Bad night to take the small gun...

[DoubleActionCHL]

I'm glad it ended well, but as Excalibur stated, there were a series of poor choices that could have unnecessarily placed you and your friend in a dangerous or deadly situation. Letting them in, not asking them to leave and (oh my God!) plying them with alcohol? If this had turned ugly, your initial 'friendly' actions toward these guys would have likely compromised your legal defense.

[karder]

Over all I think you did a good job though I agree with most of the points made about not opening the door in the first place. I have found myself in similar situations in my younger days except with no snubby in my pocket. Most times these types of problems are made up by a couple of guys who like to talk about fighting, but not actually fight. Mix in some alcohol, a couple of girls show up to stir the pot some more, and then all bets are off. The good news is that at some point we grow up enough that at least these types of things stop happening to us!
Lonewolf is dead on correct when he said you can't go by looks. It seems that the buff guy with the tribal tattoo around his arm and the big mouth never actually does anything. It is always the skinny quiet guy sitting in the corner who will really hurt you. At least these are my observations.
One more thing, when did a .38 revolver become a bad self-defense choice? I don't think there was anything wrong with your choice of gun. I wouldn't stick around if you took a shot at me with that thing. We have been programmed that "bigger is better" when it comes to firearms. For a lot of people this just is not true. .38 certainly has sufficient stopping power for point-blank self defense. The mild recoil will help you get that second shot of fast if you need it, but in this case, I doubt you would have.

[gemini]

Excaliber: "5. Providing alcohol to people who were already intoxicated and apparently looking for a fight. This is not de escalation - it's throwing gasoline on a fire."

After reconsidering one of my original comments.......I think Excaliber is dead on.

[Drewthetexan]

I think your friend placed you in a horrible situation, evidenced by "do you have your gun?" All of a sudden you find yourself in a situation you can't control, and your friend is making decisions with the assumption that you and your piece is his ace in the hole. If he's close enough of a friend to know you carry, I'd have a real heart to heart with him about the responsibility he shares in your friendship.

[frazzled]

I think your friend placed you in a horrible situation, evidenced by "do you have your gun?" All of a sudden you find yourself in a situation you can't control, and your friend is making decisions with the assumption that you and your piece is his ace in the hole. If he's close enough of a friend to know you carry, I'd have a real heart to heart with him about the responsibility he shares in your friendship.

Excellent, excellent point.

[LaserTex]

Side point - by giving them alcohol, the Apartment Owner is now DIRECTLY responsible for damages they do for the rest of the night...be it by car, fight, whatever...because he gave them alcohol knowing they were alread drunk.

The person that provided the alcohol to the dude that killed my sister in law got 3 years...the drunk got 5. We lost our sister.

Doug

[pedalman]

Change friends. I agree. Some folks have to learn the hard way, and sometimes it takes many, many repetitions of the hard way before the learning commences.

I have indeed found that there are those who have to walk behind the horse more than once, before they figure out that they get kicked in the head when they do that.

[Fangs]

As always, the input is appreciated. I'll try and clear some things up that I didn't entirely cover in my first post.

Andrew's new girlfriend is still in the picture, I think she was amused by the ordeal.

Andrew asking if I had a gun wasn't him using it as an ace in the hole for a fight as much as a reasonable concern. He had no idea who the guys were, and he legitimately thought they were possibly his roommate's friends. The roommate wasn't there and there had been a "knock and force in" robbery at the complex maybe two months ago. So it didn't freak him out enough to hide behind a locked door, but he wanted to make sure that if he was about to get mugged that he'd have help. Like I said, I still wouldn't have opened the door. I think he went from on edge about a potential threat to totally at ease when he saw a face he recognized.

My concern with the .38 was lack of ammo for a reload more than size of the bullet. (Haven't gotten a speedloader or two yet and wasn't wearing my cargo shorts that had extra ammo in them). Keep in mind that there were three pretty big guys and I personally would have preferred a little more to go around if need be. Just because I considered Teddy Bear to be the least of the threats doesn't mean I didn't fully expect him to side with his friends if the choice came. I also know that you can do a lot of damage with a knife before some less-than-perfectly placed shots stop you.

Rachael isn't so much my friend as I know who she is. She had dated Andrew for maybe a week before she tried to marry him and he bailed out but remained friends. I was nice to her for his sake, and I'd hung out with her maybe two or three times when she was with Andrew. Same goes for Manon, but they dated longer, so I'd seen more of her. I believe they're both to blame for the set up.

I agree that generally giving alcohol to drunk people is a bad idea. Rachael was driving, she only had one shot. The 3 guys were already pretty drunk and Andrew got them hammered, like to the point were Slim was falling over and Dark had to lean against the wall to stand still. I would much rather fight three guys who are too drunk to stand than 3 guys who are drunk enough not to feel it but still functional. It's also hard to hate on someone who's hooking you up.

I had decided to draw IF a knife was involved. The apartment isn't very big and I'd very easily be within 21 feet and feeling very threatened. Dark kept putting his hand on his knife, and if he drew it I would have drawn and fired. Sorry I wrote this at 8:30 this morning after not having slept and I realize it's a bit disjointed. My legal concern was that I fully intended on drawing and firing as fast as possible at the first sign of drawing / grabbing a weapon instead of waiting to make sure what their intent was. They guy may very well have been pulling out his knife to cut a tag off his pants, but at that distance in those circumstances I wasn't going to wait to find out unless it was obviously nonthreatening.

I was less worried about the way they looked than the way they kept looking like each other. Like each was waiting for the other to initiate the confrontation.

They hadn't done anything worth calling the cops over, and without Andrew asking them to leave I didn't want to risk escalating it by making him take a stand on the issue. We've been friends since middle school and I wasn't going to leave him there alone with his new 5-foot-nothing, maybe 100 pound girlfriend. This is also the first time he has ever put me in a situation like this, and he didn't realize they're intentions 'til after they were inside.

As far as not drinking and having friends who don't drink, we maybe just have a difference of opinion on this. I keep my drinking and my guns very far apart from each other, and neither Andrew nor I were drinking at all last night. I do also live in a college town, and I personally credit my drinking night with Teddy Bear for a lot of the reconsideration that was done on their part. It's a huge difference from "let's go kick that random jerk's butt" to "Oh hey we were drinking buddies and you're offering us shots"... not saying it's right, but it worked. Teddy Bear warmed right up. Slim acted more like he wanted to hate us but couldn't, so he just talked big in front of the girls. Dark was my main concern, he seemed a lot more willing to carry through with their original intent, and it only takes one to start the whole mess.

[mr.72]

As far as not drinking and having friends who don't drink, we maybe just have a difference of opinion on this. I keep my drinking and my guns very far apart from each other, and neither Andrew nor I were drinking at all last night.

That's a moot point, since out of 8 people in the apartment, 5+ of them were drunk or on their way to being drunk, and the two who were "not drinking" were serving it up. Maybe you are suggesting those 5 people are not your "friends" but the people you socialize with inside that apartment are who I was calling "friends". Maybe "company" is a better term.

Hanging out with drunks is not a common practice of the wise. "He who walks with the wise grows wise, but a companion of fools suffers harm."

[The Annoyed Man]

You asked for opinion, so I am going to give it to you.

If you have to think about whether you should shoot or not, then you shouldn't. If you have time to size up the situation, you have time to put distance between yourself and the threat.

Next, if you are going to carry, then you need to grow up, stop drinking, and get new friends that also have grown up and stopped drinking.

I'll drink to that!

Seriously though, Crossfire is 100% right on here. I could not have put any better, or any more succinctly.

Get new friends. I've found myself in an uneasy situation one time with a pocket gun. I almost exclusively carry a "real" gun now (Steyr M9A1) - I have had to draw it once, and I can tell you - moments like that make any hassle associated with larger-gun-carry 100% worth it. Having said that, I think that apartment would have cleared out pretty quick if things went different and you lit off a .38 - 140+ dB and the very real possibility of dying will shock some sobriety into all but the most foolish drunken idiots...

1. If not new friends, then at least sober friends.
2. A 5 shot .38 is a "real" enough gun to kill 5 people with, without reloading. How "real" does the gun have to be? I typically carry a more powerful round, in greater quantity myself, but I sometimes pocket carry a 642 and it's an adequate gun — more than adequate if the alternative is not carrying at all. There's nothing wrong with a 5 shot .38 Special, if that's what it is going to take to get you to carry a gun.
3. If all you have is 5 rounds (which seems to be a limitation in your view), then lighting one off to get everyone's attention is A) illegal; and B) leaves you with only 4 rounds left. Far better to not draw the gun at all until someone needs to be shot, and then if that moment comes, shoot them. THAT will get their attention.

[wford]

Sounds like the classic deadly force potential in a non deadly force situation.

[Frost]

Thanks for the story. If anyone ever asks if I got my gun the next words out of my mouth with be an admonition not an affirmation.

[ELB]

Interesting story. Thanks for sharing. Some thoughts:

1. Yeah, opening the door was a mistake, but if everyone made perfect instantaneous decisions every time, life would not be nearly so...interesting. Your pal made up for it by talking everyone out of committing any nonsense, and good for him. Best possible outcome. Some have suggested -- and I might have done so myself -- that ordering them out immediately would have been the proper action. In hindsight this looks good, especially on paper, legally speaking, if a fight had broken out, but I think doing so may also have very well precipitated a fight. In fact, if your surmise that they came to the door looking for an excuse to fight, it probably would have kicked things off. You and your buddy were on the spot, you saw the verbal and non-verbal cues, apparently you played it correctly -- including offering booze instead of fighting words. Well done.

2. I am as much a nut for legal detail and being prepared for the aftermath and all that as anyone, and it is great fun to dissect how the legal machinations might play out, but if that is what you -- or any of us -- is thinking about when threatened, we are setting our selves up for failure. If you are confronted with a threat, you should not be focusing on what the DA might think about it afterward, you should be focusing on what the threat is, and how to best disengage or counter it. You have to survive, preferably without being maimed for life, before you even get to the that point, so focus on that. You don't blast somebody for mouthing off, but neither should you hesitate when threatened with imminent deadly force or serious injury. Even if your own stupidity got you into a bad situation, you have to survive it relatively intact to have a chance to plead your case.

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.

[KD5NRH]

You might also want to look into a foam or gel type pepper spray. The Kimber PepperBlaster, even with only two shots, is going to splatter in that small of an area, and could help with the odds quite a bit even if some of them aren't affected quickly.

Get yourself some speedloaders and practice with them. For really close stuff, I sometimes practice doing the first five shots one-handed, while my weak hand gets a Safariland Comp I out and ready. (I almost always reload with the gun remaining in the strong hand, and save the "standard" method as a backup.) Doing it this way, I can get 5 .357s out quickly with enough accuracy for spitting range, reload, get the weak hand on the gun, and follow up with two-handed shots much more quickly than if I wait until the gun is dry to reach for the reload.

[surprise_i'm_armed]

ELB:
Re: your friend who shot himself in the leg with a .40.
Was this a case of Glockleg? Or did he have a non-Glock?

How did this ND happen?

What was his longterm outcome from this wound?

Inquiring minds (or at least one) want to know.

SIA