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Thread: So, how many guns are "enough"?

  1. #31
    Site Supporter NEPAKevin's Avatar
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    While it is admittedly not the same, shooting from retention approximates the index that one would use while firing from a jacket pocket. When I started shooting pistols, one instructor had us shoot from retention at increasing distances and the one technique using a head index allowed most of us to about double the range we could reliably hit from which depending on the shooter was ten to fifteen yards. By hit, I mean hits on COM or knocking down a popper.
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  2. #32
    Site Supporter Tamara's Avatar
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    Not a pocket gun, as such, but I selected the gun that goes in my purse's carry compartment for three reasons:
    1. It's very light.
    2. It's hammerless and can be fired from inside the purse. (And I have sacrificed a few cheap bags to the gods of thunder to test this.)
    3. It's chambered for big, slow .429" bullets that are less reliant on velocity and unclogged hollowpoints to expand after getting fired through a purse.


    It is very easy to hold the purse in front of me in such a way that my gun is already in my hand while walking across a parking lot or riding in an elevator, yet it would not be apparent to an observer.

    I recollect at Blade Show in ATL several years back, I had to walk from the Galleria across Cobb Parkway back to the hotel at 0MyGawd30 and the only way to get to the lobby was to take the elevator in the parking garage. When the elevator stops on a middle floor of a deserted parking garage, it is very reassuring to know you can open the ball with your gun already in hand without spooking the person getting on if they turn out to be just a very large and scruffy, but otherwise harmless and happy, drunk.

    Like Al T. implied about shooting from a pocket, it's a pretty narrow-focus tool, but I figure I have to take the purse along anyway...
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  3. #33
    Quote Originally Posted by ToddG View Post
    Thank you for those responses, guys. The lesson learned from your examples, hopefully, is that "I can shoot from inside the pocket" isn't as simple as it sounds.
    There is another aspect to this.

    One Friday afternoon, with nothing on the schedule, my guys and I decided to try this out (nothing more dangerous than a gaggle of bored LE firearms instructors, eh?). We had discussed it previously, and one of the guys had brought an old London Fog overcoat he had gotten from a deceased relative.

    In addition to the already-noted caveats about muzzle orientation and difficulty in getting the piece aligned to your target, we made one more important discovery... an OLD garment that has been treated heavily with Scotch-Guard will catch fire when a J-frame is fired from within a pocket. Needless to say, things got real exciting for a minute. The shooter was mildly scorched, nothing serious; but he put a professional pole dancer to shame stripping out of that overcoat.

    Just sayin'... :-)

    .

  4. #34
    Member JHC's Avatar
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    OH man!!! Wouldn't that have been epic to have caught on video? It would be a youtube sensation!
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  5. #35
    Leopard Printer Mr_White's Avatar
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    On the subject of firing the gun from inside the pocket:

    I haven't worked with this myself. When I've carried a pocket gun in the past, it was in the pants pocket using a pocket holster. There's no way firing from inside that pocket will work.

    I have an acquaintance who was in a class where they tested the conventional wisdom of 'revolvers can fire multiple shots from inside a coat pocket, but semiautomatics will only get one shot before malfunctioning.'

    He tells me that, to their great surprise, a significant percentage of semiautomatics were able to fire multiple shots from inside a coat pocket without malfunctioning. I would think this is dependent on the size of the gun and the size of the pocket. I was pretty surprised by his report since it flew in the face of conventional wisdom, though I certainly don't think he was simply lying to me.

    Again, I have not tried this myself, but given his report it might bear some more testing.

  6. #36
    Quote Originally Posted by JHC View Post
    OH man!!! Wouldn't that have been epic to have caught on video? It would be a youtube sensation!
    Undoubtedly. However, this was before cell phone cameras; before cell phones, period, now that I think about it. "Bag" phones were all the rage, though...

    We tried it again later, using several old M-65 field jackets. Basically, at anything beyond contact distance your hit probability is rather iffy. And after the second shot, there is quite a big hole blown out the front of the garment, so I can see where a self-loader might get more than the proverbial one round off. We never tried one; we used my old M-37 with a bobbed hammer, and another fellow's M-38 Bodyguard (a REAL Bodyguard, not those plastic abortions they're hawking these days).

    J frames rule...

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  7. #37
    Site Supporter Tamara's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by LSP972 View Post
    Basically, at anything beyond contact distance your hit probability is rather iffy.
    This.

    And a .44 Spl CCI Blazer 200gr GDHP load will turn a genuine Mexican goat leather purse darn near inside out.
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  8. #38
    Quote Originally Posted by ToddG View Post
    Thank you for those responses, guys. The lesson learned from your examples, hopefully, is that "I can shoot from inside the pocket" isn't as simple as it sounds.


    I will vouch for what buzz said. I tried it when I first got my snubbie with an old wrangler jean jacket. I backed a standard silhouette target back three yards. First I fired with my left hand inside the pocket. Accuracy was atrocious. I thought I was at least pointed towards COM, but instead my shots were landing at the right side wrist area of the target. When I switched to the right pocket, my shots were landing in the left forearm area. As Buzz said, this is a tactic I would use if someone was literally right on top of me.

    I also tried firing from the same retention position as Buzz outside the jacket, and the result was...breathtaking, to say the least. I'd never fired a gun that close to my own body before, and it wasn't something I forgot, or probably will ever forget. I was using Blazer 158 gr +P when I did that.
    Last edited by Long tom coffin; 04-13-2012 at 01:38 PM.
    " One of the tribesmen in Thrace now delights in the shield I discarded /Unwillingly near a bush, for it was perfectly good /But at least I got myself safely out. Why should I care for that shield? / Let it go. Some other time I'll find another no worse. - Archilochus
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  9. #39
    Quote Originally Posted by Long tom coffin View Post
    I will vouch for what buzz said. I tried it when I first got my snubbie with an old wrangler jean jacket. I backed a standard silhouette target back three yards.
    Three yards is typically beyond the range that most instructors recomend for retention shooting, unless the target is closing on you so that the danger exists that he might try to grab or divert your weapon if you were to extend it in a typical shooting stance. In which case your first shot might take place at three yards; your second shot might take place at 3 feet; and your third shot might take place at 3 inches.

  10. #40
    Quote Originally Posted by ed l View Post
    Three yards is typically beyond the range that most instructors recomend for retention shooting, unless the target is closing on you so that the danger exists that he might try to grab or divert your weapon if you were to extend it in a typical shooting stance. In which case your first shot might take place at three yards; your second shot might take place at 3 feet; and your third shot might take place at 3 inches.
    There was a practical reason for that, namely that the range I was at at the time didn't allow shooting under three yards or beyond 25 (for pistols). It was more or less for the general experience of trying such, to see what it was like before I seriously considered the tactic having any place at all in my toolbox.
    " One of the tribesmen in Thrace now delights in the shield I discarded /Unwillingly near a bush, for it was perfectly good /But at least I got myself safely out. Why should I care for that shield? / Let it go. Some other time I'll find another no worse. - Archilochus
    "To take the uninstructed to war is to throw them away" - Confucious

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