Why Firearm Capacity is Very Important for Self Defense

No one has ever said after a gunfight, "I wish I had less ammo.

Why Firearm Capacity is Very Important for Self Defense Pistol Drill

I’ve heard many times people say things along the lines of, “I only need a gun to scare them off, I don’t have to fire” or “Criminals will just run when I start firing.” While it is very common for criminals to run as soon as a gun is presented, that is not always the case. Some criminals have no problem fighting against armed defenders. These determined criminals are a very serious threat to people with small, low capacity firearms.

Mickey Schuch from Carry Trainer and Sang Lee from RMSI go over some data on defensive encounters and then put two guns on the clock to illustrate the importance of having larger capacity self defense firearms.

The FBI compiles statistics on police shootings, which provides very informative insight into the reality of self defense situations.

  1. 90% of the time, self defense shootings happen 21 feet or less
  2. 70% of the time, self defense shootings happen 10 feet or less
  3. 50% of the time, self defense shootings happen 6 feet or less
  4. 20% hit ratio from law enforcement
  5. 50% of the time, there’s at least two attackers

In the real world, criminals move around. Erratically moving targets are much harder to hit than the static paper targets we practice on. This is one of the reasons why trained law enforcement officers have such a low hit rate. If you’re carrying a 7 round handgun, that means you’ll have one or two hits on one target before you’re empty. That is not a guarantee to stop the attacker in the slightest, and it leaves no extra rounds for a second attacker.

Written by - always a student, sometimes a teacher.

I don't consider myself a competition shooter - I think of myself as a performance pistol shooter. I am all about performing at as high of a level as possible. Towards that end, I am obsessive about learning how to perform. I spend a lot of my life learning from the best across the entire firearms world and even into other areas of performance and other sports. I am a USPSA Carry Optics Grandmaster, currently working towards my second GM title in the Open division.

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