Posted on 02/22/2022 7:16:09 PM PST by End Times Sentinel
Folks,
Due to a number of painfully obvious factors, I've decided to add an EDC firearm to my repertoire.
Firearms wise, a Sig Sauer P365 or a S&W Airweight 38 are in the lead. Yes, I know these are designed for a woman to carry in her lady-bits. However, in my situation, simply being able to return fire will be plenty 99% of the time, if not, I have other man sized weapons I can bring.
I need something to carry without fail, comfort and concealability are far and away the most important.
Gun safe wise, from time to time, I need to attend/enter places with metal detectors and need a place to temporarily stow a fire arm. Never long term, but for a couple of hours attending a sporting event, PTA meeting, something that could spiral out of control if a little person with a small brain and a tiny amount of authority discovered any subterfuge.
Any advice will be much appreciated and I hope to weigh it all over the next day or so before making a purchase.
I dislike striker fired pistols and don't own any. The consensus among P365 owners is that the striker is fully cocked by the slide action. That makes it single action to me. Others say it is only partially cocked, like a Glock, but that's still not double action in my mind.
Sig's website avoids the debate by describing the trigger action as "striker fired."
As for safeties, the only Sigs that I know have external safeties are the single action only models, including the 1911.
“...38Spl SD ammo is scarce, but available. Practice ammo is abundant. Practice ammo will work fine in a pinch....”
It’s starting to show up some.
I picked up a box of Hornady Critical Defense in .38 at the BassPro store in Katy, TX last Friday morning. They had just stocked the shelf with a whole case of it. It wasn’t cheap at about $35/box or so, but it was available. Hornaday is temporarily using brass, rather than nickel-plated, for it now due to long delay times for the nickel-plating. Brass works fine for me as I wasn’t buyin’ it for its good looks.
And those nice round circles that those wad cutters and/or semi-wad cutters make on those practice targets will also do the same thing on a perpetrator. The wound channel is a full .357” diameter for quite a distance causing massive bleeding. No knockdown/expansion from em, but yeah, they’ll do a pretty good job in a pinch.
Kel Tec made the first mouse gun of that style. The first gen was bad, second was good. The LCP is much more refined and a good carry weapon.
I like the Judge. A 410 pocket scattergun is not going to go through the next car and hit some poor kid.
Sig 365 just came out with one.
The point of my original post is some “newer” pistols do not have an external safety unless required by state law. Almost all manufacturers offer at least one DAO model. Under stress all you do is squeeze the trigger, like a revolver.
I used to use a 1911 for home defense but purchased a DAO because if, under stress, I forgot the safety things could get bad quickly.
For people who have plenty of time and money to practice shooting with a safety, great. But if training is more limited because of budgets or time DAO is recommended (at least according to one of our local rangemasters).
Lots of cops have shot themselves, and there’s several on video (check it out)
CC is NOT the same as a service weapon.
Enjoy your choices. Cops are NOT a good example of proper firearm use.
Not all cops are proficient. But the bottom line still is that carrying with an empty chamber is foolish and a sign of unsureness and a lack of self-confidence. I’ve been in a position where I was trying to control one person while another criminal was advancing on me. Not a good position to be in with an empty chamber. But keep carrying with an empty chamber. Hopefully it never comes back to bite you in the arse.
I appreciate the suggestion, but I actually live where having a CCW is needed, and I'd spend literally hours a week looking for parking, and nearly $60 a week in gas endlessly circling blocks around my home looking for an open spot. Kind of impractical, but the suggestion does give food for thought for the retirement years ahead.
We've had a good run for 30 or so years in the city, made a fortune on real-estate appreciation, but the day we leave and sell off to some liberal sucker is approaching soon enough. Hopefully, then, CCW will be a wise practice, not a necessity.
I beat dude who shoot semi-auto shotguns with my pump every day of the week on accuracy when shooting at 3,4,5 moving targets. It’s about muscle memory.
Oh, and if you are chambered and carrying and you inadvertently loose control on the weapon, they don’t know it needs to be racked.
He never said don’t have a round in the chamber. He was saying have a round in the chamber and a manual safety you have drilled into muscle memory to flip off. He is absolutely right about how muscle memory makes flipping the safety off take zero additional time in a draw. If you practice a hundred draw a day for a week, you will have trouble drawing the gun without flipping the safety off in one smooth motion. Your hand will hit the gun and the safety just goes off as part of the motion without even thinking. This was normal back when everybody carried a 1911.
IMO, I am much more comfortable holstering with a safety on, than with it off. The single most experienced shooter I knew had a nice little pair of crescent shaped scars between his toes, where a 357 went off when it was holstered fast and a leather flap hit the trigger and touched it off double action. Once you are ready to holster, you have the time, and it is muscle memory anyway, to flip the safety on and the gun has one more level of protection between you and an AD.
I think two is one and one is none holds with safety on a gun. The whole, I don’t want one when SHTF is probably statistically foolish, given you will holster thousands of times in your life, and maybe one in every thousand or ten thousand people will ever have to unholster and shoot. If trained it is zero time-delay, and IMO it is a big safety buffer when holstering in training.
Oh, and if you are chambered and carrying and you inadvertently loose control on the weapon, they don’t know it needs to be racked.
This has nothing to do with shotguns. I've seen video of a person whose muscle memory failed when he was confronted with an armed robber. He forgot to take his safety off and started squeezing the trigger.
As for inadvertently losing your weapon, if that happens, you were never in a good place to begin with. Situational awareness should help you identify potential threats. If you let one come up close enough to you that he can take your weapon, then nothing is going to help you anyway.
Bottom line...carrying with an empty chamber is foolish and a sign that you need to somehow gain more confidence with your firearm. We can go back and forth on this forever, but you will never change my mind, or the minds of the vast majority of people who carry with one in the chamber.
With respect to those hand guns, they are both excellent. Buy them both.
To each his own.
I know people that freeze up or are jumpy, too.
I myself am calm and function better in the stress moment. Some people can’t take in the situation.
I never just drop a handgun in my pocket. Even with a mouse gun (NAA Sidewinder) I use a pocket holster.
I place a lockable case in a secure storage area liker a trunk. I place the weapon there prior to arrival at the place where I have inability to carry.
So far, I'm still able to use a Semi, but fully loading the clip is getting increasingly difficult.
While dropping a gun into my pocket isn't ideal, sometimes, particularly in the summer when I have to run an errand in the neighborhood (I live in the city and walk to a lot of places), that option is just incredibly practical and attractive. I know I'm going to do it from time to time.
Usually, I know well in advance that I'm going to be entering a place where guns are verboten (football/basketball games). Even though I'm legally permitted to carry there (LEO status), it's not worth arguing with some 75 IQ security guard and his 75.1 IQ supervisor. So, it'd be a 3 hour proposition in a heavily patrolled parking facility.
My point about vehicle stowing is that I don’t want to be possibly seen at the parking site stowing something away — just makes my car a target. Therefore I stow the weapon when I se t off or in route.
The pocket thing is pure safety for me. I know I have set off car or house alarms by an inadvertent bump or rub on a key fob. Is an unshrouded trigger more immune.
Just my two cents. Stay armed. Stay well.
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