“Raven Smith doesn’t usually take a gun to Applebee’s,” tampabay.com reports. “But something made him reconsider Sunday night as he held his .380 caliber weapon in his hand, about to leave it behind as he stepped out of his car to have dinner with his girlfriend, Ashley Tanner. In a split second, he found himself firing the weapon at a masked stranger who rushed up behind Tanner with what looked like a gun.” Hmmm. Smith just happened to have his gun in his hand when an armed robber appeared? Anyway, Jungle Boogie . . . [Note: it's a pun on a popular song, not a racist remark.]
“Get down, get down!” Smith yelled to Tanner. She ducked and he fired four shots at the stranger from less than 6 feet away, over the head of his crouched girlfriend. The would-be robber was Anthony Lawrence Hauser, 17, of 3760 38th Ave. N, police said . . .
“I saw orange flashes over my head,” Tanner said. “And then my ears were ringing.”
Smith recalled shooting the robber four times. He fell to the ground, then yelled to Smith: “Don’t shoot me anymore!”
Assuming that this report gets the basics facts right, a man intent on killing Mr. Smith and Ms. Tanner gets shot four times from six feet and he has enough presence of mind to beg for his life? Sounds like he had enough life left in him to f them up.
Shot placement is all. A gun is better than no gun. Stopping power is not the same as lethality. Feel free to carry a .380 for self-defense and feel good about it. But I wonder what would have happened if Mr. Smith had shot his would-be attacker with a .45 caliber handgun. Four times. Would the perp have still been able to mount a counter-attack?
I know: caliber wars are so last decade. So let’s make this personal: do YOU carry a .380? If you carry something more ostensibly potent, would you feel under-gunned with a .380? And finally, why not a sub-compact nine?
I live in Los Angeles. If I carried a concealed weapon, and used it in perfectly justified self-defense, I would face a long jail sentence.
A .380 out of a 4″bbl has ballistics pretty much identical to a .38spl in a snub nosed revolver, and a LOT of cops carry a .38 snubby as a backup or off duty weapon. What matters is that you have it, and you’ve practiced with it. I replaced my .38 S&W 442 with a PPK because the PPK is flatter, has a safety, and can be reloaded a lot more quickly.
Can we please be done with “caliber snobbery”? Carry the pistol you are most able to score X-zone hits with. Vital hits end fights regardless of caliber.
Well Said
I carry a Kel Tec PF-9. It weighs about the same as a 380 but has real stopping power.
It is a handful to shoot but very accurate.
My home protection weapon of choice is a Mossberg 20 inch pump shotgun with buckshot. It spits out 9 30 caliber metal balls at 1250 feet per second and holds 8 shells. I know these projectiles are very similar to a 380 in size and speed but 72 will clear a wide path.
I agree that a 45 ACP can be a handful if you have not practised enough but it will stop a man with a single shot most times. This is what we are trying to achieve in this situation I think?
Don’t go for a smaller weapon just practise more until you can really use the most appropriate weapon. I have used a 45 ACP in tricky situation in Angola, Iraq, and the US. It always did what it was supposed to do.
Several years ago after attending a street survival course my department sent me to, I went looking for a backup/off duty weapon. One of the instructors had made a impression on me with his views of backup/off duty weapons. Basically he felt that when you were in a “oh shit” moment, and the monkey portion of your brain had taken over, you wanted something that was very simple, and very deadly. I took this to heart and bought a Smith and Wesson Model 296 Air Weight .44 Special hammerless revolver. It weighs 19 ounces loaded, has no safety or hammer to get in the way, and fires one ass kicker of a round. I load it with 200 grain gold dots, and the bullets stay in the body where they belong. If someone is so far away that I feel I can’t hit them, then I should probably be running and not in a gunfight to begin with. If they are close enough that I can hit them, well I seriously doubt they are going to be asking me to stop shooting after I hit them. Any concealed carry weapon should be two things, and two things only, simple, and deadly. The reason for this is simple, in that unless you are involved in so many shootings that they have become muscle memory, you’ll be lucky just to get it out and pointed in the right direction when the shit hits the fan. Simple and deadly will be your best friend when that time comes.
Rodger on the 296ti. The Centennial-type trigger is excellent Good for shooting through the pocket–0.00 seconds reaction time.. When you learn the trigger, the gun has 25-yard capability.
I have three concealed carry weapons. The first is a full size Kimber .45. I only wear that when it’s cold out and the bulk of my jackets will make concealment easy. The second gun I carry is a Glock 19 9mm. It’s small, compact, and easy to conceal in most clothing. Finally, being a Floridian, I don’t always wear long pants with a belt or a jacket. I wear shorts and T-shirts…a lot. For those instances I carry a Diamondback .380 loaded with +P ammunition. +P ammo will penetrate 12 inches of ballistic gelatin. That’s plenty of power to ruin a vital organ.
Shot placement is more important than stopping power. Practice, practice, and practice some more pulling your gun quickly and hitting center mass at 8 yards. Do that and even a .22 will stop an attacker dead in his tracks.
Hammerless revolver carried in the pocket of a loose-fitting jacket. Either an S&W 296ti or a Ruger LCR. No holster, no draw–shoot through the pocket: 0.00 seconds reaction time from decision to shoot to round on the way. Wheelguns always go off when they are supposed to, and they never go off when they are not supposed to.
Buenos Ares in the 90′s gave some of us real-world CCW experiences. I was in the (safe?) investment business, but we all found ourselves carrying and facing actual threats on almost a weekly basis. I’m no cowboy, but found myself drawing a weapon 20+ times, firing several. Here’s what we learned:
1. Forget caliber: find a weapon that you will, in fact, carry daily, everywhere.
2. Know your weapon and get comfortable with it: best way–go buy 1,000 rounds, fire them in one marathon range session, and take notes. Go to the range weekly. Spend 30 minutes/week drawing your weapon quickly and getting site-on-target.
3. Decide your outcome: mine was to ‘put attacker on defense and escape’
4. The aftermath: since my goal was to ‘escape’, I didn’t want to hang around for the police (no disrespect, I just didn’t want the hassle). Thus, an additional issue was the Gunshot Sound Detection System that many cities employ. Response: change the sound profile of your weapon. Integrated suppressor systems work fine.
5. Weapon: popular options: (a) taking a high-capacity 22 (eg Mark III), chopping the barrel down to 3 inches, and maybe attaching a suppressor; (b) Walther PPK with suppressor; (c) Beretta Model 70 and 71 chambered in 22.
6. The general idea was to make your response quick and quiet.
just my thoughts from the field.
More people have been killed with .22s that all other calibers combined. Learning to shoot well is a lot more important than gun caliber. If .22s weren’t deadly hit men wouldn’t use them.
I currently carry a .45 but carried a .380 PPK for many years and still do when clothing calls for it. I would rather have the .45 but the .380 will do the job if I do mine.
I think the .380 is probably “enough gun” if you’re stopping one perp and can hit something smaller than the side of a barn. If you jumped to the original story, the perp not only said “stop shooting me” (something I doubt he’d be able to do if hit my my Kimber .45ACP), but also claimed his gun was ‘fake.’ Turns out it was a fully-operational and fully-loaded .25 semi-auto.
Come to think of it, perhaps the robber knew something about calibers and accuracy. I’d carry a .380 if I had to. But a .25? I don’t think so.
The only time I ever had to draw my weapon and fire it, I happened to be carrying an old .36 Navy Cap & Ball Colt in a cross-draw holster. I was checking on my grandfathers farm house while he was on vacation. A Ford van was in front door and two teens were trying to get the tv into it. I called on them to stop and they dropped the tv, jumped in the van and tried to run me down. I pulled the old Colt and put two lead balls into the radiator. The steaming van shuddered to a stop and I held the teens at gunpoint till the police arrived. Goes to show that any gun is better than nothing when it comes down to it.
That is some Outlaw Josie Wales badassery right there.
my $0.02. The question is if .380 suitable for self-defense. Short answer…No. “A pistol is what you use to fight your way to your rifle” to quote the esteemed Mr. Clint Smith of Thunder Ranch. Unfortunately it is not always possible to carry a rifle and smaller calibers tend to be more controllable. In many urban situations, the distances that confrontations occur at and over-penetration become relevant concerns.
Especially in the summer months, I will conceal a .380 specifically a Sig P238 because I can keep it concealed and its manual of arms is similar to a 1911A1. In other words, it is the best that I can do.
I shot a criminal who was resisting my citizen’s arrest in the leg with a solid-point .22 short. (That’s what was in the gun I borrowed.) He hollered, fell right over, and bled profusely. All the fight went right out of him. I was kind of worried that I might have to sacrifice my necktie for a tourniquet, but the ambulance (and police) did come right along.
I typically carry a little teeny tiny Beretta .22 (loaded with long rifle hollow points). I found I can hit an empty .22 cartridge box every time at 25 feet with that pistol. I strongly suspect that an aimed shot to a fatal area of the body would stop practically everyone.
I suggest re-watching that disgusting video of the attempted assassination of President Reagan. 22 stopped everyone hit. A similar question might be “which is better, 22 or 380 or 45 or 9mm?” The high velocity 22 is impressive both in effect and ability to shoot accurately.
Kel-Tec is making a 30 round .22 mag pistol right now that looks nasty. I don’t think it’s much bigger than a .45, and with .22 mag hollow points it would be pushing out walnut sized exit wounds, with little to no kick. Nasty little weapon it is. Cheap too. I think it’s under $400.00.
as for the question is a 380 enough gun? i dont think so in 97 i was shot 3 times in the back the caliber was 380 it left one round in my armpit one in my lung that by the way never collapesed and one a half inch from my heart. all well placed rounds just not enough ass.
What about aiming for the belly button, there’s no ribcage to get in the way, the abdominal aorta would be a very good target and all the energy would be absorbed, with little or no air spaces to allow a through and through with smaller caliber rounds. A little lower and there’s bundle of nerves and the rt & lft iliac.
Let’s not forget that if a miss or through and through hits someone other than the bad guy your responsible, that could mean jail time, i would rather be dead than do time in prison. I have been carrying a pf9 kel tek 9mm, but have been leaning toward a 380 cal, maybe a cz 83. Please reply I would like the feed back. Thanks; Bill
I carry a Bersa .380, real cheap. I also believe in this belly button theory. The simple fact of the matter is concealability vs. stopping power. The .380 allows for follow up shots where something like a cm9 does not.