ELB, I want to emphasize that I advise and practice carrying more than a 5 shot snubby myself for the most part. I was merely stating that a .38 Special is a real gun.ELB wrote:3. Here's where I seriously disagree with some posters above -- refresh your coffee, this is a long one: Yes you were seriously under-weaponed for what you were facing. I have a five shot snub too and I like it, but no they are not first-choice self-defense guns, especially if facing more than one opponent -- they are specialized up-close back up guns. You were quite possibly looking at a four vs one fight, with at least one of your opponents armed with a knife at close range. (i.e. could you really count on your buddy to pitch in and fight? Probably just you).
I don't care how many people have been scared off or killed with one, there are a lot more who have been shot with handguns of all calibers and kept right on moving -- meaning they were still able to fight and kill and maim. It doesn't matter that it is technically possible to kill five people with a five shot gun -- what you need is as much probability that you can STOP someone -- or several someones -- as fast as possible before he shoots you or guts you with a knife, or simply bashes your head in. There are no guarantees, but your probability of stopping someone is much better with multiple shots for each opponent. Yeah maybe after the first shot everyone would run out of the room, but that is relying on hope and chance -- thin reeds.
You mentioned you have Gold Dots -- they have a very good record with police shootings, but they are not magic. As a first responder I treated an acquaintance who accidentally shot himself lengthwise through the thigh (about 8-10 inches of flesh) with a .40 Gold Dot -- and didn't even know it until he picked the bullet up off the floor and wondered why it was fully expanded. In fact, there was so little pain, and he was so embarrassed, he did not call 911 and thought he might be able to "walk it off." He changed his mind when the pain and swelling hit, but that didn't happen for several minutes. He wasn't even pumped up for fight, he was just clumsy putting a gun in his pocket. Had he wanted to clobber someone, he was still perfectly capable of doing so.
There's a nice long thread here http://warriortalk.com/showthread.php?t=57406" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; with lots of first hand accounts of being shot. What's interesting in many of these, and other accounts I have searched out, is that most people who are not killed right away do not even realize they have been shot, never mind stopped or even slowed down. That means to stop someone with a hand gun you are going to need to either put one right in the CNS (and even a brain shot is not a guarantee) or you are going to need time and several rounds into various vascular and mobility structures to stop them. Five shot snub versus three opponents might do the job, but it is a weak bet. One or two shots from any handgun, snub or 1911, is not a good bet. Better than nothing, but at the ranges you were talking about, maybe not even better than a knife.
Get a hi cap semi-auto -- it really isn't that much more difficult to carry than a snub -- and maybe keep your snub and a knife in your pockets for back up. No guarantee of success, but much better odds than a snub all by itself. (and oh BTW, even if you did have some speedloaders and strips, when were you going to reload in an apartment living room-sized fight with three guys and a gal?)
4. Some new, wiser friends might help, but even "sensible" people find girlfriends or boyfriends that turn out to be loonies, and then you have to deal with that.
Good luck.
I worked in an ER for years, and have seen people survive multiple hits from hard hitting calibers. I've seen a guy with 5 or 6 hits from a .38 in the upper torso walk into our ER under his own power. I've also seen people, as I'm sure you have too, shot dead with one round of .22 LR. My point was that, while the OP may have been undergunned from a capacity POV, he certainly was not undergunned from a caliber POV, and a 5 shot snubby is a lethal weapon; and my comment was directed at the person who suggested that he should get a "real gun." Yes, it is better to be armed with a heavier caliber in higher capacity, but it still equally true that the 5 shot snubby in your pocket beats the high cap .40 you left at home.
Interesting thread you linked to by the way. I read every page of it. I've never been shot myself, but I've got a lot of experience with gunshot patients, and most everything I read there is consistent with my own observations, and also with the experience of my father in Cushman's Pocket at Iwo Jima. My dad was hit with a rifle round right in the solar plexus. The bullet hit one of the brass buttons on his jacket, shattering both the button and the bullet jacketing, and deflecting the lead core a little to the left. The bullet entered his chest wall, dissecting between two of his ribs, but staying in the chest wall, and exited about the middle of his back, 2 or 3 inches to the left of his spine. He was upright, but on his knees when the bullet struck him. He said the impact knocked him over backwards and knocked the wind out of him. He said that after he got his breath back, the wound track began to burn terribly, and it hurt like that for about 15 minutes, and then it all went numb. He described the burning as having a red hot poker run through him and twisted around inside. He said that he stuck his thumbs into the entrance and exit wounds until he could be treated by a corpsman. (Sadly, the corpsman who treated him was hit twice while working on my dad - once in the arm, and once in the leg, breaking his femur. When he finished, he laid down and started to talk my dad through treating him. While my dad was doing so, the corpsman was hit in the head and killed instantly.) Dad stayed in the fight for approximately 24 hours after being wounded until he could be evacuated, although he said that he alternated between being combat effective and not being combat effective, according to how much morphine he had been given. But his particular action was extremely grim, and he spent part of the time (as did most of the other survivors) pulling the bodies of already dead marines on top of himself to soak up the shrapnel from the intense mortar barrage he was under at the time. In the end, he was one of 10 survivors out of two rifle companies, 9 of whom were wounded, and their combat effectiveness was down to zero.
