Nonconformist's Guide To Gun Ownership Part 4

In Part 1, we dealt with the equipment, basic aspects of acquiring a gun and the associated hardware. In Part 2, we dealt with personal relationships with respect to the new gun owner. Part 3 was mostly about interacting with the gun culture. In Part 4, we are going to deal with the practical aspects of owning and using a gun.

Inventory
First let's take a look at your equipment inventory. The nonconformist gun owner has probably acquired the following things:

• a handgun
• some quantity of ammunition
• a pistol safe
• a cleaning kit
  
• shooting supplies such as hearing and eye protection, targets and maybe a range bag
• perhaps a holster

If you don't have these things yet, then go get them, by all means. The well-equipped nonconformist gun owner should eventually have these things:

• one or more handguns of the same caliber (preferably 9mm)
• a bare minimum of two, and preferably four magazines for each handgun
  
• one full box of 50 rounds of quality self-defense ammunition that has been tested in every pistol
• 100+ rounds of quality FMJ range/practice ammunition (preferably 200+ rounds), best if this is the same brand/weight/grain as your SD ammo
• a range bag (that is, a bag that you can take to the range)
  
• one set of ear and eye protection for each person shooting on any practice outing
• a basic cleaning kit
• hard-side lockable pistol cases, and keyed-alike locks, for each pistol you own

Let's talk about how to get here, and why, in a little while.

Hit What You Are Shooting At
The fundamental reasons to have a defensive handgun are:

1. To protect your home and family in the event of a burglary or robbery
2. To protect your personal life and property while not in your home
3. To protect the life and property of a third person while not in your home

As you would learn in a CHL class, there are laws governing when it is warranted to use "deadly force" and I will not get into that here. I am talking mostly about philosophy. The plain fact is, you probably will never have to use a handgun for any of these fundamental reasons, but if you do, you will absolutely need to be prepared to use it effectively for the purpose.

The key is to be able to hit what you are shooting at, and not hit what you are not shooting at. Most of your equipment choices and practice habits need to be focused on the applicability towards these goals at a very minimum.

The four rules of safe gun handling are as follows:

1. All guns are always loaded
2. Do not point the gun at anything you do not wish to destroy
3. Keep your finger off of the trigger until you have sighted in your target
4. Be sure of your target and what lies behind it

With the exception of #1, these all involve hitting what you are shooting at, and not hitting that which you do not want to destroy.

In any defensive shooting scenario, there is always the question of what is the target, how do I hit the target, what is not the target, and how do I avoid hitting that which is not the target.

Take for example a robbery in your home while you are in the house. Let's say you park both cars in the garage, you forgot to turn on any lights, and you and your family are sleeping when someone breaks in, unaware that you are inside the house. You wake up and grab your gun and run into the kitchen and there you find the bad guy, armed and dangerous, in your house. This guy is not going to stand still like a firing range silouhette. He's going to try and shoot you, while trying to avoid getting shot. Your adrenaline is going to be through the roof. Just because you can hit center of mass 10 shots in a row at the firing range while under no stress does not mean you can hit and stop a moving attacker in the dark with your adrenaline out the window. And speaking of out the window, there is no backstop magically moving around behind your home intruder, so if you miss, even by a little bit, then you have a bullet flying into who knows where. What is that fourth rule?

You know a 9mm hollowpoint bullet fired from a regular pistol can go through six interior sheetrock walls. Are you going to accidentally shoot someone you cannot even see in your own home? How do you know?

Also, if the intruder is shooting back at you, how do you find cover? Where is the cover? Is there any cover you can get behind inside your house? Where do your children and family go for cover if they hear gunshots in the house? Have you thought about any of this? New tools means new responsibility for effective use of tools. They don't typically teach any of this in a CHL class. They teach you what is legal, not what is practical.

The basics: Bare Minimum Practice
For the brand new gun owner, the priority is to learn to operate the pistol, even under ideal conditions. For your first outing, take 200 rounds of full-pressure ammunition (not Monarch or reloads), get instruction, learn to use the sights with both eyes open and focusing on the front sight, firing with two hands and the Weaver stance (look it up), and practice until you can put an entire magazine's worth of rounds into a 6" target at 7 yards. You will need to learn trigger control, you will need to learn why you are pulling down and to the left and how to remedy that, and you will need to learn to relax and time your shot correctly, as well as follow-through. You need to make these things habits. Doing it the right way from the first day will develop the best habits.

After that, for the next few months, you are still learning. The next couple of outings need to be 100 rounds, and over the next few months work on the same fundamentals, but add to it shooting one handed with either hand, point shooting (look it up), and shooting at longer distances (15 yards). You should eventually be able to hit the target with your non-dominant hand point shooting at 7 yards, put a whole mag into a 6" target with your dominant hand both point shooting and with sights, one handed, and also put a whole mag into the center of mass at 15 yards with your strong hand and two-hands using sights. Once you get to this point, you are ready to move on.

Next up is shooting on the move and from cover. Again I suggest range outings include 100 rounds for one practice session, and shoot from draw, shoot while moving, and shoot from behind cover. This is harder than you might think. Good luck finding an appropriate range. You may find reactive targets to be helpful in this type of practice (such as balloons stapled to the target area, put up red and yellow balloons, and you are to hit the red and miss the yellow, etc.).

Once you become proficient like this (it took me over 6 months), while going out once a month, I suggest running 50 rounds per month at range practice, with a once-a-month ongoing practice regimine, with a mixture of the above techniques to stay sharp.

Qualifying Ammunition ... and guns
If you read the manual for your pistol, you will notice that they say something about not all ammunition is the same and you should verify your ammunition works correctly before using it. Likewise you should verify your gun works correctly before trusting it as a solid defense tool.

I am now talking only about 9mm ammunition.

Stick to medium bullet weight, such as 115gr or 124gr. There is much debate about 147gr, and it is unreliable in some pistols, so just stay out of that hornet's nest. Stick to standard pressure or +P loads. +P+ or other high power loads are probably more than you need in a 3-4" barrell handgun and will definitely wear the gun faster. You should practice with ammo that closely resembles your self defense ammo. I recommend major premium brands like Winchester, Remington, Federal, Speer and Cor-Bon. The Winchester "white box" ammunition is available at Wal Mart for about $20 for 100 rounds for practice ammo, and the "white box" 115gr JHP defense ammo is only about 50% more expensive and feeds and shoots nearly the same as the practice rounds. This is a major benefit because the last thing you want is the gun to behave differently in a self defense scenario than it does in practice due to different ammo choices.

To qualify the gun as reliable, you should shoot about 200 failure-free consecutive rounds through it. Also 200 rounds is a good breakin period for a new pistol.

To qualify the ammo as reliable, a minimum is 50 consecutive failure-free rounds before relying on the ammo for carry. More is obviously better. You can see how choosing boutique, expensive ammo can make qualification expensive, which means you may not qualify it correctly due to cost. This would be a big mistake because an ammo-related failure may not show up in just 20 rounds of qualification, but you don't want to learn about an ammo-related problem on that day when you need the gun to go "bang" and it goes "click".

The difference between self-defense and practice ammo is mostly price. Self-defense ammo is hollow-point, which means it will expand or "mushroom" when it meets resistance. A lot of ballistic testing is done on this ammo to verify it works correctly. Unlike the hollywood image of hollowpoints as cop-killers or exploding rounds or some kind of ultra lethal round, hollowpoints are probably less lethal and safer than regular "ball" or FMJ ammo. The reason is because when hollowpoints expand, they slow down and are intended to not penetrate all the way through the target (target = bad guy). This minimizes the chances of a bystander being hit by a bullet that went straight through. Also since there is only an entry wound, there is less bleeding with a hollowpoint than a FMJ round.

The idea is to stop the attack. The idea is not to eventually kill the attacker. A JHP round is more likely to stop the attack, since all of the energy of the bullet is put into the attacker, while a FMJ round is more likely to pass through, meaning some of the energy is not put into the attacker. So the attacker may continue the attack, and then die of bleeding later on with a FMJ, but the attacker may stop the attack and not bleed to death if hit with a JHP.

So your defense ammo should be JHP, and ideally, JHP that reacts similarly in your pistol to the FMJ that you use for practice.

The Winchester "white box" 115gr ammo you can buy at Wal Mart is great for practice, and the JHP variety is economical enough to get plenty of qual and practice in, and effective for use as a defense round.

Be Prepared
There are a bunch of gun sayings that apply here. Like, the first rule of gun fighting is "bring a gun". Or, "the .22 in your pocket is better than the .45 in your safe". I'll make a new one. There is no point in owning a gun if it is not available when you need to use it.

Making the gun available for use involves planning. The gun has to be immediately at hand when you need it. It needs to be loaded. It needs to have a round in the chamber.

The best and simplest way to solve this most of the time is to have the gun on your person. However, when you are in the shower or sleeping, I bet even the most die hard CHL advocate won't carry a gun.

So where do you put your gun when you are sleeping? A bed-side gun safe is the way to go. A fast-access electronic safe is a great solution, and a Gun-Vault type with finger grooves for the combination is a great idea. If you do not have guests or kids (then get a life!), then leaving the gun in an unlocked state may be acceptable. Masaad Ayoob (you need to know who this is) describes sleeping with the gun on the floor next to the bed, with a magazine tossed on top of it. You see the gun on the night stand is likely to wind up in the hands of the attacker, since they are awake and alert when they enter your room, and you are not.

There is also a very good argument for keeping your gun in the holster, and the holster on the belt, and still affixed to your pants that you wore the day before you went to bed. Then you leave these pants next to the bed. You can get to the gun quickly, but also if you need to get up and get out of the house, when you put on your pants, you are already armed.

There are an infinite number of other solutions, but work it out for yourself.

Now be prepared in the car. Getting to a gun while driving your car can be tricky. I can't even get my cell phone out of my pocket while driving. If you are stopped at a light and a carjacker gets in the passenger seat, are you going to be able to get to your gun carried small-of-the-back? Do you want it in a holster attached to the inside of the glove box? Don't you think the BG will get to it first if you have to reach across? This is something to consider.

Basically the key is, the closer to your body and your right hand, the better.

Why All Of That Ammo
You might have noticed I recommend having a lot of ammo on hand. There are a couple of reasons.

First off, you may get a chance to run out and get in some practice range time, and maybe it's during a time when your gun store is closed. I went by Wal Mart recently on the way to the range to find they were out of my ammo. You never know. So having some on hand makes this more convenient.

Secondly, the price of ammo has been increasing steadily. It lasts a long time. Buying now hedges against higher prices later.

Thirdly, in the event you suddenly find you would like to have a lot of ammo on hand, like a natural disaster, extended power outage, some other event that might cause looting or whatever, that's a real bad time to have to run to the store and pick some up. In fact, for this reason alone, it makes a lot of sense to stockpile ammo. There are slim odds of something like this happening, but it is cheap insurance. Maybe once a month, while in Wal Mart picking up groceries, you pick up a box of ammo. One month, get a 100-round value pack of practice ammo. The next month, get 50 rounds of defense ammo. Do this every month for a year and even including range trips and that kind of thing, you will end up with 1000 rounds of ammo stored up in case of an emergency.

Quite simply, an emergency that would call for the use of a lot of ammo (like, you cannot go buy any more for a long time), also is an emergency making acquisition of ammo nearly impossible.

The Other Gear
The other gear like hearing protection, range bag, etc. are all convenience items. The extra magazines for your pistols are #1 for backup, in case one breaks (it's known to happen), #2 for extra capacity to carry, and #3 convenience. It's much easier when you go to the range to take out your defense-loaded magazine and set it aside, then just use the spare for the practice, reload with the defense mag when you leave. Also if you are traveling or need to transport more than one gun's worth of ammo, you can carry it in the spare magazines.

What Next
Buying guns can get addictive. It can turn into a hobby. Barring that, what is the use in having a bunch of guns? Is there any use? If so, what is it and what kinds of guns make sense?

Rimfire. You might have noticed that you can buy 500 rounds of .22LR ammunition for the price of 100 rounds of 9mm. Sure seems like a great way to get in target practice. So having a .22LR pistol that has a similar manual of arms, sights, etc. to your defense pistol could make target practice to work on sight skills, shooting on the move and that kind of thing much more economical. .22LR pistols are kind of expensive but .22LR rifles are very inexpensive. Once you get a stock pile of ammunition (and one box of 550 rounds is a stock pile), then why not get another gun to shoot it with. The same logic for why the nonconformist might want to learn to use a pistol applies to a rifle, and a .22LR rifle is an excellent way to learn on the cheap.

Small Game. I will never be into hunting. I sure hope I don't ever have to kill an animal and figure out how to clean it and prepare the meat for consumption on my own. But if the time were to come that I do need to do just that, then having the skills and tools to do it would be handy. A .22LR rifle is perfect for small game like rabbits and squirrels. Look I don't want to eat a squirrell, but I am not starving or watching my family starve. Things might look different under different circumstances.

Non-animal Predators. There is an acronym used by the apocalyptic tinfoil hat gun types, "SHTF". You know what it stands for. In this case, there may be some chance of bad guys lurking in the neighborhood. Sure you can fend them off with your couple of 9mm handguns but nothing beats a .223 rifle. A .223 can also be used to hunt larger game, or to fend off animal predators like coyotes if you happen to find yourself in the woods and being attacked by coyotes. Yeah I know, slim odds. AR15 is the platform of choice. That's almost like a religion in itself. I like the Kel-Tec SU-16 or a Ruger Mini-14 as an alternative.

Handguns For Specific Purposes. Your second gun will probably be a dedicated carry gun, one smaller and lower capacity vs. your first gun. A single-stack compact or subcompact 9mm is a perfect choice. Your third gun may well be a "deep concealment" or "high convenience" carry gun like a very small .380 such as a Kel-Tec P3AT or Ruger LCP... maybe even a P32. A gun you can just stick in your pocket and go no matter what you are wearing including swim trunks and nothing else. Maybe your spouse wants her own carry gun and thinks a .38 snubnose with pink grips is the one to get. Go for it. Maybe you have kids that are old enough and responsible enough to want to be able to use a gun to defend themselves in the home if need be, but are not strong enough to clear a jam in a semi-auto. So you want a revolver.

There are many legitimate reasons for non-sportsman suburban gun owners to own multiple guns.

Of course, when I bought my second gun my wife said, incredulously, "just how many guns do you want anyway?!?!". I said, "at least five". She almost hit the roof. So what seems normal to me now still seems outrageous to my wife, who is about six months behind me on the gun ownership curve. My five: double stack 9mm (I have), carry 9mm (I have), gun for the wife to carry, .22LR rifle and .223 rifle. I could easily add to that a dedicated pocket gun, a .22LR pistol, and a .38 revolver. See how five turns to eight, just like that?

I guarantee you, any of your family and friends who swallowed the idea of you owning a gun and didn't protest too much will definitely think you are a gun nut if you buy eight guns in just a couple of years.