Re: 8 & 9 year old girls riding bicycles

On 12/28/2024 5:18 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:

On 12/28/2024 12:16 PM, AMuzi wrote:

On 12/28/2024 9:41 AM, Frank Krygowski wrote:

On 12/28/2024 9:25 AM, AMuzi wrote:

On 12/27/2024 8:59 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:

On 12/27/2024 2:35 PM, AMuzi wrote:

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Sure, there are incidents like the woman last summer who shot dead the guy attacking her husband using her one day old pistol, but we'd have to call that a fortuitous fluke. Start with that same woman asleep at 2am and the outcome is less clear.  Your odds, with years of experience, practice and 'muscle memory' are much better.

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But damn, what a thing to devote your life to!
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"I'm going to practice three times a week so in case someone breaks into my house in the middle of the night, I can slap my hand right on my gun, jump up into combat stance and blow the intruder away!"
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Sheesh. 99.999% chance it's just a waste of time, plus a paranoid mindset.
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Not really, for me anyway.
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The past several years, I shoot targets weekly with a pistol I made and find it a challenging and relaxing pause in my week.

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Target practice can be fun, I agree. But I think it has little relevance to a 2 AM home invasion.
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Only tangentially, but it does.
Ownership is itself a factor.
Familiarity, including 'muscle memory' is a factor, just as much as for, as I mentioned earlier, friction shifting or riding no hands. After doing it a lot, you no longer think while doing it.

 My point in more detail: In your hypothetical 2 AM home invasion situation, familiarity with your gun has value only in the very last seconds. Your problems begin so much earlier that the benefits are probably only theoretical.
 Again, John described his case, in which he was actually awake and eating dinner. He had absolutely no way of getting to his gun.
 Someone lying asleep at 2 AM will not have the alertness to even comprehend what's happening at first. Will they be able to fumble around and find their gun? If so, it's stored improperly and vulnerable to theft, or perhaps to their kid finding it and shooting himself, shooting someone else, or just taking it to school leading to all sorts of hell breaking loose.
 If they do fumble around and find the gun, then what? Get into a gunfight with a guy who has entered with weapon drawn? Good luck! Blast through a bedroom door hoping the guy is in the proper location? Good luck!
 There's always the chance he can be the hero of a story like this:
https://nypost.com/2024/12/06/us-news/texas-man-michael- howard-claims-he-shot-his-son-after-mistaking-him-for-an- intruder-later-burns-the-body/
 

p.s. Another contributor mentions that merely displaying defensive capacity can be enough to deter an aggressor. I agree, and that need not always be a firearm.
Although I never once reached for the baseball bat in the hall at my house or the machete alongside the piano, I have raised a bat in my store many times over the years and never had to swing it.
That said I know two store owners [different incidents] who were shot dead after handing over a cash tray.
--
Andrew Muzi
am@yellowjersey.org
Open every day since 1 April, 1971