Pistol, Rifle or Both?

QUESTION:

You have mentioned that you would use a handgun to fight your way to a rifle, and you have also stated that a rifle inside a house might be excessive and the bullets will pass through the walls and furniture. I am confused. What is the best firearm for home defense if these factors are as you say?

ANSWER:

Fantastic question. I say if I know I’m going to be in a “gunfight”, I will bring a rifle with me, and if I have the opportunity and am in a very bad gunfight (and none are good ones, just some are worse) and all I have in my hands is a pistol; I will use the pistol to “fight my way to my rifle”. The best firearm for home defense is the one that you are totally confident in using for that purpose. The most effective weapon you have for your self defense is right between your ears.

I have emphasized having a plan both outside of and in your home. If you have a plan, any weapon will at the very least suffice. A plan will enable us to customize the personal defense of our home and property such as what weapon you would use for that purpose and how you’d use it. Your family members will of course know what to do because you did plan. Shot gun down the hallway with birdshot, extremely effective. AR 15, AK 47, Marlin 22, Remington deer rifle, handguns of all types are all fine if you ambush the bad guys; which should be a major part of your plans. Use the gun you have. Use it wisely because a round out of a rifle that isn’t of a handgun caliber is going to punch through everything at close range and it will keep on going. Lever action rifles are available in .38 spl./.357 magnum, .44 spl./.44magnum, and .45 long colt to name a few and these are fantastic in home self defense options especially in carbine form. (Don’t forget the Ruger Deerfield carbine semi-auto carbine in .44 magnum, it ain’t cheap)

Lots of folks have bought or are buying AR’s and AK’s, and SKS’s and all sorts of battle rifles and are thinking that these are in house guns cause they see them every day on the news or on the History/Discovery channels in the hands of soldiers and swat teams and cops clearing houses with them. Several things to consider here; among which are they are entering the house to specifically clear it. They are not already in there under assault from kick burglars in the middle of the night in Houston suburbia. They constantly use and train for that specific purpose. They leave when finished. They use the houses for cover to engage from when assaulted by enemy troops and if you notice they are engaging targets at distance from that cover not searching for it. “IT” found them!

A point I missed in using battle rifles: My early experience with the M-16 and later AR-15 rifles and other common battle rifles is extensive. At first the optics for these guns was rudimentary at best and downright crude and fragile, so we pretty much all used the iron sights on them. Nowadays they have dot scopes, holographic sights, lasers that are designed for these battle rifles. One thing I forgot to tell y’all about is what is known as “offset” on these rifles.

Offset is the height difference between where the barrel is and where the sights are on the rifle. On an AR or AK type rifle that can be between three and four inches below where the rifles sights are actually looking. Even if you have a “flat top” receiver on your handy dandy AR “platform” and you put a scope or red dot in a set of rings on top of the rail on the rifle you have to account for the added height above the barrel/bore. Here’s a quick and easy way to check your offset on your rifle. Take your rifle and lay it on its side on the floor in front of you. If it’s an AR,AK,SKS, or whatever and you have any kind of “Star Wars” type sight on it, get a tape measure. Measure the distance from the middle of your sight device straight down to where the middle of the barrel might be. That is how much your barrel is offset below your sight. If you don’t have a fancy optic on it just do the same measurement from the top of the front sight to the top of the barrel. Deer rifle scopes are bore sighted for this. You may or may not have enough adjustment in your scope/optical sight to compensate for it but don’t count on it. Make a mental note to compensate simply by holding your sights at the 12 o’clock position on target as opposed to the 6 o’clock position. In the most technical sense we hold at the 6 o’clock position to allow for the bullet rise of normal trajectory profiles. Simply stated, a bullet travels in an arc as opposed to a straight line and we sight to accommodate the arc.

This past week in Houston a home owner shot and killed a burglar as he was leaving with the home owner’s television set in the middle of the night. The home owner fired from an upstairs window I believe and was totally within his rights and the laws of Texas in so doing. Police responded and found the turd dead as a sack of hammers and were amazed when the recently dispatched predator’s girlfriend arrived on scene and became immediately and hysterically distraught and went into the accompanying hysterics……. She was summarily arrested on the scene by the officers because she told them…SHE WAS THERE TO PICK HIM UP AFTER THE BURGLARY!!

These things are planned and as Forrest said “stupid is as stupid does”. Your instructor