Spare carry mags? Really?

[Wake27]

When I first started carrying, I thought the idea of a spare G19 mag was almost as ridiculous as a BUG. Somewhere along the line, that changed and now I feel undergunned without a spare mag. Part of that had to do with mag pouches as the best option available at the time was a Raven mag carrier setup for IWB (didn’t seem ideal) whereas my phlster mag pouch is solid at AIWB. I think the other part was a combination of my daughter being born and seeing how many gun fights involve lots of 9mm rounds. The latter was due to two reasons, one was watching more and more videos from Active Self Protection on YouTube and the other was the closest thing I’ve had to a real experience - two marathon targets charging and only going down after two critical hits. That exercise quickly changed from relatively aimed shots at COM/head to “f*ck f*ck f*ck” and all of the bullets.


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[UniSol]

Part of me thinks this post is trolling. The other part of me remembers a thread a few weeks ago where someone asked why don’t companies make more of XX revolvers and a second, more recent, thread about which revolver is best for self defense.

I get being a gun hipster just to be different, or maybe because of class or skill required or some other awe-inspiring trait, but it’s 2020. Only gun hipsters and people in their 80s (even old guys from their 50s-70s choose the 1911) think that revolvers are anything more than fun guns, though I’ll consent 1% of revolver usage to some mind-blowing niche that can’t be filled by a semi auto. But that’s it, and 1% is probably high.

Revolvers have shit capacity and are far more difficult to operate. Plus they’re reportedly more picky about being clean. They’re literally the carry version of the Freedom Group Rem 870 Express shotgun for home defense that you only have to rack to scare away 70% of bad guys and you don’t even have to aim fur yer one shot kills of the other 30%.

Spare mag a necessity? Probably not. But I’m not betting life on my ability to kill someone with five shots of a less-than-ideal caliber while he’s spraying .223 or 12ga from a semi auto long gun, in the dark with flashing lights, and loud noises, likely dozens of people screaming and running towards a limited number of exits, and probably a few of them throwing their bodies into yours since movement is already restricted in the aisles.

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I don’t own any or have much interest in revolvers, but what is a fun gun? They all shoot bullets and are designed to kill humans.. Everything else is defined by degrees.An “Armed Professional” said in another thread recently that Glocks and Sigs are tools for killing people, everything else is a fun gun”....that’s a moving target, the minutiae of action, caliber, and manufacturer are geek territory.

So is carrying a spare mag. It’s a TTP that changes based on situation. It’s generally a good idea but it’s not a go/no-go criterion.

[Ed L]

you're leaving out personal demographics.

Go look at those "crimes" and the demographics of the "victims" and the perpetrators and the likelihood of the member of this forum being the "victim" of a violent crime drops to nearly nil.

factor in the most valuable lesson learned in "survival training" (situational awareness) and it becomes even less than that.

Then start to think about the number of these scenarios where someone would have dropped their guard enough to be a "victim" but still be presented with enough time to react in a way so as to make the gun in their crotch the deciding factor in the live/die... I mean, damn.

I'm not saying "don't carry a gun", which is how many on this forum tend to react when I point these things out. What I *am* saying is that the "odds" discussion is pretty much ludicrous. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the "odds" damn near negate the "stakes" so often cited.

But somehow almost 70 of Tom Givens' students actually wound up in exactly the situation you described and successfully defended themselves.

What is old is new again:

Rob- I’ll save you the trouble of looking for a check.

The problem lies in the source of various statistics. After spending 25 years in patrol or investigative work I can tell you there is far more violent crime, and violent crime against completely innocent victims, than you imagine.

Part of the confusion comes from the adoption of “incident based reporting” some time ago. In the past, under “offense based reporting” if a subject robbed 5 people at gunpoint, that was five armed robberies. Now it is one armed robbery. So, the armed robbery rate is now lower.

The FBI UCR report lists total crimes each year, using the incident based reporting model. Another problem is that the UCR system is voluntary—police agencies are not required to report all or any data to the FBI. Thus, their totals are way, way under-reported. The UCR shows about 12,500 murders a year in recent years, while experts think the actual number of criminal homicides in the US is closer to 40,000 a year. The same under-reporting applies to other violent crimes.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics is a part of the Justice Department, separate from the FBI. According to the BJS, in the US in 2006 there were 5,585,620 violent crimes. For that year, the BJS lists 1,209,730 Aggravated Assaults. A majority of those would probably justify a lethal self defense response. The BJS says there were 255,630 Forcible Rapes in 2006. The 2011 numbers rose to 5.8 million, one for every 30 adults.

In Memphis alone in 2013 there were 154 homicides. That number sounds like low odds. That is because of a very busy and very proficient Class 1 Trauma Center there, who treated 3,100 people for gunshots in 2013 alone. In Memphis in 2013 there were 9,165 Aggravated Assaults, according to the MPD, which is an average of 25.1 per day.

I’ve had dozens of students involved in legitimate self defense shootings. These are people with clean records and who possess handgun carry permits. They were typically going about their daily routine when attacked.

[BehindBlueI's]

But somehow almost 70 of Tom Givens' students actually wound up in exactly the situation you described and successfully defended themselves.

You're both right.

Rob's main point is that overall statistics are meaningless to the individual, which is completely correct no matter what the risk assessment is. The risks aren't remotely evenly distributed, and not every crime is a new victim, which is often overlooked when compiling these sorts of stats. The way crime is counted for NIBRs is different then when I first started with UCR, but it makes crime look "bigger" because it counts more. It used to be that if you were raped, murdered, and your house was set on fire that was counted as one crime: Murder. Now it's counted as three crimes, Murder, Rape, and Arson.

Rape is counted in the above post. If you are an un-incarcerated male, your chances of being a rape statistic are all but zero. (Note: prior to 2013 it was literally impossible for a male to be a rape statistic as the UCR definition was "a female forcibly...", so men could never be counted.) If you are a working prostitute your chances of being a rape statistic are high. If you're a young attractive female who goes to bars on her own, it's in the middle. Demographics, occupation, location, lifestyle choices, etc. all play in to any given individual's odds and it's reasonable to be concerned with YOUR odds, not some generic every-person-combined odds. To reuse an analogy, it's like averaging a Prius and a tri-axle and declaring that the result is the average vehicle on the road.

However, nobody's odds are zero. The burden of carrying a pistol is minimal to many of us and is an extra buffer against life altering or ending incidents, but some will decide that burden is too great given the odds. I know flying is safer then driving, yet I drive to Florida due to the burden of flying. Is there a significant difference? I'm doing something that's more dangerous to escape the bother of flying inside the US.

[El Cid]

You're both right.

Rob's main point is that overall statistics are meaningless to the individual, which is completely correct no matter what the risk assessment is. The risks aren't remotely evenly distributed, and not every crime is a new victim, which is often overlooked when compiling these sorts of stats. The way crime is counted for NIBRs is different then when I first started with UCR, but it makes crime look "bigger" because it counts more. It used to be that if you were raped, murdered, and your house was set on fire that was counted as one crime: Murder. Now it's counted as three crimes, Murder, Rape, and Arson.

Rape is counted in the above post. If you are an un-incarcerated male, your chances of being a rape statistic are all but zero. (Note: prior to 2013 it was literally impossible for a male to be a rape statistic as the UCR definition was "a female forcibly...", so men could never be counted.) If you are a working prostitute your chances of being a rape statistic are high. If you're a young attractive female who goes to bars on her own, it's in the middle. Demographics, occupation, location, lifestyle choices, etc. all play in to any given individual's odds and it's reasonable to be concerned with YOUR odds, not some generic every-person-combined odds. To reuse an analogy, it's like averaging a Prius and a tri-axle and declaring that the result is the average vehicle on the road.

However, nobody's odds are zero. The burden of carrying a pistol is minimal to many of us and is an extra buffer against life altering or ending incidents, but some will decide that burden is too great given the odds. I know flying is safer then driving, yet I drive to Florida due to the burden of flying. Is there a significant difference? I'm doing something that's more dangerous to escape the bother of flying inside the US.

Amen! Please write a book after you retire.

As for a spare mag, I always carry at least one when out and about on or off duty. Small burden for a lot of insurance. Especially given how ineffective handguns are at dropping determined threats. And has the OP stated yet where his claimed stat of 2 rounds fired is from? I was taught the rule of 7 (less than 7 rounds, 7 yards or less, 7 seconds or less) at the academy though I presume that’s a stat for LEO’s rather than private citizens.

[Half Moon]

Amen! Please write a book after you retire.

As for a spare mag, I always carry at least one when out and about on or off duty. Small burden for a lot of insurance. Especially given how ineffective handguns are at dropping determined threats. And has the OP stated yet where his claimed stat of 2 rounds fired is from? I was taught the rule of 7 (less than 7 rounds, 7 yards or less, 7 seconds or less) at the academy though I presume that’s a stat for LEO’s rather than private citizens.

The rule of thumb I've most often seen for civilian shootings is less than three yards, less than three seconds, less than three rounds. As far as I can tell they are all anecdotal guesstimates though. There is no real clearing house of information, at least that I'm aware of, for civilian shootings. The closest to anything empirical is review of NYPD stats for off-duty officers that Claude Werner has done. There's a more in depth article he's done but don't have time to find it so throwing this one out there:

https://tacticalprofessor.wordpress....charge-report/

To a couple poster's points, note that while the largest number occurred under 5 yards, 14% were over 26 yards (small sample though). Always good to know averages but also know your gunfight, if it happens, may not be average.

[ETA: THE LINK HERE IS FOR ALL NYPD SHOOTINGS IN 2012. NEED TO FIND THE ONE FOR OFF-DUTY. MAYBE LATER TODAY]

[El Cid]

The rule of thumb I've most often seen for civilian shootings is less than three yards, less than three seconds, less than three rounds. As far as I can tell they are all anecdotal guesstimates though. There is no real clearing house of information, at least that I'm aware of, for civilian shootings. The closest to anything empirical is review of NYPD stats for off-duty officers that Claude Werner has done. There's a more in depth article he's done but don't have time to find it so throwing this one out there:

https://tacticalprofessor.wordpress....charge-report/

To a couple poster's points, note that while the largest number occurred under 5 yards, 14% were over 26 yards (small sample though). Always good to know averages but also know your gunfight, if it happens, may not be average.

Good info. Thanks!

And I agree we can’t count on averages or stats. I like to remind my folks when we train that all you’ll have when it starts is what you have on you. We don’t get to choose where it happens. We don’t get to choose how many bad guys there are. We don’t get to choose if our friends/coworkers are with us. We don’t get to choose if it’s day or night. Those are all up to the bad guy who initiates the fight. If I don’t have a spare mag, flashlight, etc... I can’t call timeout to get them.

[HeavyDuty]

Professionally, I’m a P&C insurance underwriter and risk manager. I also spent twenty years doing planning and mitigation against bad shit for the county. I deal in possibilities, not probabilities.

I carry a defensive weapon and a reload knowing that I will likely never need them.

[BehindBlueI's]

There is no real clearing house of information, at least that I'm aware of, for civilian shootings.

There isn't. When I was compiling my information I had folks ask if I would branch out to other departments. I declined because I wanted to be able to vet that random was actually random. Without seeing case files, that's an impossible task. There are cases I know were drug related, for example, that the media just reports as a home invasion because the drug related part isn't public information and of course the victim isn't spreading it to the media.

Taking media accounts, UCR/NIBRS, etc. you end up with an amalgamation that didn't do what I wanted to do. Note this is (possibly) getting better as now "relation to offender" is a captured field. You can break down the stats a bit more into stranger/domestic/etc...but there's still an issue that those are entered at the time of reporting. Most dope rips the victim lies about not knowing who did it, and it's "stranger" as far as stats...but that's almost never the full story. If later in the investigation a relationship is discovered, it's highly unlikely anyone goes back and changes the NIBRS reporting. Why? Because nobody really cares. It's checking a box, not something that's going to solve a crime, so the people solving crimes aren't invested in the extra layer of paperwork and the people tasked with the extra layer of paperwork don't have access to case files.

[jnc36rcpd]

I suspect many people don't carry a spare magazine because of perceived or actual difficulty in concealing it. A big, blocky magazine, especially a double stack, seems obtrusive and obvious. I eventually found a 4LEOS magazine/handcuff holder that does a great job of concealing both items. While I typically carried handcuffs, I seldom clipped on a spare magazine unless in a soft uniform or operating the cruiser off duty.

Of course, in this day and age of personal communication devices, there's no excuse not to have a spare magazine with you. An odd bulge under the shirt can be explained as your work mobile phone.