If I was expecting trouble, I’d have brought my rifle
So, 8 years of moderate practice with a pistol and I’m twice as fast using a carbine I’ve never shot before.
Anybody wonder why I sometimes recommend pistol caliber carbines for home defense? They’re far easier to get on target and make hits with than a regular pistol.
November 3rd, 2009 at 5:30 pm
My son and I were shooting at the range and rented a 9mm carbine (Beretta, I recall). We quit after one box of ammo, because it was so, well, boring, hitting center of target at 25 yards again and again and again. We much preferred the difficulty of hitting well with our pistols.
November 3rd, 2009 at 6:33 pm
Carbines, in either .223 (frangibles!) or pistol caliber, are my long standing recommendation for infrequent shooters who want to have a house gun “just in case” for that very reason.
November 3rd, 2009 at 7:21 pm
Just love my Camp9 and now the Camp 45 they are awsome!!
November 3rd, 2009 at 8:11 pm
I love my Beretta CX4 Storm, it’s in .45ACP.
But… I always suggest a pump-action to friends who ask me because they know I’m into guns.
If there’s a burglar, you just jack the slide on your shotgun and you most likely won’t have to shoot him and clean up body parts, just the puddle of urine and maybe some of blood and/or the crap that leaked out of the burglar’s undies.
Something that doesn’t make that distinctive sound is not going to scare goblins so you’ll have to shoot.
I don’t want to kill someone even if he’s in my house, I’d rather scare the crap out of him and get him arrested. The sound of a shotgun slide being worked has to be one of the scariest sounds you could hear in the dark of the house you broke into.
So naturally I have a .44 magnum by my bed.
November 3rd, 2009 at 8:14 pm
The word “blood” should have been in the line above where it was, weird.
November 4th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
There’s an issue with using the pistol caliber carbines for in-home defense.
That issue is the moderate bullet speed increase most of them impart to the bullet because of the 16″ barrel, as opposed to the 3″-5″ barrel in a pistol.
This speed increase is huge in 9mm, with some hot loads exiting the barrel at almost 1800 fps.
If you study the charts that all the bullet manufacturers put out, and the penetration data that is also available online, you will note that over-penetration becomes an issue with some bullets at just over 200 fps increase. A secondary problem is that over-clocked bullets don’t expand reliably.
Generally, you should shoot the heaviest bullet you can get in a defense round for any caliber you have a pistol-caliber carbine for. The heavier bullets don’t have as much of a speed increase as the lighter ones, and are less likely to over-penetrate or fail to expand.
You could solve this problem with handloading, but most folks prefer to use factory ammo for defense, for often-discussed reasons.
The NRA teaches that over-penetration is a huge issue for defensive shooting inside the home, but, like anything with roots in physics, it is a solvable problem, once you know it exists.
November 4th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
Those Hi-Point carbines are ugly, but they work really well; very much surprised me when I had a chance to shoot one. With a red dot, be a hell of a fine defensive arm.