Why the Pistol is the Most Important Weapon

Thankfully, we live in a relatively stable society, mostly free from serious crime.  You may doubt that first sentence, but history is on my side here. If you leave your home to go to the store, you don’t really have to worry about coming home to find your family killed or kidnapped and your house burned down. It can happen.  It has happened. It will happen again. It is still incredibly unlikely to happen today.  Not just to you, but to anyone in America.

I’m not saying to just play the odds and all will be well.  I’m saying that certain types of crime are simply not a factor in society today the way they might have been in years past or in other places. Though that is true, it does not prevent me from taking precautions when I leave the house.  I am armed. My wife is armed.  The alarm system is on. The gate at our driveway is closed. The cameras are monitored, the dogs are loose, etc. We take precautions because the penalty for being wrong is greater than we want to bear. 

That being said, defensive civilian encounters in America are generally short-lived, spontaneous, and completely resolvable with a concealed carry handgun. It is mostly internet fantasy that you will get your truck gun and go save the day when the flag flies. In fact, way more guns are stolen from vehicles, than ever get to play a role in defending their owners. So, the plain ‘ol pistol, carried concealed (NOT carried openly), is the superior weapon for today’s defensive needs.

What pistol?

Any pistol, generally speaking. Size doesn’t matter much, caliber doesn’t matter much, capacity doesn’t matter much, but given my druthers, a large(er) caliber, with more of them in the mag, in an easy-to-shoot gun (larger than smaller) is the way to go. Is it much better than a smaller gun? Only occasionally, but since we carry guns for already unlikely scenarios, I don’t see how saving an inch here or there, or a few ounces, is worthwhile. If I need my gun, I want all of my shooting ability on tap, not 90% or whatever, because I chose to carry a small gun.

Under stress, we all shoot worse than our easy days on the range. 50%, is a number often thrown about in training circles, with cooler-headed, higher trained people able to use more like 60, 70, or even 80% of their ability. If we are going to lose some ability, I want to start at 100%, not less, therefore I choose a duty-type weapon for carrying.

But, don’t worry! We will cover all sorts of weapons here, as all have their place and all are pretty awesome. I do think it is a mistake though, to worry about defensive use of a carbine/shotgun/subgun/heavy rifle if you don’t already have a pretty high level of skill with the pistol. Also, having a high level of skill with a pistol makes it unbelievably easy to learn to shoot just about everything else. Unfortunately, shooting a rifle at a high level has almost no crossover to shooting a pistol, so if you have to put the time in anyway, might as well start with the pistol.