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The Annoyed Man wrote:Is 40 poorly placed rounds of 9mm going to make up for 5 well placed rounds of .357?

I'm not making fun of capacity, but all the capacity in the world won't make up for A) poor judgement in where you go, and B) poor shot placement if trouble finds you anyway.

I do appreciate the capacity argument, and I capacity-up or down according to where I'm going, how far from home I'll be, and how long I'll be away. BUT..... there is a limit to how much I am willing to carry. "[F]or God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control." (2 Timothy 1:7)

With that in mind....... I have two "hi-cap" guns at my disposal. One is my XD(M)45-Compact 3.8. It has a 9+1 magazine, and a 13+1 extended magazine (I have two of those). If I carry both extended mags, I have 36 rounds of .45 ACP on hand, but I almost never carry both. If I need more than that, I need an AR15, not another pistol magazine. The other "hi-cap" gun is a Glock 19, with 31 rounds of 9mm. If I need another 15 rounds, I need an AR15.

If you need LOTS of rounds, then no handgun is going to fill the bill, and you need an AR15 and several 30 round mags. Well, that doesn't really work for me as a daily carry strategy. I think an AR SBR or AR pistol stored in your vehicle is a great idea......but I'm talking about what you can carry on your person, and still look like a harmless person, hiding in plain sight, without drawing attention to that pair of 3-gun sextuple magazine holders bulging out the sides of your windbreaker.

33 round magazines are fine in a standoff, but they are too much for most people to carry around.....and that's 9mm. A 31 round mag of .40 weighs more, and a 27 round mag of .45 even more yet. It's just not practical for most of us.

Some people are fond of saying that you never wish you had less ammo in a firefight. But I'm even more fond of saying that I don't live and move in such a way as to get into firefights. I really do think that it is possible to take things too far, and to let your fears govern your actions. This is not denial. This is trying to live without a spirit of fear. The nation has some serious challenges from potential terrorists, and from criminals sneaking across a border that the feckless moron in the White House refuses to defend because he is trying to build his party the illegal way.......literally. But, the likelihood that any of it will affect any one individual of us today any more certainly than it would have 5 years ago, or 10 years ago, is slim. Whatever the risks were to you a decade ago, that is pretty much the risks to you today.

Dress accordingly. For me, that usually means either a 5 shot .357 plus a reload, a 5+1 shot .45 plus a backup 7 rnd mag, or a 9+1 shot .45 plus a backup 13 round mag. I simply refuse to live in fear of the boogyman.