Following up on the recent AIWB self inflicted gunshot wound…
I do not like to play the odds, but if I was going to, I would say the overwhelming majority of people will never need a gun to defend themselves. Of those who do, the largest percentage will need it at home, not in public. Public self defense stats are hard to pin down, but somewhere around 10% of civilian self defense shootings occur in public. If you have better numbers, please share them in the comments. So, if you want to protect yourself as well as possible with the least inconvenience to your lifestyle, keeping a gun at home seems to make sense. Once you decide to carry a gun in public (or on you at all) you must have more skills and more effort invested in the practice. Most are unwilling to do this at any reasonable level.
Even with higher levels of interest and effort, carrying a gun on you very possibly carries more risk than reward for most people. After all, if you are unlikely to need it (that’s all of us, more or less), you still have to live with the thing, day in and day out, and not have anything bad happen from that decision. When you look at it this way, I think small revolvers like the iconic Detective Special start to look pretty good. Double action autos like the discontinued Sig P239 or S&W 3913 look really good. But, the market has spoken and those guns just don’t interest most of the buying public. That is unfortunate. The closest thing we have today is probably the P30SK, and it is a truly fantastic option.
Pretty Good – 6 shot revolvers
Good – Single stack DA/SA autos
Fanstastic – subcompact DA/SA or DAO doublestack autos
While it may be true that most people are possibly safer if they do not carry a gun, society is not safer that way. When criminals think there is a decent chance they will run into armed opposition, they tend to look elsewhere. Even if they think they will not encounter an armed civilian, sometimes they do, as recently happened at a mass shooting. Because of that, I want everyone in my town, as well as the places I visit, to carry a gun. That is my idea of civics. Put society before yourself and we will all be happier and safer. Except for the guy who shoots himself or a loved one by accident, he’s going to wish he had not decided to carry a gun.
Thankfully, that is a rare occurrence, but you can make it even rarer.
1. Get good training. If your chosen instructor just parrots the 4 safety rules and does not teach you actionable ways to implement them correctly, find a better instructor.
2. Carry a gun that is more forgiving of human error. Just because some whizbang tactical guy carries a certain gun setup does not mean you should. You do not have his training or experience (he probably doesn’t either). Even if he is legit, you don’t face the same daily threats he faces. I know, there I go playing the odds, which I said I don’t like to do. But it is true. You do not face the same threats as a SWAT operator or a guy sharpening the tip of the spear overseas.
3. Carry your gun in a position that is more forgiving of human error. AIWB is fantastic, but it is not for everyone. Some people in the gun community cannot walk and chew gum. I’m pretty sure they should not carry a gun AIWB.
Something that doesn’t get discussed much is how well you handle stress. One of the reasons an experienced SWAT guy or military operator can do the things they can do is because they have a lot of experience handling stress. Finding out the hard way that you cannot do that could be a very expensive lesson to learn.
When is the last time you experienced immediate, life threatening circumstances?
How did you handle it?
If the answer is never, or not well, you are probably living in the developed world and are lucky to do so.
One of the things about being a mature adult is having a real understanding about your capabilities and limitations. Too many people seem to identify with John Wick these days, and that’s fine. They just conveniently forget that this fictional character lived long enough to do what he did because the guys who beat him half to death in the beginning chose not to kill him. He got lucky. Will you?