{"id":65087,"date":"2021-02-21T13:16:35","date_gmt":"2021-02-21T19:16:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=65087"},"modified":"2021-02-21T13:18:17","modified_gmt":"2021-02-21T19:18:17","slug":"65087","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=65087","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Home Defense Firearms: A Newly Relevant Blast from the Past.<\/a><\/p>\n

Well, it\u2019s started. The new administration (hack. spit) is calling for yet more \u201cgun control\u201d, leading the charge for an \u201cassault weapon\u201d ban, magazine size limits, universal background checks (which requires a complete gun registry to be enforceable), and so on.<\/p>\n

Today I\u2019m bringing forward a post addressing that so-called \u201cassault weapon\u201d issue. The definition of \u201cassault weapon\u201d is slippery. It mimics the term \u201cassault rifle\u201d but doesn\u2019t meet the definition of one (an assault rifle is a rifle of intermediate power with \u201cselect fire\u201d, meaning that it has a full-auto or \u201cburst\u201d capability\u2013that is one trigger operation fires the rifle multiple times). Generally, \u201cassault weapon is a semi-automatic (fires once for each trigger operation) rifle or carbine (overall length being the main difference there, or intermediate power (not the uber-high-power that the media would have you believe), and some various ergonomic and cosmetic features. It is this definition that I address in the post below.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

When it comes to home defense, a strong argument can be made that the best, the absolute best, weapon for defense against a home invasion is a compact semi-automatic rifle with certain, particular features.<\/p>\n

Despite what Hollywood would have you believe, criminals often continue to function after being shot, often after being shot several times. \u201cThe dead man\u2019s ten seconds\u201d is a phenomenon well and long known (the phrase comes from the Civil War). The criminal may be effectively dead from the first shot, but they still have the ability to do a great deal of harm before they\u2019re\u00a0stopped<\/em>. Thus, it may take multiple shots to\u00a0stop<\/em>\u00a0them. Maybe they\u2019ll spend their entire \u201cdead man\u2019s ten seconds\u201d staring down at the hole in their chest.\u00a0 Maybe it\u2019s easy for you to bet other people\u2019s lives that that\u2019s how it will go down but maybe instead they\u2019ll use that ten seconds to hurt or kill the homeowner unless distracted by, oh, other holes being put in their body from repeat shots until they\u00a0do<\/em>\u00a0stop.<\/p>\n

We have repeated reports of people\u00a0in\u00a0military theaters shooting an individual multiple times and having them continue to fight.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s not even counting that robberies are often committed by more than one person. Again, local news reports suggest that the majority of home invasions involve multiple attackers.<\/p>\n

Now, maybe in the \u201caverage\u201d it\u2019s over after only a couple of shots. But one can drown in a stream that \u201caverages\u201d 6 inches deep if one happens to step in a hole that\u2019s 8\u2032 deep (the rest of the stream only being 4\u2033 or so, so the \u201caverage\u201d comes to 6\u2033). But multiple attackers requiring multiple shots each to put down is one of the scenarios a \u201ccivilian\u201d may face.<\/p>\n

The person defending his home can\u2019t wait until he\u2019s got overwhelming force, SWAT, and backup before going in and engaging. They have to deal with the problem right. now. with only what they have ready to hand. Firing a shotgun twice into the air may or may not scare off attackers (or might not, despite what then Vice Presidential candidate Joe Biden advocated) and shooting through the door is generally a felony (again, despite Joe Biden\u2019t advocation of that very thing).<\/p>\n

In high stress and fear situations human beings have certain common issues. One is that fine motor skills go to hell. Simply working the action of a rifle or handgun can become a thing of fumbling when one is in fear for ones life (a necessary condition of use of lethal force in\u00a0all<\/em> jurisdictions in the US). Much better a simple action of \u201caim, pull trigger, aim, pull trigger\u201d. Thus, semi-automatic. (Police and civilian firearms trainer and recognized expert witness on firearms matters Massad Ayoob discusses the effects of fear on ones shooting ability in his book Stressfire<\/a>\u00a0among others.)<\/p>\n

When an attack comes, you can\u2019t be sure that everyone in your household is all together. You may, for example, have to go get the kids. This doesn\u2019t involve hunting the \u201cbad guys.\u201d I don\u2019t recommend that at all. Get your family together and defend them if the bad guys come to you, but \u201cget your family together\u201d may require some moving around. Now, when you\u2019re moving around, you may have to do things like open doors or work light switches. Or maybe (it\u2019s dark, say, and this occurred after everyone was in bed) you need one hand free to hold a flashlight. Maybe you have a light mounted on your rifle but, well, you\u2019re looking for your kids. It would be good to have a light you can shine on things\u00a0without<\/em>\u00a0pointing your gun at them, don\u2019t you think? (First rule of safe gun handling is treat any gun with the respect due a loaded gun but the\u00a0second<\/em>\u00a0rule is \u201cnever point a gun at anything you\u2019re not willing to destroy.\u201d What that means regarding using a light mounted on your firearm to look for family members is left as an exercise for the student.)\u00a0A \u201cpistol grip\u201d simply makes it easier to handle and keep control of the rifle in such circumstances. Also, a more \u201ccompact\u201d design is easier to maneuver down hallways, through doors, and the like.<\/p>\n

The attack happens at night? When you fire the muzzle flash blooms in front of you, temporarily blinding you. Who knows what can happen in the couple of seconds it takes your eyesight to recover? A flash suppressor\/hider doesn\u2019t actually suppress or hide the flash. It diverts it to the side where it interferes less with your vision allowing you to keep eyes on target allowing you to assess whether the attacker had been stopped or if you need to keep shooting, and if you do need to keep shooting you can\u00a0aim<\/em>\u00a0rather than fire blindly (literally) and trust to luck.<\/p>\n

A rifle is easier to aim accurately than any handgun. A centerfire rifle has more stopping power than any handgun.<\/p>\n

Now, maybe you\u2019re not the one available to grab the rifle.\u00a0 Maybe it\u2019s your wife (or husband if you\u2019re a woman reading this\u2013or whatever if you\u2019re in a non-traditional relationship. \u00a0I won\u2019t judge) who\u2019s smaller than you (or larger).\u00a0 Or maybe you sometimes use the rifle out in the cold while wearing heavy, thick clothing and sometimes when its warmer so you don\u2019t have so much heavy clothes on.\u00a0 A stock that can be adjusted for length helps size the rifle for easy, comfortable,\u00a0accurate\u00a0<\/em>shooting.<\/p>\n

Now note what I\u2019ve just described: a compact rifle with a pistol grip, \u201clarge\u201d capacity magazine (actually \u201cstandard\u201d capacity since that\u2019s what these rifles are designed for), flash hider, adjustable stock, and possibly a rail to which a light can be attached. While there\u2019s no \u201cshoulder thing that goes up\u201d (Carolyn McCarthy can never be sufficiently mocked for that) what I\u2019ve just described is an \u201cassault weapon\u201d per the media and folk like the Brady Campaign. (Not an \u201cassault rifle\u201d as defined by the military since that definition calls for fully automatic capability.)<\/p>\n

It also happens to describe the best tool for defending your family against one of the between 4 and 40 thousand home invasions that occur every year.<\/p>\n

How many of those 4 to 40 thousand families, many with children, are you willing to sacrifice?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Home Defense Firearms: A Newly Relevant Blast from the Past. Well, it\u2019s started. The new administration (hack. spit) is calling for yet more \u201cgun control\u201d, leading the charge for an \u201cassault weapon\u201d ban, magazine size limits, universal background checks (which requires a complete gun registry to be enforceable), and so on. Today I\u2019m bringing forward … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,29,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rkba","category-safety","category-self-defense"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65087"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65090,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65087\/revisions\/65090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}