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"Should I get a gun?" It’s a simple question with a less than simple answer. First off, there are a few people for whom having a gun is more dangerous than not having a gun. We'll assume here that you are not a criminal or someone otherwise legally bared from owning a gun. If you: have ever hit your wife or kids, have suicidal thoughts or have a hard time controlling your anger, a gun is going to be more trouble than it's worth. If most of your stories begin with, "I was drunk," and end with property damage, injury or arrest, getting a gun is not a good idea. If you are going to be drinking, put the guns in a safe, and give the keys (along with your car keys) to someone who isn't drinking.
If you use illegal drugs, having a gun around is bad news. First, there is the very real danger that, while high, you will shoot something or someone that you will regret in the morning. Second, suppose someone breaks into your house and you shoot them. The cops are on the way, and you now have a gun, drugs and a dead guy in your living-room; that alone equals time in the Federal prison. Even if you shot the guy in self-defense, there is a good chance you are also going to do time for Felony Murder.
Having a gun involves taking on a huge responsibility. Guns are dangerous, uncaring things. Not having a gun when you need one could also pose some problems. A gun is, to borrow an analogy, like a parachute; If you don't have one when you need one, chances are you will never need one again. We are liberals, and liberals are nothing if not seekers of truth, so lets look at some facts, or at least some research.
I know you've heard it a thousand times, “Having a handgun in your home increases your chances of being killed with one by 47 times.” I've heard it everywhere from "The Simpsons" to the Maryland State mandated gun safety video. You ever wonder where it comes from? This now (in)famous case of news media misinformation comes from a 1986 New England Journal of Medicine study by a guy named Arthur Kellermann and one of his pals. There are only two problems with the that whole '47 times' statement; They mis-quote the study, and the study is useless. The truth, easily accessible by finding the article on the web, is that the study said, "For every Self-protection homicide in the home, there were 43 deaths involving a firearm." Well, before you go throwing guns in the oceans with wild abandon maybe we’d better discuss the research a bit.
Guncite.com has a great article on this study and what's wrong with it, so I'll just give you the short version. First, the study is based on observations from King county in Washington state, AKA Seattle. From a research design point of view, this is really stupid. Rule one in research design: if you want your study to apply to the whole country, you have to sample from the whole country. It is the equivalent of doing research on natural disasters in one county in Oklahoma, and concluding that the whole country really needs to worry about tornados, and not earthquakes, floods, wildfires or hurricanes.
Next, let's look at the conclusion itself, "For every case of self-protection homicide involving a firearm kept in the home, there were 1.3 accidental deaths, 4.6 criminal homicides, and 37 suicides involving firearms." That adds up to almost 43 deaths for every self-protection homicide. Let's think about that for a second. Notice it's not saying, 'you're more likely to get killed if you have a gun than if you don't.' It doesn't make that kind of comparison (Kellermann does do this in a later paper). What if, instead of 'firearm' it said, 'baseball bat' or 'golf club.' How about 'car' or 'doctor?' That's ridiculous you say, those things are not made to kill people. Neither are guns! In fact, cars kill more people than guns, and doctors kill more people every year than guns and cars combined. Should you then get rid of your car and your doctor? No, because they are more likely to save a life than to cause a death. A gun in the home is also more likely to save a life than to cause a death.
Another researcher named Gary Kleck did a great deal of research using random surveys of homeowners across the country and concluded that handguns were used to prevent far more acts of violence than they perpetrated. Vast increases in violent crime rates in countries that have recently disarmed their citizens (Like Australia and England) and sharp drops in homicide rates of States that enact concealed weapons laws point to the deterrent effect of firearms. You can make yourself dizzy pondering all the research, but when it comes down to it, the question is “What do you believe?” and “How do you feel?” about guns in your home.
What it all boils down to is that only you can make “The Decision”. You have to decide whether, if it came down to it, you would rather shoot and possibly kill another human whom you believed was about to maim, rape or kill you, or simply let the bad guy do what he will, and hope for the best. This is a very personal decision that many blab on and on about, but few who haven’t looked down the sights of a gun at another human have carefully thought through. I hope it’s a decision you never have to make. Before you consider purchasing a gun, though, you should have already formed some pretty strong opinions about the matter. Buying a gun “for its intimidation factor” is a bad idea. If you bring a gun into a fight, you’d better damn well be ready for a gunfight. Real bad guys don’t always cower at the sight of a gun like they do in movies. Sometimes they’re under the influence of drugs or alcohol and are as a result beyond the bounds of reason, and sometimes they’ve slipped the bonds of reason without any chemical assistance. The point being, if you can’t use it, don’t bring it into the conflict.
Now, let’s assume you’ve sorted all that mess out. Now you have to make some slightly less serious and nearly as complicated shopping decisions. What kind of gun should you get? What kind of ammo? We’ll answer these and many other burning questions next.
The first question is always “What kind of gun should I get?”. This is a bit like asking, "What kind of shoes should I buy?". It depends on what, exactly, you intend to do with it. Most folks want a handgun with which they can learn to shoot fairly accurately and which costs less than two hundred dollars or so. Sadly, the choices in the $200 range are sorely limited. Some used .357 revolvers that are good defense guns can be had in the under $300 range, but generally you’re talking about shelling out four or five hundred bucks. This is without a doubt a life and death kind of spending decision. Don’t skimp. Get a decent gun.
Handguns basically come in two flavors, Revolvers, and Automatics. Revolvers have a big cylinder that usually holds six bullets (some hold less, some hold more). These guns are generally simple and reliable and are a very good choice for defense. Most revolvers, however have a very long, fairly heavy “trigger pull.” Trigger Pull is how much muscle your finger’s gotta put forth to make the gun go bang. Some people with smaller hands have a bit of trouble dealing with the trigger on a revolver and those folks might want to look elsewhere. There are, to add another wrinkle to the problem, two ways to shoot a revolver. In both cases the hammer of the revolver starts in the down position. In method one you just pull the trigger. The force you apply lifts the hammer and then, at the end of the stroke, lets it go. Lifting the hammer is where most of the work comes from, because you’re compressing the spring that pushes the hammer back as you go. This is called “Double Action”, because your trigger pull does two things. It cocks the hammer and then fires the gun. The other way to shoot a revolver is by first pulling back the hammer with your thumb. This ”Cocks” the gun. From here it takes only very light pressure on the trigger to make the gun go bang. This is called “Single Action”. Shooting the gun single action makes it a lot easier to shoot accurately, because only light pressure is needed to fire. This method is, however, a seriously bad idea in a “Pointing your gun at another human” scenario for the same reason. If you have the gun cocked and you’re startled, it might go bang before you intended it to. Most automatics can also be shot single or double action, but the single action triggers on automatics are generally set to go off with quite a bit more pressure than the single action triggers on revolvers, so this is a bit less foolhardy. You should know that there are some Single Action revolvers around. While it will PO some cowboys to say it, Single Action revolvers are generally not a good idea for self-defense.
Automatic pistols (which are really Semiautomatic, but that is another story) are called that because they “self-load”. When the gun fires it goes through a few mechanical steps that put a new bullet in the barrel, some also re-cock the hammer. Automatics come with several different types of triggers.
The first, and simplest is single action. These guns, like the old .45 Auto of World Wars I and II fame would only shoot with the hammer cocked. When you load one, it cocks its self and you either have to lower it manually, or leave it cocked. If leaving it cocked sounds a little unsafe to you, you’re not alone. The designers and pretty much everyone else who ever used one agreed. For this reason they put a manual safety on the gun. This is a lever you can flick on and off which keeps the gun from going bang when you pull the trigger. Carrying a single action auto with the hammer cocked and the safety on is called “Cocked and Locked”. These are perfectly good guns, but you have to remember to put the safety on when it’s supposed to be on and to take it off before you use it.
The second type is the “Double Action Only” automatics. These require you to fire the gun double action every time. They generally don’t have manual safeties, but some do. These guns can’t be cocked and fired like revolvers. If you pull back on the hammer it just falls back to it’s resting position without any fireworks, assuming the trigger wasn’t pulled in the mean time. These guns were produced for very liability conscious police departments and carry all the limitations to good marksmanship previously mentioned for double action revolvers.
The third type are the “Double/Single” Autos. They normally have a “decocker” lever on the side that allows you to safely drop the hammer without firing the gun. From this hammer down state the gun will have to be fired double action, that is, the hammer will have to be hauled up and then let go with trigger finger pressure on the first shot. After the first shot, the gun will cock its self and all remaining shots will be single action. A respectable compromise, and the system now in use on the military’s Beretta handguns. The problem with single/double is that you have to change horses in mid-stream, so to speak. You have to shift your hand position because of the large difference in the trigger pull between your first and second shots
Last, but not least is the Glock "safe-action" system. This system was introduced by Glock, Inc on their handguns in the mid eighties. The Glock system half cocks the gun every time it’s shot. This is the system of choice, and the handgun of choice, for about 70 percent of the US law enforcement market. The reasons are simple. First, the officer has to remember only three things. Pull the gun, Point it at the bad guy and pull the trigger. More than a few officers have died because they forgot to take the safety off their guns. Second, the trigger is the same every time you pull the trigger. And lastly, it works well for fingers of all sizes. The relatively short trigger reach of a Glock style trigger allows smaller framed people to shoot it well. There are several handguns not made by Glock that have similar triggers. The down side is that just like the revolver, there’s no manually activated safety on the gun. You pull the trigger, it goes bang. Now let’s discuss what you’re going to do with all this information.
The first thing you have to do is handle a few guns. See how they feel in your hand, see if your finger reaches the trigger, see what you like and don’t like. To do this you may have to go into a gun store. This is an activity fraught with peril. Many gun storeowners are quite knowledgeable and decent folks, many more are not. I was once in a gun store when a college-aged girl came in to ask about buying a gun. The store owner politely suggested a pump shotgun. This raised my eyebrows a bit, as most folks find a shotgun a bit unwieldy inside a house. He went on to say that one of the truly wonderful advantages of the shotgun was that you could, if you heard a strange noise around the corner, stick the gun around the corner and fire with decimating results. This is, without a doubt, the worst advice I’ve ever heard, on several levels. The most obvious being that you would never want to shoot in the direction of a funny noise. You would only want to shoot at something you have positively identified as an immediate threat to your life, and that’s difficulty to do from around a corner. This is the type of advice one might find at gun stores. Listen politely, but with a jaded ear. Also, never forget that gun store owners make their living by selling guns. Don’t let them talk you into a $3000 Renaissance Grade Browning High Power when all you wanted was a used Glock or a functional revolver.
Your next hurdle is what caliber to choose. This is yet another quagmire of decisions I’ll try to make simple. In revolvers you can’t beat a .357 magnum. A .357 revolver shoots either .357 magnum shells, which kick a bit and run $20 a box or so, or .38 Special shells which are much nicer to shoot and lots cheaper too. .44 magnum is way more handgun than most folks need and isn’t much fun to shoot. Its legendary man stopping power may be somewhat over inflated too. A former Detroit homicide detective named Evan Marshal and a working cop named Ed Sanow did some research into this sort of business in the Mid-Ninety’s to which I shall soon be referring to extensively, called, oddly enough, the Marshall/Sanow study. They looked at actual shootings and defined a successful shooting as a “one shot stop”. This is not a kill ratio, but is the percentage of bad guys who stopped being bad and/of fell over after being shot once in the chest. The intent of a police officer or lawful citizen in shooting someone isn’t to kill them, it is to stop them from continuing some nefarious act. That being the case, Marshall/Sanow rated a shooting which stopped the shootee as a success and one that allowed him or her to continue a failure.While I think Marshall/Sanow is an excellet study, there are folks who disagree. If you have lots of spare time on your hands and want to make yourself crazy, search for "handgun stopping power" on the web, or go to my friend Todd Green's webpage, Calibers. Otherwise, just about every knowledgeable and rational person agrees that shot placement (being able to hit what you are shooting at) is more important than the bullet, and 9mm and above will do the job. If you can handle more gun, so much the better. Lets look at available choices more closely.
There are several calibers of automatic ammo that bear discussion, and many we won’t discuss in the interest of simplicity. The big three auto calibers are 9mm, .40 Smith and Wesson and .45 ACP. Lets look at each in turn. The 9mm is the cheapest of the three with the lightest recoil and is by far my favorite. You can buy a box of 9mm practice ammo for seven bucks at Wal-Mart. The other two run around fifteen bucks a box. (I’m speaking generally here) and you can shoot comfortably for hours with 9mm. Some decry it’s stopping power as weak and ineffective when compared to the .45’s legendary “knock-em-on-their-asses” stopping power, but the Marshall/Sanow data shows that both calibers perform similarly with similar ammunition. A good hollowpoint 9mm round has about an 85 percent one-shot-stop (OSS) rating. A good .45 bullet is around the same. Round nose or “full metal jacket” bullets are great for practice, but are marginally effective stoppers. They run in the 60% range for both calibers and you shouldn’t use them for self-defense. The .40 Smith and Wesson, contrary to the impression its name gives, is available in guns by a number of manufacturers. .40 SW is an excellent stopper and has, since its introduction in the 1980’s, taken the law enforcement market by storm. The lighter weight (Bullet weights are in grains, and there are 7000 of them in a pound) 155 grain .40 SW rounds have stopping percentages well into the 90’s. They’re more expensive and less comfortable to shoot, but they work. Store owners will ask what grain weight bullets you want. For 9mm the 115 or 124 grain hollowpoints are good, and for .45 the lighter the better, in my opinion. They come in 165, 185, 200, 230 and probably a dozen more weights I can’t think of. Avoid gimmick bullets and try a few different kinds to see how they feel and shoot. Now lets talk about keeping your new gun and its ammo from getting you into trouble.
There is great variation among gun laws from state to state and county to county, but this general rule follows. If you know in your heart of hearts that someone is about to murder you or rape you right that second, and there’s nothing else you can do to avoid those fates, you can shoot them. You cannot shoot someone who’s stealing your TV, or beating the hell out of your dog, or running from a bank robbery, period (Well, maybe in Texas.) If you can run away, you must. If you can avoid the whole situation in the first place you must. If you start an argument that ends in your shooting the person you were arguing with, you’re in trouble. If you shoot someone when you could have safely turned tail and run, you’re in trouble. In most jurisdictions, you are relieved of your duty to retreat if you’re inside your own house, and for the most part, you can assume that an uninvited 3am guest who kicks in your door means you harm. I’m no attorney though, so you’d best check local laws.
This brings us back to our young friend from the gun store. What should you do if you’re awakened in the wee hours by a strange noise? Well, your best bet is to listen and think for a bit, as we’ve all done one or two times in the middle of the night. If you decide it could be somebody dangerous, get the phone, get behind something and call 911. Having a flashlight by the bed might not be a bad plan either, because if the door comes open before the cops get there you’re going to want plenty of light so you can see what the hell is really going on before you use that gun. Searching the house puts you at a disadvantage. There are dozens of places a bad guy could hide while you traipse past so they can bonk you on the head. Don’t do it. Stay put and call the fuzz.
What I’ve offered here is a mere appetizer to the Thanksgiving dinner of information you need before you continue forward. There are several books on the subject that are excellent. Among my favorites is “Armed and Female” by Paxton Quigley, an interesting and articulate woman who’s book offers great insight and advice for men and women alike. Her books are widely available and she has her own website. My other favorite author is a police officer/expert witness/author named Mossad Ayoob. He’s written several books on the subject that are authoritative and interesting as well. Good luck, practice with what you buy and write us with any questions.
Kellermann, Arthur and Don T. Reay
1986 Protection
or peril? An analysis of firearms related deaths in the home, New
England Journal of Medicine 314: 1557-60.
