Back up guns/optics/slides

[HCM]

BUIS on the gun and an iron sight Glock in the safe. I think BUGs are stupid. If it really came down to that, I’m either going to beat someone with my pistol or it was my time anyways.


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This is an incredibly myopic and ignorant statement. Both in terms of carrying a BUG and in terms of “spare” guns.

In terms of carrying a BUG, you are .MIL which means you normally don’t do work stuff alone. You have anything from a fire team to a platoon with you all the time. CONUS, for LE and others in higher risk situations a BUG is both practical and highly encouraged. Higher capacity autos have lessened the importance of the BUG as a “New York Reload” but guns still break, get hit by rounds in gun fights and gun grabs are still a thing.

Part of the justification for the switch to the M17/18 was to get more pistols out into combat arms units. What is a pistol for someone armed with a rifle ? Oh yeah... a BUG.

As for spares, you and I both have at least some spare /BUG guns in the armory at work. The idea of something similar for a high volume shooter is not unreasonable.

TLG, the founder of PF usually had at least a pair of whatever guns he was shooting at the time based on both his shooting experience and working for manufacturers. I’ve seen enough guns fail and go into evidence after shootings to believe the PF standard of three identical guns, one training gun, one vetted carry gun and one spare is prudent unless you are a “50 flawless rounds” type.

[Wake27]

This is an incredibly myopic and ignorant statement. Both in terms of carrying a BUG and in terms of “spare” guns.

In terms of carrying a BUG, you are .MIL which means you normally don’t do work stuff alone. You have anything from a fire team to a platoon with you all the time. CONUS, for LE and others in higher risk situations a BUG is both practical and highly encouraged. Higher capacity autos have lessened the importance of the BUG as a “New York Reload” but guns still break, get hit by rounds in gun fights and gun grabs are still a thing.

Part of the justification for the switch to the M17/18 was to get more pistols out into combat arms units. What is a pistol for someone armed with a rifle ? Oh yeah... a BUG.

As for spares, you and I both have at least some spare /BUG guns in the armory at work. The idea of something similar for a high volume shooter is not unreasonable.

TLG, the founder of PF usually had at least a pair of whatever guns he was shooting at the time based on both his shooting experience and working for manufacturers. I’ve seen enough guns fail and go into evidence after shootings to believe the PF standard of three identical guns, one training gun, one vetted carry gun and one spare is prudent unless you are a “50 flawless rounds” type.

The OP never indicated LE, so part of my response is based off of that. I have no idea what the statistics are, but my assumption based on what I do know is that the vast majority of Americans will never get in a gunfight. That includes LE and mil overseas. If we narrow it down to just CONUS civilians, that number is drastically smaller. After all that, what’s the percentage that will actually need a BUG? My guess is it’s well under 1% of Americans civilians. I could be wrong and would be interested to see actual statistics, but it’s one of a few things that I’m confident enough in my assumption not to lose sleep over it.

As far as spares, I’m a big believer there. I want another roughly identical setup for a spare, but my reality is that I’ve yet to need a pistol backup in several years. I shoot less than a lot of people here so that’s part of it, but realistically IMO, not having an RDS spare gun shouldn’t be a big deal.


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[HCM]

Question for those who carry a pistol with a slide mounted red dot. It’s still a matter of when, not if, they’re going to break. What redundancies do you have in place? Do you have multiple guns set up and ready to go? A spare optic to mount when the primary breaks?

I’m waiting for my first slide to come back with an RMR type 2. I haven’t decided what my back up plan is. If my RMR goes down at the range, I have other guns to finish out the day. If my number comes up and I have to use my gun for real, AND I’m unlucky enough that it breaks then, well it has BUIS and I carry a back up revolver in the pocket.

As long as the world hasn’t gone completely tango uniform, at this point I’m leaning towards just running the one gun, if the optic breaks, I’ll amazon prime a new one and send the busted one in for repair. I’m a bit of a minimalist and don’t like having a bunch of guns around that don’t get used, so I’d rather not tie up another $1500 in a contingency plan.

What’s everyone else’s approach?

It’s a matter of when, not if, your pistol itself will break. We try to minimize this via preventive maintenance but if you shoot enough it will happen.

Optics are getting inherently more reliable but we have learned that half (or more) of the pistol mounted optic (PMO) reliability equation is proper mounting.

Go back and read TLG’s blog on pistol-training.com. If you actually shoot /train in any real volume the idea of having two or three identical guns predates PMO. Common practice is to have a carry gun with enough rounds through it to vet it for reliability and a second to run hard as a training /range gun because it will eventually break. Some take this further and have a third identical gun in case one of the others is taken into evidence after a shooting, lost, stolen etc.

No reason to think of PMO any differently.

Guns break. Two is one and one is none is a real thing. If you are actually shooting on a regular basis two identical guns is a “minimalist” set up.

I currently carry a personally owned duty gun by choice and based in my experiences I have three copies of it: the duty gun, a training gun and a true spare.

I will echo the concerns about the odds of getting counterfeit/airsoft optics via Amazon. Same reason I wouldn’t buy a tourniquet off Amazon.

[HCM]

The OP never indicated LE, so part of my response is based off of that. I have no idea what the statistics are, but my assumption based on what I do know is that the vast majority of Americans will never get in a gunfight. That includes LE and mil overseas. If we narrow it down to just CONUS civilians, that number is drastically smaller. After all that, what’s the percentage that will actually need a BUG? My guess is it’s well under 1% of Americans civilians. I could be wrong and would be interested to see actual statistics, but it’s one of a few things that I’m confident enough in my assumption not to lose sleep over it.

As far as spares, I’m a big believer there. I want another roughly identical setup for a spare, but my reality is that I’ve yet to need a pistol backup in several years. I shoot less than a lot of people here so that’s part of it, but realistically IMO, not having an RDS spare gun shouldn’t be a big deal.


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Risk profile is going to determine the BUG thing. I carry a BUG on duty but not off duty since I try to avoid the triple S (Stupid People, places things)

However, there are non LE with higher risk profiles for whom BUGs, soft armor etc make sense.

I’ve issued out a spare guns to many officers with broken guns who were relatively low volume shooters. I’ve also sent people home with my duty gun after theirs went into evidence after a shooting. Stuff happens.

Speaking of stuff happening, having lived through the 1994 AWB, several rounds of scarcity due to panic buying etc, the idea of getting a spare or two while they are cheap and available is prudent. Being able to quickly, cheaply or easily get another at any time is not guaranteed.