Self-Defense: A Fine Perspective

Kim du Toit
March 24, 2008
8:30 AM CDT

Blogger Mike Lief sent me a link to this website. As well as Stephen Camp’s love of the wonderful Browning High Power (how bad can a man be, when he loves the Browning/Saive masterpiece?), his FAQ page on self-defense guns and stopping power is one after my own heart: no-nonsense, even-handed, and refreshingly devoid of cant.

It’s going into the blogroll, immediately, under “Reference”.

Like me, Stephen thinks that the .38 Special +P is about the minimum cartridge power needed for adequate self-defense; unlike me, he likes Glocks. But at the same time, it’s all in the “feel”—and we both know it. His hand gets beaten up by the Kahr pistols; mine doesn’t. Glocks fit his hand nicely; they don’t in mine.

None of that’s important. What’s important about his discourse is that I don’t disagree with a single thing he says. Where we would have a difference, it’s in shading. Example: he frowns on a .22 for self-defense. So do I. My take, however, is that if it’s a choice between a .22 and no gun (for someone extremely averse to noise or recoil, for instance), then pack a .22, by all means—just as long as you realize that you may have to dump an entire mag into a bad guy to get him to stop.

That’s not a serious point of difference; in fact, I doubt there’s any difference between us at all.

And of course, there’s that BHP thing.

When you have been shooting for as long as Stephen and I have, you learn that about 20% of a gun’s effectiveness is mechanics, 40% is cartridge, and the remaining 40% is the shooter. (That’s effectiveness; as far as accuracy is concerned, of course, it’s 99% shooter.)

I have no “favorite” between a revolver or pistol for self-defense—I carry either or sometimes both, depending on circumstance. I used to prefer semi-autos, and speak sneeringly of “old-timers” with their sixguns, until I came across people like the Layabout Sailor who are not only astonishingly good with a wheelgun: they’d kick the asses of most semi-auto shooters in a gun fight, myself included.

That has a way of changing your mind.

Ditto on Glocks. As I’ve said before, I don’t like Glocks myself, because I think they’re ugly and they don’t fit my hand to my liking (there’s also that “made by furriners” and Gaston Glock’s “I support ballistic testing” nonsense, but that has nothing to do with the guns, per se). But there’s no denying the Glock’s effectiveness—I shoot the Mod 17 as well as I shoot almost any handgun, and better than some—and I frequently recommend them to beginner shooters, if the gun feels good in their hand.

But back to Stephen Camp. There’s all sorts of shooty goodness in that FAQ, covering other stuff like magazines and so on.

Read it soon, and bookmark for yourselves. It’s worth it.