Defensive Handgun Session 2: Types of Defensive Handguns

Let's talk about the different types of defensive handguns that you may see when you go to the store to first pick out your choice for home defense or for concealed carry. Now, this table here, again, represents a selection of personally owned firearms that I have some I've had for many, many years, some are relatively new additions to my collection. These are all firearms that at one time or another, I have trusted for personal defense or home defense. Some of them, I would not choose to carry or have staged in my home any longer because of an evolution in my thought process about which types of guns are the most appropriate. And several of these guns on the table, I would feel very comfortable carrying in a public space, obviously where I was legal to do so, or having stayed inside of my home. And in fact, my primary carry gun is one of these that's here on the table. The one that I carried here on the way into the studio to do this video. So let's talk about exactly what we've got. We're gonna start up here in this corner with the revolvers. Now, revolvers may be seen as a little bit old fashioned or a little bit antiquated, but they do have some distinct advantages that are very attractive to a number of people trying to select their first defensive firearm. Now, I will caution you that I don't feel that revolvers are the best choice for someone who's just starting that journey to being armed for the defense of themselves or others today. I think that there are better choices, there are more modern choices that are gonna be more efficient and allow you to achieve more under a variety of plausible circumstances than you can with a revolver. I wouldn't rule them out and say that they are completely worthless, but let's talk about what some of the advantages and disadvantages are. First, the typical advantage that is most attributed to revolvers is their reliability. And we talked about how important reliability is when it comes to a defensive handgun, so it would make sense that that's what keeps the revolver in the conversation even though it is a much older design. Now it's got two things working against it in terms of complications versus complexity and overall capabilities. The first is the heavy double action trigger pole. So you've got a relatively long trigger pole and it's relatively heavy for a defensive handgun. And the second is going to be the relatively low capacity. So let's take this firearm, for example, this is a medium size handgun. And this is actually a model of the exact type of handgun that I first learned how to shoot centerfire ammunition with. So the first gun that I ever started practicing with it wasn't a 22 rim fire type firearm target shooting cartridge was a model 19 Smith and Wesson combat Magnum. I'm very similar to this, but with a different type of grip. It's a six shot revolver and it can hold 38 special rounds or 357 Magnum rounds. Now for personal defense for most people, I'm gonna recommend that the 38 special is really the only option that they would choose not to go with the 357 Magnum rounds, which create a lot more flash, a lot more recoil, a lot more noise for very little practical benefit in terms of wounding capacity to affect the bad guy. So when it comes to revolvers, these two revolvers that we've got on the table today, they are 38 special revolvers for practical purposes for our defensive use. Now, once we close this cylinder up, we now can take a look at this it's obviously a clear and unloaded gun, they've been checked by some of my other associates here on the studio floor. And you can see here that it's empty as well. I'm gonna still point the gun off into a safe direction over here and I want you to watch this hammer as it moves back, while I press the trigger. As I press the trigger, you can see that hammer comes all the way back and at some point goes back forward. And that takes a relatively long distance of travel. Again, I'm gonna point the gun over to here into the floor, and you can watch how this trigger moves. And that's a relatively heavy trigger pull as well as a long trigger pole distance. Now, heavy trigger pull, light trigger pull may not mean anything to you yet at this point, basically when I say heavy, I'm gonna talk about anything that's eight pounds and greater. And this is probably more like a 10 to 12 pound trigger press right here. Lightweight. I'm gonna talk about anything that's less than about three and a half pounds. I'm going to consider that lightweight trigger pull. So what we're really looking for is that four or five, six pounds trigger pull that's gonna be a moderate weight trigger pull and that's really where we optimize that balance of needing a conscious effort to pull the trigger, but not needing such a conscious effort that it can significantly affect your ability to control deviation. So revolvers very reliable, we have the long, heavy, double action trigger pull that works as a negative, and we have the very low capacity that also works as a negative. The other thing that I'll say about revolvers is that they're not as ergonomic as the modern semiautomatic guns for most people trying to get two hands on the revolver, especially a carry size revolver, like either one of these, is going to be more cumbersome, it's gonna be more difficult for someone to get a good grip on these guns and the guns don't point as naturally as most of the modern semiautomatic guns do for the average shooter. So again, if you come to the table as a revolver shooter, in one of my classes, I'll already assume that how to shoot the revolver, you've learned how to integrate with it and we're just there to brush up on the fine points. If you come to one of my classes a new shooter, new to defensive shooting, and you're thinking bout doing a revolver a choice, I'm probably gonna recommend against it for those various reasons. Now you might be in a situation where, because this gun has an exposed hammer, you would think that it might be okay to the hammer and go to this very light crisp single action trigger. And this is what I was talking about before an extremely light, extremely short travel distance, as you'll see here as I press the trigger and you'll see it's very light and it's very short travel distance, almost imperceptible, probably from your perspective on how far that that trigger moves. So we take a look at that again, as we press that trigger, it's gonna barely move and that trigger is gonna actuate in a way that allows the hammer to fall. Well, that's what we would call a hair trigger. And we certainly don't recommend the complex motion of a fine motor skill of cocking this hammer and then firing a single action shot and you'll see that we don't have a single action like a cowboy type single action gun, the kind you might see people fanning the hammer or having to manually the hammer before it gets fired. We don't even put those guns into the realm of an option when it comes to a modern defensive handgun. This revolver which I've carried quite a bit over the years, it's very lightweight. This is only a five shot revolver, this revolver is one that has a shrouded hammer. So this does not even allow me the option of putting my thumb on that hammer and cocking it. What that also means is that if I needed to shoot this gun in a very close space, even if it were still inside of a jacket pocket inside of a pocket holster of course, if I were to get my finger in onto the trigger, I could shoot this gun without worrying about that hammer getting tangled up in anything or getting blocked. In an extreme close quarters situation if I had pulled my firearm out to defend myself, somebody grabs onto the gun, it is conceivable that they could block the motion of this hammer but they can't block the motion of this hammer. So there's some advantages to the shrouded hammer design when it comes to close quarters personal defense handgun. This is again, only a five shot 38 special revolver and again, still has that long, heavy double action trigger pole. Now you can see that, this one looks like it has some polishing done to it, and it's kind of got some rounded edges. It's also been worn in some flaking of the coding here. And this is a very old revolver, it's been in my collection for quite some time and I've carried it quite a bit shot at quite a bit. And it has had some custom work done to smooth out that long, heavy double-action trigger pull, but it's still a long, heavy double-action trigger pull it requires a lot of weight, a lot of pressure, and a lot of time to fire this gun. And because it's so small you can see the sights on it are very muted' this is not a gun that is easy to be accurate with. So it's not an efficient firearm design. So we'll put the revolvers down and move into the world of semiautomatic pistols. Revolvers, again, not a primary option. Semiautomatics are really where we want to focus the conversation in this day and age. And we're gonna start kind of like we did with revolvers. We're gonna start with an older design. So this is one of the rare single action semiautomatics that I personally have found to be reliable enough to be relied upon for personal defense or home defense. I no longer do that this is just a gun that's kinda been put in my collection and been retired so to speak, but going back 15 years ago, this was a gun that I considered viable as a home defense or even a carry gun although you can see it's relatively large and it's be relatively hard to carry on a daily basis. This is a single action gun. You'll see that it has an exposed hammer. You'll also notice that it has these levers sectionally one lever, one on either side they're connected through the middle. And that allows me with either thumb, where to get the gun into my left hand. Also be able to push this down on that side. And that's that manually operated external safety lever that requires an action that's not otherwise required to shoot the gun. Now, the reason that's important is because there's another mechanical safety on this particular firearm that you can see here on the back of the grip. And that's a grip safety. It has to be depressed in order for this gun to be fired. So if you can see this safety is up and this safety is up. If I try to pull the trigger right now, nothing's gonna happen. The hammer stays in place, right? Now, obviously this gun has been cleared and checked again, as all these have. I'm pushing here, nothing's happening because this safety lever is on. When I depress the safety lever, I can now push the trigger and we're still gonna see that nothing is going to happen because this grip safety isn't depressed. The grip safety is depressed, and I'll turn my hand over and do it a little bit awkwardly as I achieve my good shooting grip. The base of this grip safety is going to hit my palm and is going to be depressed. Obviously my thumb is gonna push that lever down and only now will this gun allow itself to be fired. Now I can press that trigger and the hammer fall forward. The gun would cycle reset that hammer and I could shoot again. Now you can see this is that light crisp single action trigger pull we were talking about. Okay, very little movement, very little pressure. When the gun cycles and I put the gun back into this condition with the safety on, and I put the gun in my holster, or I put the gun down into the my quick access safe when I grabbed the gun or when I draw the gun from my holster, I am already depressing the grip safety. This is a mechanical safety, which is deactivated by an action that is inherent in the shooting process. I don't have to do anything extra. So part of shooting a gun is complex. Getting a good grip prior to extending and shooting the gun or pushing the gun into a retention shooting position and shooting it. Well, I have to do that anyway. So deactivating the grip safety inherent in the process. This safety lever, however, requires an extra action that action in this case has to be performed as I'm getting the gun into my shooting position, whether that's a close quarters shooting position or an extended shooting position, the lever has to be moved. And then obviously the lever has to be put back into that on position to make sure the gun won't fire with a light crisp trigger when I'm done shooting. And then I have to holster, and next time I bring the gun out, again I have to drive out with that safety. What we actually teach people what to do with this type of a gun is drive out and shoot and as the gun comes back into the ready position put that safety back on. So the safety moves when the gun moves, well, that's another step that has to be learned. Certainly it can be learned and there's people out there who can do it very, very well. But I've also seen a great many very experienced shooters with a single action gun that happens to also be a reliable one, which is a relatively rare combination, very experienced 1911 shooter and a single action or 1911 type firearm that's the way you'll hear to these referred to although this is not technically a 1911 it does look like one and operate like one. You'll see that terminology a lot, having a combination of a gun that works very well and a shooter that runs the gun very well. I've still out of the thousands of opportunities I've seen on the range. I've seen many, many people fail to run these guns properly. They've had the safety on and they've been trying to shoot the gun or they've the safety off and they've gone back to their holster with the gun off of a safe position. Both of those things are not optimum obviously and one of them can cause you to have a gun that you can't use to defend yourself or others when you actually need it. And that's why this particular type of gun, even though it's reliable and has the single action short crisp trigger which makes deviation control easier is not one that we recommend for personal defense this day and age. The next gun we're gonna look at, is this Beretta. This is a double action, single action type firearm. And what that means is there's two different trigger pull. There's a double action trigger pull to get the action started and then all your subsequent shots will be single action. There'll be short crisp trigger pull that obviously introduces a complication right away. You have to learn to shoot two different types of triggers with this type of firearm. Now this type of firearm has been in service with the United States military since 1986. It is a mid type of gun in terms of the evolution of firearms, this is the middle ground you've got revolvers, and then you've got your single action guns and then you move up to this gun becoming the one that was predominant in design and popularity and use. There is a Beretta is there are Smith and Wessons, there are SIG Sauers, several different types of guns that utilize this type of a system. Now some of them have manually operated safeties. Some of them only have what we referred to as DD Cockers. There are a couple of models out there that are double action, single action that don't have DD Cockers and I would strongly advise you not to consider them as viable defensive shooting options. Primarily you see them in competition environments, I'll see them sometimes being used in a European area, usually when with the rounds not chambered. So in other words, when they're being carried in Europe, whether it's a personal defense or by professional security or military law enforcement we see them with the rounds only in the magazine, not being carried in the chamber, which is never something we recommend for a defensive firearm when someone's properly trained. So using this gun we're gonna be able to look at all the possible complications at the double action, single action gun presents. A gun like the SIG Sauer has a DD Cocker, but does not have a manually operated safety. So while it's still very complicated, it's not quite as complicated as this, but this sort of gives us everything we need to look at. Right now the gun is in double action mode and the safety is on. That means that when I get my grip on the gun and I press the trigger, I've got almost no pressure on it. You can see how far it travels, but nothing's happening with the hammer back here. And I'm pulling this trigger and I'm really not feeling anything happen. So I know that something is wrong. Well, what's wrong is the safety is on. And believe me, I've seen many military including very high end military soldiers come into a class having shot this gun a lot pulling the gun out of their holster driving out and pulling on what we call a dead trigger. This trigger doesn't do anything because the safety is left on. Well, this safety has to be swept up with the thumb and as you can see if I didn't have a very long thumb, if I had a short thumb, might not be able to reach that lever from my grip so that's one disadvantage of this gun already you can see it's relatively large circumference of grip and you need a relatively large hand to be able to run it well. So the safety has to be swept off, and then you have this long, heavy double-action trigger pull. You can watch the hammer, come back, back, back, back, back, back, very heavy at this point and then the hammer falls forward. At this point the gun would cycle and when the gun cycles, I now have a light the crisp trigger, which allows the subsequent shots to be fired when I'm done shooting at this point the gun has cycled. It's now in the light crisp trigger single action mode. And again, as I bring the gun back in, I'm gonna have to bring my thumb all the way up on top of that lever pull the lever back down. That's the DD Cocker and then what we teach people to do is immediately sweep that lever back up. That takes the safety out of the equation because now we have a long, heavy, double action trigger pull, just like we did on these revolvers, which means we really don't need to worry about an external manually operated safety. Some people don't like to carry this gun in this mode and in fact, in the military some people aren't allowed to carry the gun in this mode, if they were gonna carry the gun with the safety off, the other thing that we do is once the gun goes back into the holster, there's a position here called half cock it's not really half but that's what it's referred to as, but if we get in here with a closeup, you'll be able to see that this hammer right now is resting up here against the rest of the mechanism and in sharp impact in theory could cause this gun to be set off, so we just pull this hammer back to this first click, and now it sits right there. Now some of the people in the military we'll talk about how this could allow something to get caught between the hammer and the rest of the mechanisms of the gun and there are a hundred percent correct. Any exposed hammer gun creates potential issues with the hammer getting tangled up or the area between the hammer and the firing pin causing problems or having problems because something can get in there and obstruct that. Okay. So this is just an inherent complication and inherent vulnerability in this type of system, even though over the lifetime of this gun service, especially in military and law enforcement environments it's been seen to be very reliable, and this was actually a gun that I was issued by a police department. When I was active duty police officer, when I was full-time police officer, this gun was issued to me by a police department. I had experienced with this gun briefly in the military and I shoot it very well, I enjoy shooting it but it's a cumbersome gun, it's large and it also is very complicated. So it's not a gun that we would recommend to people at this day and age as the type of gun that they should really be looking at. So we've looked at revolvers, we looked at single action semiautomatics and we've looked at double action, single action semiautomatics. And we haven't found the preferred gun. The preferred gun is actually represented by these four options and what we call them as modern striker fired guns. Now you can find some guns that fit the definition of striker fired in the history of the evolution of guns, but it really hasn't been until the last couple of decades that every major firearms manufacturer has offered a viable striker fired gun. That is a mid-sized gun. Again, chambered in nine millimeter which is primarily what we're gonna be looking at in modern day self-defense applications because of the quality of the ammunition, the variety of ammunition and the performance of the ammunition inside of the bad guy. We have looked since the late 80's, early 90's as a community at the modern striker fired gun and said, overwhelmingly, this is the best choice. In fact, you'll be hard pressed to find anyone in this day and age who is at the top levels of instruction in the personal defense world, in our community who won't make a striker fired gun, their primary recommendation. Now you'll still have a lot of people that maybe have a bit of nostalgia or a bit of tradition or some respect especially emotional commitment and respect to the idea of the single action gun or the double action single action gun or even the revolver, but on a purely intellectual basis when we really look at all that the pros and cons, the modern striker fired gun offers the most efficient and reliable way for people to use a firearm to defend themselves or others. And that's what we're gonna focus on now. You'll notice a couple of things about these guns. First of all, there's no exposed hammer. So we get rid of all the potential issues with them hammer getting tangled up or getting blocked. We don't have to worry about that. The lack of a hammer also means that this gun is going to be more ergonomic. It's gonna point more naturally, and we're gonna be able to shoot it faster, because the access of the barrel where the actual readings coil is coming back towards our hand from where the little explosion is happening to the push the bullet out, we've got our equal and opposite, fundamental physics reaction going on here. If I can get that barrel lower relative to where my hand is, because I don't need to have this structure of the pivoting hammer up above the hand. If I can get the barrel closer, my hand, then I'm gonna have less perceived recoil. I'm gonna have faster follow-up shots because I can manage recoil more efficiently. So that's a huge advantage. And that's obviously any given size, any given weight gun with any given caliber. If we're gonna compare apples to apples, we want the lower bore axis. That's gonna allow us to run the gun more efficiently, point the gun more naturally, and inspire our follow-up shots faster. So that's one major advantage of these systems. Sometimes you'll see striker fired guns that aren't built with that aspect in mind, they'll have a very high relationship between the bore line and the hand line. You wanna stay away from those, right? As we start to refine our choices, we're gonna try to find modern striker fired guns with low barrels as this design allows. The other thing you're gonna see is that we have a moderate weight and moderate distance length of pull trigger on most of our modern striker fired guns. Again, huge advantage. We wanna make sure that we have enough of a conscious effort required to fire the gun, but we don't want it to be something that's abusive or unreasonable, like the first shot of the double action single, or the shots that we're gonna fire out of our double action revolvers, because they obviously increase the difficulty of getting our hits of putting enough deviation control into the shot so that we can be accurate and hit our target. So a length, moderate weight trigger is another advantage of the modern striker fired gun. And of course, where we started reliability, these guns have had a amazing amount of testing done to them and amazing amount of demonstrated reliability over a long duration of time with minimal maintenance and with the least amount of consideration for what type of ammo you feed into it. As long as you're putting the right type of ammo into these guns, as far as the caliber you should have no problems. They will really will work with just about anything, much like a revolver. So we see revolver like reliability with obviously an extended magazine capacity, which is going to allow us to fire more rounds at the bad guy over any extended period of time. And we're going to also have more intuitive ergonomics here, which allow us to be more efficient than we would have with the revolver. So very similar in some ways and obviously we have no external manually operated safeties that require an action, which isn't already inherent in the shooting process. Now you can find modern striker fired guns that have manually operated safeties. Obviously we would recommend against them. In this point, a lot of new shooters will say to me, "Well, I really want to safety. I've got kids in the house, I'm new to guns, I'm nervous about the gun. I want to have a safety on the gun." What I always say to the people that will launch that as a concern is if I give you a gun with this manually operated safety lever, are you gonna feel comfortable loading the gun, turning the safety on and leaving it on the floor and your kids' playroom. Are you gonna feel comfortable leaving it on your dining room table? Or are you gonna put it out on the edge of your bed and just not worry about it and leave it there because it's not going to go off, unless someone picks it up, it turns a safety off and shoots it. Or are you still going to maintain access control? Are you still gonna keep the gun hidden? Are you gonna keep the gun secure? Are you to keep the gun in a holster? You're gonna keep the gun the way a responsible gun owner should in a place where unauthorized access, either by people who might mean to do harm with the firearm, the bad guy or people who aren't intellectually capable of understanding the use of the firearm are emotionally mature enough to use the firearm properly would have access to it. Well, of course, as soon as you present it that way, I hope you would agree that you're going to secure your guns from on authorized access. So the issue isn't whether or not you're gonna hand the gun to somebody, and they're not gonna be able to figure out how to shoot it. The issue is, are you gonna make sure that only authorized people get to your gun and anybody who can get to your gun is going to be authorized to pick it up and use it to defend themselves or others. And of course, that's the intention. So with the defensive gun, we don't wanna make it harder for the gun to go off. We're gonna control access to the gun, and we want it to be as easy as possible to use this gun when we actually need it. Under the stress of a dynamic critical incident, something that's surprising, something that's chaotic and a situation in which there's the threat, specifically in this case, a threat that requires you to use a firearm to defend yourself. So simplifying the use of the gun is incredibly important and that's what that manual safety lever keeps us from having is a very simple, efficient way of defending ourselves with a firearm. Now there's still a mechanical safety in this particular gun. It's widely advertised as having three safeties. There's one safety particular that I wanna point out that one safety is this mechanical lever, I'm gonna use my index finger of my left hand here, just to push that lever in. And what you're gonna see is if I just push the edge of the trigger, the trigger is actually blocked for moving backwards, but inherent in getting a good solution from a grip standpoint and from a trigger press standpoint, inherent in that is making enough contact with the trigger to depress that center bar. That center bar when I depressed it I'll do that without moving the trigger, you can see that at the back of the trigger, it moved that mechanical block out of the way and allows me to let that trigger, travel to the rear where eventually it's gonna release and that Stryker forward, and it's gonna fire the round. So this type of a trigger block is a manual safety but it's a manual safety that is the activated, when I grip the gun and put my finger properly on the trigger with the intent of pulling it, to set the gun off. So it doesn't require any extra steps and that's really important. If we look at this gun, this is another modern striker fired gun. Again, all these guns have been cleared and are empty. Take a look at those, we usually have two people at least check because this one has the magazine in it. I'm gonna go ahead and double-check this one we always are want to do. And what we see here is this gun has the same type of a mechanical block up here on the trigger and it also has the same type of grip safety that we saw in this older generation single action gun. So this gun actually has two mechanical safeties built into it. Neither one of which require you to do anything different than you would do with this gun or with a revolver with any gun, even these other older designs, which is get a good grip and then get good contact with your trigger finger and the trigger prior to pulling the trigger and expecting the gun to go off. So here's two mechanical safeties that are both manually operated, but they're operated as part of getting a good firing grip. So if someone were to just casually grab it the gun and not have a good grip and their finger gets into the trigger area, the gun won't go off. If someone were with very small hands or to get the gun into their hand and try to find a way to pull the trigger and they didn't reach that center trigger block, the gun's not gonna go off. You're putting the gun back in your holster and it gets tangled up on something, maybe you have a clip or a flap or something from your jacket, it's flopping around out here. If, as you're holstering the gun, something catches just on that front edge or the back edge of the trigger, the gun can't go off because of those mechanical safeties. So I don't want you to think that a modern striker fired gun because it doesn't have a safety lever and a red dot painted on the side of it that it's inherently dangerous. On these guns are not inherently dangerous. What's inherently dangerous is letting someone who's not authorized to have access to this gun, have access to it. That's where we're gonna have a problem. So we get a good grip on these guns, We extend them and we can shoot and we can shoot relatively rapidly. These guns are known to be very reliable. Of course, you're gonna check that they're very efficient and they're as simple as they can be. So there's still complex mechanical devices, but they're not complicated. There's no extraneous steps to these modern striker fired hand guns.