Gone are the days where the only concern for the armed citizen was a crackhead in a dark ally with a switch blade. The J Frame proved ideal for such an adversary. While that threat certainly still exists, it is hardly all to be concerned with.
We now live in the time of heightened, hyper-violence. The most dangerous of all threats that the armed citizen may now face is the active killer, or multiple active killers, in the guise of home-grown sickos or foreign terror actors. While it makes perfect sense to say that such threats should be dealt with by teams of professionals, armed with rifles, reality has played out, multiple times, in which a sole responder, citizen or law enforcement, deals with this threat with a pistol. And, despite the disparity in firepower, there is a good track record of success.
The reality remains that, if you find yourself at ground zero of the next active killer or terror attack, you will be armed with the handgun you carry. You won’t have a rifle. Even if you keep a rifle in your vehicle, you won’t make it to the vehicle and return. Rather than obsess over your truck gun, I strongly encourage you to focus your training on the tool that you will use, and that tool has been employed to devastating effect on multiple occasions: the handgun.
At this point we have witnessed over a dozen events in which either an armed citizen or a lone police officer has neutralized rifle-wielding active killers or terrorists with only a handgun, the most recent being the event that took place at Bondi Beach, Australia, in which a detective finally showed up and stopped both terrorists with his handgun, making the hits at 40 meters. Other examples of long range successful engagements with only a handgun include Andy Brown at Fairchild Airforce Base, who killed a terrorist at 70 yards with his pistol, and Eli Dickens, who stopped a mass shooter at 43 yards. Officer Gregory Stevens neutralized two terrorists with rifles and wearing armor as they exited their vehicle to commence a terror attack with only his pistol. And the list continues.
So, at this point, we have multiple examples of handgun neutralization of rifle-armed killers at extended distances, and we have multiple examples of handgun neutralization of multiple rifle-armed, and even armored, terrorists. You will not be armed with a rifle. You will, hopefully, be armed with your pistol. And, as has been proven over and over, the pistol can prove the complete game changer, if you are good with it and have the guts to use it.
The Tool for the Job
As should be obvious, a suitably capable and shootable autoloading pistol is in order for this task. With that said, we live in a golden age of very capable and shootable smaller pistols. Realistically, service caliber cartridges are where we want to be, so 9mm and up. While bigger guns tend to be easier for most to shoot well, if you are well trained and experienced, you will tend to give up less capability when downsizing. The so called “micro 9s” are probably at the bottom of the size we should be considering here. Guns like the Glock 43x and the Sig 365, particularly the larger versions of it, tend to be quite shootable for experienced people. Carrying a minimum of such a gun, with at least one reload on body, is where I would suggest starting.
Only personal experimentation will give you an idea of how much you lose, or don’t, in performance between a smaller, easier to carry, pistol and a full-size service pistol. Such experimentation will lead you to the decision between confidence with a small gun versus making the larger gun work. A lot of experienced guys out there have moved from carrying the once-ubiquitous Glock 19 to carrying Glock 43x or the Sig P365 variants. Obviously, the smaller gun is easier to carry and conceal, but these people seem to not be concerned with a significant downgrade in capability. Ultimately, each individual needs to make the determination between concealability and performance as both will vary from one person to another.
Pertaining to sighting systems, the engagement of distant adversaries tends to be one of the true selling points of red dot pistol optics. While I agree with the obvious advantage of dots at greater distances, I would also point out that, thus far, it appears the examples we have of these long range neutralizations have all been done with iron sights. So, the modern technology offers an advantage here, if you are trained up on it, but a good shooter is hardly dead in the water with iron sights.
Besides considerations on the handgun, now is the time to be carrying hemorrhage control medical devices on your person. Especially when in crowded public environments, consider adding a full trauma kit to your person, such as an ankle IFAK, or if that does not work carry a sling bag or backpack that has a full medical kit. Be sure you have relevant training in controlling life-threatening bleeding.
The Shooting Problem
As has been witnessed numerous times, the need to shoot at extended, beyond normal engagement, distances, has arisen in numerous such incidents. While you might be able to shoot with significant accuracy with your tricked out competition gun, is that what you are carrying? Probably not.
I stand by a metric that I have suggested for a long time: with your carry gun, put in the training necessary to be able to keep your hits consistently within an 8 inch “Down Zero” circle at 25 yards, and on a C Zone target at 50 yards. Realistically, of you can do that with your carry gun, you probably have the accuracy you will need in such an event.
We live in interesting times. The homicide rate in CONUS is slated to be very low, perhaps the lowest since the 1960s, this year. However, the new and emerging threat profile is like nothing dealt with before. As the threat changes, so should our gear, training, and preparation.
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