Session 7: Physics & Physiology: Alternative Firearm Options

So that leads us to the next options. We've got modern striker fired hand guns without safeties preferred. Some of them, asterisk, have safeties, if you really want that. But a more efficient gun without the safety that has an extra level of risk mitigation is called a double action only gun. Double action only semiautomatic.

Okay, double action only semiautomatic handgun is a gun that uses an older design technology that's a mid-20th century technology that was designed to be double action on the first shot and then single action for all the follow up shots. And they simply deactivate the part that allows the gun to go to a single action mode. And now every, all you have to do to, get the gun in your hand, pull the trigger. No safeties, no extra buttons, no extra levers, but the trigger pull is going to be long and heavy every time you pull the trigger, much like a double action revolver. So double action revolver falls into the same category with the bonus detriment of low capacity and slow reloads, right?

So modern striker fired guns, double action only semiautomatic, double action revolver, is it revolving, that's what happens with ADD. Revolver with the bonus detriment of low capacity and slow reloads. Lots of people have defended themselves with revolvers, and many, many, many, many, the overall majority of defensive shooting situations are solved with less than six rounds. Five rounds and a small pocket size .38 double-action revolver is not a horrible option when it comes to personal defense, but it's not as good as a full-size 15 to 20 shot nine millimeter semiautomatic modern striker fired gun. As we go down the list, whatever I choose to put down here at the very bottom, right?

The single action .22 revolver that you kept it cocked between each shot, like that one or something like it down at the bottom of the list, could still save you, could still be useful. But when we look at probability, plausibility, possibility, certain guns will make it all the way to the edge. Other guns run out of steam real early, and we're doing worst case scenario training. If we're doing worst case scenario training, we want a gun that's gonna have as much capability as possible, not the bare minimum, right? There's a difference between the physics of penetration, right?

The physics of penetration, let's meet the minimum. That makes sense. When it comes to capabilities for the parts that aren't predictable, human anatomy is predictable. Performance of the bullet is predictable. How many bad guys there are gonna be, not predictable, not nearly as choreographed.

Not nearly as much something we can anticipate. Remember, we have to cross a line. Once we cross the line and decide we're going to need to just use a gun to defend ourselves, let's train for that, that's when we can start talking about what the bullet does to the body. But it's the further we go past that line, the less reliable any of our predictions will be. After double action only and double action revolvers, we have guns that we just simply do not recommend.

At this point in the world and the evolution of mechanics, anything below this line, we don't recommend. You have one of these guns, again, they could be used to defend yourself, right? You can pick up a can of soda and smash somebody in the head with it and that could be your defensive tool. But as people who are professionally advising others what tools to have to defend themselves, we do not recommend double, single action semiautomatic. We do not recommend them.

You have to learn to trigger pulls, we've made it more complicated already. Many of them have safety levers, so now the safety has to be taken off and you've got a heavy double action trigger pull, and then your follow up shots are single action. And then they continue operating the gun properly, you need de-cock the gun back into double action mode. These are the most complicated guns that exist, the double action, single action semiautomatics. They require the most operative maneuvers to be used properly and responsibly.

Single action, single action guns have one distinct advantage. Single action is the, what they're describing when they give this label, single action, what we're talking about is that pulling the trigger only does one thing. It drops the hammer to hit the firing pin, to fire the gun. Everything else has already been done by your own manual actions or by the gun's mechanics in the middle of a string of fire. So all you're doing when you press that trigger is releasing the hammer.

It's already set to go. In a double action gun, you're prepping the hammer also, so it's a longer, heavier pull because the hammer that strikes the firing pin has to be pushed against the spring tension back and then is released. That's the two actions, that's the double action. With a striker fired gun, the striker is sitting, waiting to be released, and you've got to move something out of the way against spring pressure. So you move something out of the way by pulling, the striker goes forward and strikes the back of the round, the primer, where the round then detonates, firing the bullet out of the barrel.

Single action, because the trigger's only doing one thing, it's just moving a very little tiny bit to release the hammer. When that happens, when you have the gun built that way, you can get some very light, very crisp triggers that induce very little deviation into the gun. Very little movement of the gun when you press the trigger. That's an advantage. That's the one advantage that you get out of a single action gun, but it comes at a high cost.

The cost of the single action is the manual safety lever. That must be activated every time you pull the gun out of the holster or take the gun out of the safe. And in fact, we, not specifically when we take out of the holster, out of the safe, but specifically when you go to shoot it. So if you're coming out of the holster to drive out and shoot, you've got to take that safety lever off. Why do you have to have the safety lever on?

Because you've got a light, crisp single action trigger, right? Light, crisp single action trigger. There's no, you touch that trigger with a lack of sensation, with a lack of fine motor control and with an adrenaline rush, the gun's going off. So we can't count on any margin of error there. If we're not ready to shoot, we leave the safety on.

So in the heat of the moment, the unexpected defensive, chaotic shooting, I've got to take that safety off and fire the gun. Now, people will tell you that that can be learned very easily. I'll tell you it can be learned, right? But again, who's missed the shift in the stick transmission? Who has screwed up the mechanical skill with multiple steps when they were in a rush, when they were panicked?

Why open yourself up to that failure? Why add the necessity to remove the safety? Plus, historically, the single action semiautomatics are not nearly as reliable as their modern evolved striker fired cousins. They simply don't, they don't hold up to abuse as well. They don't deal with being dirty as well.

They don't deal with what we call an unsupported platform, which is shooting in an unorthodox position. You might be knocked down and not able to get your body weight behind the frame of the gun. They don't deal with adversity nearly as well. The tolerances are much tighter in almost every design of single action semiautomatic pistol, and side-by-side, they just don't compare to the modern striker fired guns. You can, in this day and age, you can find them very, very well made, very, very reliable, but they also tend to cost three to four times as much as these guns, if not more, when you buy the best.

And you usually have a lower capacity, single action guns also tend to be slimmer single stack guns. There are a couple of models that have been around for a long time with moderate success that have double stacks of bullets. But for the most part, single action guns that you see commonly referred to and commonly used over the last 50 years are lower capacity guns as well. Then you get into some of that oddball stuff. Derringers, single action revolvers, pocket guns, sub caliber guns, guns in .22 and .25 and .32 calibers that won't meet the minimum threshold of penetration that we're looking for.

Can you defend yourself with them? Sure, have many, many, many people saved their lives with them? Absolutely, but they're not the optimum choice. If someone's at this level of thinking about counter ambush training and developing their skillsets, selecting the right gun is important.