Self defence

[Britsmoothy]

I am sure I,m not the first to ask but does any body know of a modern day event where by a M/L was used for self defence? I imagine it would make for interesting reading!

 

[markinstettler]

That would make for good stories.

It might seem strange, but one of the reasons that I chose to get a muzzleloader is that I didn't think it was really applicable to self-defense. At least, not in the home invasion sense. (Statistically, your chances of surviving armed home invasion are much lower if you are armed.)

On delivery of my .54 GPR I realized that it would make a pretty effective weapon in close quarters. Its got a fair bit of heft to it and the butt-plate sports two pretty wicked corners.

 

[Britsmoothy]

Yes I allways recon a blow from a M/L would kinder hurt more than say a cartridge gun- well they are more solid. Don,t forget the smoke screen on discharge!!!! Big hole and then clubbed with a hefty iron bar :surrender:

 

[gmww]

:hmm: My double barrel ML shotgun would do some serious ventilation. :grin:

 

[J.D.]

It might seem strange, but one of the reasons that I chose to get a muzzleloader is that I didn't think it was really applicable to self-defense. At least, not in the home invasion sense. (Statistically, your chances of surviving armed home invasion are much lower if you are armed.)

I suspect that the statistics you reference have been spread to convince you Canadians to give up your guns, or at least to allow the governemnt to severely restrict ownership.

Since stats can be manipulated to give any result a "researcher" may need to "prove" his agenda, you may want to check those stats using an independent source.

I seem to remember reading of at least one report of someone using a repro Walker Colt in a self-defense situation. It may have been the only gun he owned.


J.D.

 

[Bill Hall]

I went after an "intruder" with my .36 cap and ball in the middle of the night when I was younger. I heard a crash at the front door and I had the holster off and was running halfway down the hall with the hammer cocked before I was even awake. Turns out my wife had taped a big Christmas wreath on the inside of the door, along with some other ornaments. The tape had let go and the wreath slid down and took a plastic Santa with it. I let the wreath go with a warning. Bill

 

[Stophel]

I'd have shot Santa. I hate Santa...

 

[paulvallandigham]

I take issue with your " Statistics ". The overwhelming evidence says that your chance of surviving any kind of deadly assault if you are armed is about 5 times as high as if you are not!

In the case of a home invastion, YOU know your house, where the doors are in relationship to bedrooms, and other rooms, where the furniture is, which walls are solid and those that are two sheets of drywall, etc, far better than the bad guys. I would feel quite adequately armed with a double barrel ML shotgun in my home. I have other guns for self defense, for different reasons, but If I were holding a loaded ML shotgun when someone began tearing down my door, They would not get very far into my home alive.

Many years ago, we had an armed robbery in my small town on Christmas Eve, at a local liquor store, where the owner was badly beaten by the armed robber even though he offered no resistance. The owner spent weeks in the hospital. A year later he was back in his store, but sat in a padded rocking chair in the back of the store, where he could watch the front door down a long hallway, and listen to the radio, or watch TV. He was still not 100% recovered from the first beating. But this time he had a double barreled 12 ga. shotgun leaning against the wall next to his rocking chair.

Well, almost to the minute, the door opened and a man wearing a similar mask to the one worn by the robber the year before entered, and had a gun. He was looking around the front of the store as the owner got his shotgun and took a position guarding the narrow hallway. The armed robber entered the hallway, and came toward the owner. He told him to stop and get out of his store, but the robber brought his gun up, and at that point the man let him have both barrels. The guy turned out to have a regular job, a wife, and two kids. But he was the same guy who had robbed the owner the year before. The Chief of Police told me that story several years later, as he was then a patrolman and got the call to answer the " shots fired call ". the chief said there was shot in both walls of the narrow hallway, and the dead man died on the spot. The owner was upset that the man did not stop when he told him, and was willing to try to shoot him even when he could easily see that the owner had a shotgun. The owner kept that shotgun with him at the stone as his self defense weapon for the rest of his time owning the store. He never had any problems with anyone again. mThe police helped clean up the blood and mess, and removed the body. No charges were made against the owner, nor was the case even taken to a grand jury . The death was ruled justifiable Homicide.

 

[faw3]

(Statistically, your chances of surviving armed home invasion are much lower if you are armed.)
and we hunt rabbits with deer horns here in Texas all summer, (jackalope's) its the season and all that... :shake: Fred :hatsoff:

 

[Pork Chop]

The armed robber ..... turned out to have a regular job, a wife, and two kids. But he was the same guy who had robbed the owner the year before.

Out of curiousity, why would you make a point to state that the robber had a regular job, a wife and two kids? Clearly that is not relevant to the story. He was committing a felony - a repeated offense. He had already displayed that he did not value the life of the owner of the liquor store by beating him. Now he was back and was clearly threatening to kill the store owner. I think that the owner thould be thanked for taking this pussbag out of the gene pool before he could procreate again...

 

[rdale]

IMO, a person usually expects a violent criminal to be other than an individual with a job and a wife and children. :surrender:

 

[Pork Chop]

In my mind - perhaps I am alone in this thought - the fact that he was married and had kids is of absolutely NO relevance to the story. I have known some criminals - I knew them before I found out about their criminal activity. In each case, the act seemed out of character, but the fact remains that they willfully committed a crime, so their alterboy backgrounds are not germaine to the discussion.

 

[MSW]

well, tirade time!

a long time ago, in a land far away, in a place that frowned upon the privat ownership of firearms, there lived a college boy who let it be known that there was a revolver in his room. (it was said to be a .36 Navy). and nobody ever robbed him or his housemates, although there were crimes aplent all around. and he and his friends grew up and lived more or less happily everafter...

now whether or not the presence (alleged or real) of whatever weaponry might or might not have been there had any effect on the evildoers who routinely victimized others cannot be ascertained, but i believe that there was an effect, simply based upon impirical datum.

if you're serious about 'home defense" (i.e. your home) i would recommend, first and foremost, a large dog. it needn't be an 'attack dog' breed - your simple lab\sheperd mix from the local SPCA will do fine and make a great pet. a fellow who used to rob houses for a living told me that the only thing that scared him more than a homeowner with a scattergun was a dog, because as he put it "once the dog gets a target lock, you're #$%^#ed." i back up my house dog with a beat up Mossberg 500 pump with buckshot.

remember that the walls will just barely slow down the pellets, so keep track of the angles. (often hard to do with all the other bad stuff happening, i admit)

i did hear about the fellow with the Walker reproduction, i suspect that a robber who saw that thing might have had visions of a more law abiding lifestyle, assuming that he was sober or straight enough to realize what was going on.

well, good luck in your search for esoteric information. might the NRA have a database on this sort of thing?

 

[MSW]

psst! Deutscher.. i agree... wasn't there a song about how "Santa Claus wears a red suit- must be a communist, sneaks into your house at night- must be a dope fiend"?

sympomatic of the popular and tragic misconception that the ownership of mose STUFF will make one happy.

 

[paulvallandigham]

I mentioned it because everything about the robber was strange. Most robbers don't work. Most are not married, nor do they have kids they acknowledge. This guy had bought plenty of presents for his kids and wife for christmas so he didn't need the money. And, other than robbing this liquor store on two consecutive Christmas Eves, the police could find no indication that he was involved in any other robberies.

Most armed robbers are drug addicts, feeding their habits. They commit robberies every couple of days until they are caught, killed, or jailed for some other stupid crime. They are overwhelimingly male, and they will rob anyone. They usually don't own the "gun " they use to commit the crime, but share stolen guns with other junkies. Sometimes the gun is just borrowed from a relative or friend( almost always without the owner's knowledge) for the job and taken back to him before he misses it. If they owned a gun, they would sell it first, to get their fix. Armed Robbers will commit burglaries, thefts, including shop lifting, to get the money they need, while burglars generally will not do armed robberies. They don't have the courage to stck a gun in someone's face and say- " Give me your dough!" I used to get particularly frustrated when police and prosecutors would charge some guy with an armed robber who had never committed any violent felonies in his past, and only had burglaries in his criminal history. It was always an indication they had arrested the wrong guy. One prosecutor asked me why I didn't think it possible that a burglar would " graduate " to violent street crime? I admitted it was always possible, but it was highly unlikely. Burglars are sneak thieves. Robbers are into power and humiliation of their victims. They get their kicks from confronting their victims, and seeing fear in their victim's face. Burglars don't want to be anywhere near a victim. Its a different mind set.

I was a very small child when that robbery and killing took place. If I had been older, I would have taken a more active interest in the case, and tried to get some answers. The liquor store owner was not suspected of anything. He was in his 70s, had recently lost his wife to cancer, and had run the business at the same location for many years. He was just living out his days. He did not recognize the guy as a former customer, either. He had no real life away from the store, So it is difficult to believe anyone would have another reason to kill him. And, of course, the guy could have killed him easily the first robbery. So, I don't think this was a mafia hit, either. The Chief did not tell us about the robber's criminal history, and I suspect that he had one. Federal law requires that police do not disclose criminal history backgrounds except to " need to know " people involved in subsequent investigations and prosecutions. The Chief was well trained, and I am sure that is the reason we were not told the guy's history. The robber was also in his 40s, if I recall, and that is also very strange for robbers. Usually, but not always, by the time a man gets that old, he loses his courage to confront people with a gun, or he is already doing a long sentence for a prior crime, and not scheduled for release until he's much older.

 

[cowpoke1955]

I read a story abot 15 years ago. A man hunted all day with his .50 cal. Hawken style rifle with no luck. He went home that night without firing a shot. His rifle was still loaded, so he sit it in the corner of his bedroom. Later that evening, while watching TV in his living room, an armed robber broke through the front door. The man ran to his bedroom with the robber on his heels. The man grabbed his rifle, turned and fired. He hit the robber in the shoulder, who immediately fell like a sack of potatoes. That patched round ball completely shattered the robber's shoulder. Entire countries were defended with muzzleloaders for centuries. They still work today :thumbsup: .

 

[mike alexandre]

http://www.stand-and-deliver.org.uk/highwaymen/dick_turpin.htm

Looks like early 1700s was a bad time for "footpads"

 

[markinstettler]

Britsmoothy, sorry for the partial hijack of the thread. It wasn't my intention.

I stand by what I said. That statement has come from the lips of nearly every RCMP officer I've spoken to over the years. I've written the RCMP to try to track down the studies that led to that advice because I sure can't find them this morning. If I receive a reply, I'll make it available to interested parties (probably by private message). Also, the thing to remember about statistics is they really only apply to the average. A person with significant training in armed conflict situations (ie. a law-enforcement officer) could probably assume that the statistic doesn't apply to him or her-self. I'm not that person.

 

[J.D.]

There is a lot of hype about attackers taking a gun away from an intended victim. The stats do not agree with that assumption.

The latest stat I have seen indicates that police officers are 10 times more likely than a private citizen to have thier service weapon taken away from them. We have to remember that the nature of the job of an LEO is to aprehend all sorts of scumbags who would like nothing more than to kill an officer. And, those LEO's have to get close and personal to aprehend those punks.

LEO's are also trained to hold their fire, if at all possible. Private citizens are not.

Private citizens are more likely to shoot first and ask questions later than to allow an attacker to get close enough to take their gun away.

Also, as noted by Paul, many armed intruders are not familiar with their weapon. Most firearm owners ARE familiar with their weapons, which gives them a strategic advantage.

Stats also suggest that in 95% of confrontations, the mere presence of a firearm is enough to discourage an attacker.

These stats come from sociologists and criminalologists, as opposed to either pro-gun, or anti-gun propaganda.

Most of the misinformation about the use of firearms for self-defense came from a series of articles published in the new England Journal of Medicine in the late 1980's and early 1990's.

The author was/is ardently anti-gun and set out to prove his hypothesis that anyone with gun in the home is more likely to be killed than one who does not own a firearm.

The so called "research" was blatently biased, with no basis in fact. The research was so bad that the author refuses, to this day, to release his raw data to any researcher for peer review.

Just to play devil's advocate, IF one's chances of surviving an armed confrontation are smaller while being armed, why do the local constabulary carry guns?

You must also be aware that anyone who has an axe to grind, or an agenda to push can manipulate the stats to "prove" their point of view.

Mark Twain one said of statistics, "there are lies, damned lies, and statistics.

I suggest using information from independent sources. Try to find information from objective sociologists and criminologists, preferably the latter, as opposed to a government study perpetrated to convice its residents that they would be better off without their guns.
J.D.

 

[cowpoke1955]

An armed society is a polite society. A bad guy is going to think twice before committing a crime against someome, if he thinks that person is armed. Places where a person can easily obtain a weapon (legally), crime rate is low. Places with strong anti-gun laws, the crime rate soars. Look at New York City and San Fransico. In the state of Florida, when they passed their easy CCW permits, the crime rate actually dropped. The old saying,"When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns" is true. I worked the field for over 31 years. There is more crime today (per capita), then there ever was in the "Wild West"(per capita). We have gained our freedom through an armed society. We have defended or freedom through an armed society. Remember, cops cannot be everywhere all of the time. At some point, you will have to defend yourself or your family. Even if it's with an old muzzleloader, my family and I will survive. Dang, I should have been a preacher :rotf:.