The Pros And Cons Of A Defensive Revolver

Frickin aliens...amiright?

 

Lol, **** dude, don't say that. I constantly have nightmares about aliens. Freaking Fire in the Sky man. And Communion. I can't recover from that ****. And my dad used to have magazines about abductions all around the house and I would stay up all night reading them . . . and I'm not even going to get into the pranks he pulled on me. But thanks for the psychic prediction. Because, yes, my nightmares about that stuff were part of why I hesitated.

Just a funny story here, but one time this same dog was acting just this kind of crazy. Hackles raised. Growling. And she never, ever did that. She loved cats, dogs, skunks, rabbits . . . everything (except deer). But one night she was just absolutely drooling from the mouth about something outside. I grabbed a little .22 revolver (all I had at the time), and went in the backyard with her.

And she absolutely tore apart the snowman my girlfriend had made.

 

Raccoons sound like aliens at night. It sounds kinda creepy at 3 AM when i have the smokers going and they have us surrounded, drawn in by the smells. We live in a rural party of this area with lots of critters. One night my wife let out one of the big dogs and he proceeded to tree a raccoon...was barking up a storm...and the raccoons around were chittering all around them. The raccoon he treed fell from the tree and landed on him so EVERYONE was howling and my wife grabbed a flashlight and a hammer that happened to be in that area due to some we were doing and charged out after them with nothing on but her undies, whooping and hollering...the coon ran off...everything got back to normal. I just stood at the door and laughed.

I like to see that story through the eyes of the raccoon, as an old raccoon...telling stories to future generations of young raccoons gathered around a campfire...stay away from that property...they got a big ass bear and some crazy lady with a hammer...........

 

We don't get many raccoons around here, and the few we have rush off in a hurry. We've got some coyotes, not many, and those are my main concern, since we have a little dog as well. And I have to keep an eye out for alligators around my family property when I bring the dogs there. And the boar still keep me on edge when we are visiting there. That's about the only time I carry my revolver around outside the car.

 

A search for “defensive gun usage" shows it happens anywhere from 500k – 3.5 million times annually. The raw numbers come from the CDC, most recently from a study ordered by President Obama in 2013. It includes FBI data delineating how more than 95% of civilian involved defensive gun usages are resolved peacefully, with no injuries sustained by either party.

I've been involved in two such incidents. Both times: no shots fired, nobody hurt. Just a big stick on display without any bluster or chest thumping.

 

The estimates vary...but yes...typically it is safe to say there are 200,000 to 2.5 million defensive uses of firearms. MOST never involve a shot fired.

 

Also . . . probably vastly underreported