I've read in one of these threads that you have to assume that an armed person is going to kill you - if you wait to analyze the situation, it's too late, you're dead. That was said by a pro-gun poster. BTW - what else is a handgun used for, besides killing someone? Big game hunting? Pu-leeze.

In that situation, what is your measurement of success? Getting out alive is mine. That means I will do what it takes to be successful, including laying face down. If you want to fight in that situation, go ahead, I'll send flowers to your widow and tell stories of you to your kids "yeah, he cooda been a contender, but his pride was more important than raising his kids".

Maybe that's the problem. If someone with a gun broke into my house, I would say "take my stuff". It's only stuff. Try to hurt me or my family, and I'll do my best to kill you - gun or no gun. But staying alive and unhurt is my primary goal.

Jay-zus, Spexx. You call yourself a modern, with-it man? Uh uh -- your thinking is so totally last century as to make you a complete square -- maybe a tesseract.

Handgun hunting even has its own particular season, Spexx. (Kid, if you're going to debate guns with gun people, you need to know all about guns!) Here is a short and not at all comprehensive list of hunting handguns, both single shot and repeaters:

Smith & Wesson Model 29, .44 magnum; Thompson-Center Contender and Encore, any caliber you want up to minor elephant gun cartridges like .375 H&H, single shot; Casull .454, a magnum that dwarfs the .44 mag, and a 5-shot revolver you can shoot bears with; .460, .475, and .480 Linebaugh -- mainly, like the Casull, put in conversions of large Ruger revolver frames. Lots of revolver makers make a .357, which was the first magnum cartridge Elmer Keith invented before he came up with the .44 mag -- specifically to hunt with.

With a hunting handgun, you're not keeping one hand involved with toting seven or eight pounds of rifle while you make your way through or across the rough country, but instead wearing three or four pounds of smaller more convenient pistol and pistol scope, often as not. (Elmer Keith did it with iron sights and shot moose three hundred yards off with his .357. Ate 'em, too. Then he did it better with a bigger cartridge.)

Handgun hunting seasons approximate the special muzzleloader seasons, and for about the same reason -- each has its particular demands (like no available follow-up shot) and imposes limits upon the gun-toting hunter.

Then arm yourself and become skilled not only at putting shots inside the ten-ring, but in what tactics you will use to defend your dwelling -- the best way, proven in study after study of which studies you know nothing, nothing at all, is to have greater force available to you than to the invader. Your chances of "doing my best to kill you" if you didn't bring a gun to the gunfight are laughably small: "...a grasshopper may fight a lawnmower; his courage is undoubtable, but not his judgement" or something like that. Heinlein again -- his thinking, along with Jeff Cooper's, informs a lot of my thinking on this and related subjects.

Another ignorance, that window dressing somehow makes one gun "worse" than another.
My hunting rifle shoots just as many rounds, more powerful rounds, with more penetration, just as quickly as an AK, it just does not look like a military weapon. It is more powerful than an AK... it is closer to (and sometimes uses as one by cops) a sniper rifle, but no hippie idiots want to ban it, because they have never seen it in movies. So, they have no flaky emotions tied to it.
Most crimes are committed with a revolver or shotgun, a STOLEN, revolver or shotgun, to clarify.
Anti-collector legislation aimed at military styled weapons makes NO sense and is just a waste of legislator's time and tax payers money.
BTW, I target shoot to relax and used to shoot skeet when I still could physically. It is no one's right to take that away from anyone who is not a felon.
Busybodies who feel they have it in them to remove other's rights need to go to a nation that is not based on freedom.
Freedom means you are exposed to other's freedoms as well, some of those are going to make you uncomfortable. If you can't deal, that means you are not cut-out for freedom. It is simple.

I have used my sidearm to protect my life from rattlesnakes more than once on my family ranch while crawling under fruit trees and once from a wild boar that was attacking. You have no idea what you are talking about.
They are also for protecting your life from others.
If you want to take mine away, fine, NO ONE else gets one under any circumstances, no cops, no military, first, then we will talk.

Thats exactly what I said I was for. Take 'em away from everyone.

To protect me from snakes and boar?
*has aneurysm*

Nope, from these sows:

http://free.gunchicks.com/rchicks/je...enn-olivia.jpg

How?

That bit aint my problem!

Typical two-toned lobster rhetoric!

My wife protects me from them just fine...damn it.
I know people who can shoot with a handgun at sharpshooter level and cannot hit a moving target better than some ten-year-olds in our family.
Had a long talk one day with a cop about this, he said it was a real problem on the force. The older cops can shoot just fine on the range but can't hit a live target, but young people raised on video games all shoot like they were born with guns in their hands (well... they were) and hit everything they aim at. I asked him to put them on first person shooters... he said they did and his people sucked so bad that the learning curve was so huge that it was almost a waste of time.
My next statement upset him... "promote younger men", he did not, or could not speak, but just nodded.
I shoot fine, and did not play games, but grew-up hunting. Makes sense though. Drs. are training for surgery on video games now. Just works.

Just because you've never been in the general locale of snakes and boar doesn't make em any less dangerous. A javelina tried to kill my dog one time. In our yard. He might have been sent by the armadillos.

I am saying that is what I used my side-arm for. You are making my point. Are you reading other's posts or just tail-posting?

Tail posting. I lack the attention span to keep up with 3 gun threads in their entirety. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

Did it stab your dog in the foot? ;)

It bounced off the chainlink fence a couple times and got its head under. It had about 10 friends with it, they had been displaced by a flood and were terrorizing the countryside.

I didn't see it happen, I had to read the tracks (and fix the fence).