As those of you who follow the YouTube channel know, I sometimes like to pose “What if” type questions with respect to firearms, and usually in two scenarios: One realistic and one totally blue-sky.
This probably comes from my years of playing RPGs where such choices for your characters sometimes came up. And possibly having worked with a gun for some years too. Anyway… my blue-sky handgun/fantasy weapon is, of course, the .454 Casull revolver with 30mm grenade launcher. I have wanted this as a real firearm (yes, yes, laws be damned, the Apocalypse is coming don’t ya know?!) for years. I mean… if I could have one at the low, low, price of total war… almost worth it.
But what about a real handgun, for the real world? Only one… Forever.
Yes, it is a very cruel and harsh mental torture. I am not even sure how I would go about it, so, here, with you, I will share my mental process.
Calibre: Almost certainly .357 Magnum. .44 Magnum acceptable too. 41 Magnum would be ok too but the ammo is too rare.
While I generally don’t trust .45 and 9mm, there is a case to be made for the 9mm automatically suppressed Silencerco Maxim 9. It has a high mag capacity and it’s a little bit unwieldy, but not impossible to carry concealed and the quiet aspect is very interesting. I’d say if I decided on a lesser calibre than .357 magnum then the maxim 9 would probably be it.
However, although the maxim 9 is certainly a contender, and depending on legal requirements (suppressors are illegal in many countries) I am more likely to go for a custom made 8 shot .357 magnum on the base of the Ruger Redhawk, but with a 6″ barrel and custom grips. The image below is tragic in terms of photoshop skills, but it gives an idea.
I can hear the squeals now:
Impractical! Too Big! Too Heavy! Too Slow! Not enough ammo!
Now, listen here, you young, millennial, know-nothing, here is my reasonings:
In a post apocalyptic wasteland: The laws don’t matter, I’d strap it to my leg and woe betide anyone foolish enough to irritate me. There might be faster drawers (not many, I tend to be obsessive when I practice and you bet in such a world any moment I am not actually shooting I’d be practicing) but few would be as accurate under actual life fire and with that revolver, assuming it’s well-built, which it would be, I’d be ok out to 50 metres with a bit of practice. I know because I used to be good out to 50 metres with headshots from concealed draw in 2 seconds. It was some 26 years ago and time is not your friend in such things, and I am out of practice, but the extra 2″ should about make up for it, since I used to have a 4″ .357 Ruger GP 100 back then. And centre-mass is good enough for me these days too. And a .357 magnum in your lung will still spoil your whole day.
As for the not enough ammo, again, unless you’re fighting zombie hordes, 8 shots is plenty. Even if you’re fighting 3-4 guys, you thing they will all stand-and-deliver as their friends’ heads turn into pink clouds? 8 shots is about enough for me to shoot 4 different people and be sure they are hit. And at anything like actual gun ranges, 6 for 8 or even 8 for 8 wouldn’t be all that hard. Keep in mind average gunfights are done at about 6 feet. And if you are fighting a horde, I still think a lot of spray and pray is not as effective as calm and deadly with each shot. Either by luck, genetics, mild Aspergers, a few decades of martial arts, or whatever, in every very serious situation I have been in, I tend to enter what Myamoto Mushashi called “The Void”. I wouldn’t be able to do it consciously mostly, but when the SHTF my brain automatically switches into everything is in slow-mo and my movements become close to perfect. I am not bragging, it’s just how it happens. Always been that way since I was a child. So, as long as I get to keep firing, I am fairly sure each shot would go very much where it’s meant to.
The too big, too heavy criticism doesn’t apply as far as I am concerned, as I have no issue carrying a heavy handgun 24/7. I have big hands too so it’s not too big for me at all.
All-right then but what about in the supposedly civilised world? The only thing that changes then is conceilability. Yes a 6″ revolver is harder to hide than a small semi-auto or even a full sized colt 1911, but, again, not impossible to do if you are careful and actually practice this art as if your life depended on it. This aspect though, does bring into it the slow factor. I agree that drawing a concealed 6″ revolver is probably, for most people, including me, going to take longer than pretty much any full sized semi-auto. So I’ll give you that one, but… we’re talking fractions of a second here. Maybe half a second at the outside. And half a second is a lot, it’s 3 fast rounds from a smaller calibre weapon, but… most people will not hit the side of a barn at 10 feet under combat situations.
More importantly, if you have decent situational awareness, the chances are you can see trouble before it kicks off. If you cannot, your speed of drawing and firing is probably moot anyway since you’ll be shot before you even know something’s up. And if you do have decent situational awareness, then you’re unlikely to be any slower drawing than the bad guy, since, in my case, certainly, I’d already be holding the gun, even if still holstered, in a way you would be unlikely to notice I even have a gun, much less that I am holding it already and am ready to draw and fire.
Other criticisms
Too loud. Yeah, sure. But in a civilised world I am not really planning on offing strangers in silence. And in a self-defence situation, whatever the circumstances, as my dad always says, better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6. And in certain home invasion by multiple attackers, the sonic boom is certainly an advantage in terms of changing the intruder’s underpants, assuming their friend getting sprayed onto the nearest wall wasn’t in their line of sight.
Too much penetration. Eh. If you’re actually ok at real life gunfighting, your general awareness of a backstop is pretty much engrained. It’s not perfect, and shit happens, but the chances are that unless you’re firing in a crowd (why would you?!?) the chances of some innocent bystander catching around that went through a bad guy are not huge. And if you use hydra-shock or cor-bons, most of the energy gets dumped into the target.
So that’s my answer. Please feel free to leave your own version/thoughts/criticisms in a comment.
CZ 75b
Because I shoot it and know how to repair it.
But I would prefer a long gun
Would you take a rifle or shotgun for hunting animals?
Fair reasoning.
Also, the post said ONE HANDGUN for life sir. What kind of cruel animal do you think I am that I would not allow one to also have long guns? The very EYE-DEAH that a man would only limit himself to ONE firearm is….positively barbaric sir. Barbaric. I can’t even fathom such nefariousness. And now you have placed that evil worm in my mind I may have to exorcise it.
As to your question, it depends on where I am. In Africa I would take a rifle. In post apocalypse gamma world also. In present day Europe, probably a shotgun, if you’re into shooting domesticated
chickenspheasants