy (or, given the spray and pray mentality gun fight results with hi-cap handguns are showing, at every bad guy) you aren't going to survive a multiple assailant incident anyway.

I didn't say 6 rounds only gives the capacity to deal with one threat. I said it handicaps you in a situation where there is more than one threat. Cover isn't always available in your immediate area. I wouldn't rely on 6 rounds to "deal" with 3-6 attackers. You're really diminishing your odds with that kind of mentality. To think that in a high stress adrenaline pumping situation you're going to land a kill shot with one to two rounds is preposterous. Once you expend your ammunition its game over unless the other team are really bad shots. More can go wrong during a revolver reload than a semi-auto reload

[NineseveN]

Okay, so what you are saying is focus every reasonable effort on avoiding the situation in the first place, then if the situation is unavoidable fight the good fight and hope that luck is on your side? If so, I agree 100%

However, I still think that a well trained shooter has a higher survivability rate overall than you seem to be giving credit for.

I'm thinking of it in terms like this:

For an untrained and/or poorly armed shooter, the odds might be 1 in 10. For the master class shooter or better, with a solid firearm and enough rounds to follow through the engagement, the odds might be 1 in 5 or 1 in 4. Those still aren't necessarily good odds, nor are they in the shooter's favor, but the skill and gear have allowed them to close in on evening up the odds, they just don't quite make it. A lot has to happen, and some of what needs to occur is out of the lone shooter's control, for the odds to be evened up or even switch over to his side.

Now granted, we're only talking about the initial onset of the confrontation, as the incident unfolds and evolves, a trained shooter, should they survive the initial confrontation, can still more to increase their odds. By drawing quickly (skill) and dumping rounds into at least one target (skill) while moving (skill, tactic) towards cover (skill/tactic), managing to get behind cover while engaging the second target (skill/tactic), the odds are probably closer to to 1 or even in the trained shooter's favor (as they now have the initiative, they have cover and they have the necessary skills to follow through with the engagement. But, and this is crucial here, they have to make it to that point first.

Now, we're getting away from how important a factor capacity is in all of this, which was not my intent. When we isolate one variable, capacity, we can see that it may or may not play a vital role. I submit that if it takes longer than the time you need to put 8 rounds on target to get behind that cover, your odds start to decrease. The longer you are out in the open, the lower your chances become of making it behind cover without being injured or killed

A master class shooter can fire those 8 rounds and reload faster than your average gun owner can fire just the 8 rounds (or even less than 8 rounds). Now, the argument that makes sense against this is that a shooter at that level would undoubtedly be faster if they didn't have to reload there, that's pretty obvious. But here we go back to the fact that there are other considerations aside from magazine capacity that influence what we carry (or at least there should be or we'd all be carrying FN Five-Sevens).

OTOH, if I were walking down the street, saw a shady looking group and I crossed to walk down the other side of the street, then they showed interest in me. Next I walk the other way to evade, but they pursue making verbal threats. I draw my weapon, create distance and move toward cover. None of the 10-12 of them want to look weak in front of their friends, so they try to call the bluff and continue to advance, one is drawing a weapon. As I fire at the threat all but three of them turn tail and run. The three draw and begin to return fire. I feel that if I am well trained and disciplined, I have a better chance of surviving the fight than they do....

I don't disagree with that assessment at all. You've used distance, avoidance and cover to your advantage. Capacity, which is where my arguments were framed from, doesn't factor into this scenario (or many others) nearly as heavily as some would like to think based on the things we've been discussing. That's where I went into this from the door.

[NineseveN]

I wasn't disagreeing so much as giving my thoughts, after something you said struck a chord with me.

I don't really differ that much from what you're saying.

No, I don't think, you, I or Carnes are speaking on radically different levels. I just got excited to discuss this and your response kinda helped me clarify some things I thought I might have been fogging up previously.

[synergy]

Since when does having 6 rounds give me the capacity to deal with only 1 threat? That gives me capacity to deal with 3-6 threats, while moving to cover, before reloading. If you are looking to dump 5-7 rounds in every bad guy (or, given the spray and pray mentality gun fight results with hi-cap handguns are showing, at every bad guy) you aren't going to survive a multiple assailant incident anyway.

personally, I intend to put rounds into threat until they fall out of my sight picture, or put up the white flag. Pistol rounds don't do magic... It may take 4 or 5 rounds that connect to put someone down. Add 1 for a headshot, and you have 1 round left over to miss with.

Capacity is a good thing.