"Stormin Mormon" wrote in message
...
You bought a .380 to take out a 300 pound crazy man? Do you
think that's enough gun? I doubt it.

I bought a .380 because I was applying for a carry permit and a 16 gauge
would have been awkward to carry around in a ankle holster. (-: This was
way back in the day when money (for me) was pretty scarce and it was
"either-or." I had to make do with a weapon that could be both carried
discreetly and used for home defense. A couple of well-placed shots from a
..380 will take out a fat man or a thin one unless he's wearing a bulletproof
welder's helmet. One or two shots up through the jaw will do it. Very
little bone between the barrel and the brain.

But I will agree that a .380 is not an intimidation weapon, it is a weapon
of last resort. I wouldn't shoot a 300 pound man in a leather jacket in the
center of mass and expect good results. I'd aim for the head and pray he
wasn't a relative of Joe the Boss Masseria, the man who could dodge bullets:

http://www.worldlingo.com/ma/enwiki/en/Joe_Masseria

He eventually ran out of luck and died in a hail of .32 and .38 caliber
slugs. As someone else noted, the Mob has historically made very effective
use of the .22 caliber round as a murder weapon. It all depends on how you
use it.

Ironically, the only time I had to depend on my .380, displaying it was
enough. The guy on the other end weaved his head from side to side to try
to determine if it was a real gun (it's pretty damn small) and ran away when
he concluded it was. It was good for him that he just moved side to side
because I had already decided he was close enough to grab it from me and if
he moved forward even an inch, I would have shot him. And emptied the clip.

Eventually I graduated from the Beretta to a Browning 9mm HiPower. There's
no way that the Browning was anywhere near as conceable as the Beretta,
although it had tremendously greater power as well as a 13 round clip v. the
Beretta's 7. It had substantially greater intimidation power as well. Now
I have a .40 Glock, a Ruger mini 14 and a few others around the house.

I still prefer a pistol to a shotgun for really tight quarters but for carry
purposes, a Baby Browning .25 with 7 rounds of steel-tipped ammo is enough
gun for most situations. At least for me. As someone else said a while
back, a powerful gun that's too big to take everywhere is no better than a
small caliber gun than can go anywhere. Escape is still preferable to a
shootout, at least for me. The Baby is for when escape is not an option.
Even a justifiable shooting is going to cost big bucks, especially if you're
arrested as a result. But being arrested is still a lot better than being
dead.

--
Bobby G.