Interesting thing about social media -- like real face-to-face coffee shop and gun shop conversations, they often start with “what do you think about this” and quickly turn into “well, you’re wrong.”
I stumbled into one of those conversations over the weekend. It started from an assumption, you carry a gun for self-protection, and went to “how much ammo” – does the gun carry and how much do you carry.
It started out with “I think this” and “I think that,” but no one really got around to examining how we reach those decisions. Understand that a uniformed copper with, say, a Glock 17 or a full-size SIG P320 or M&P M2.0, has the gun with a pair of spare magazines. You’re looking at, what, 52 total rounds of ammo?
That’s before you get to a small, concealed second gun, but let’s stick to the basic loadout.
I went to work July, 1977, at a small town police department. I had to provide the gun, but they provided gunleather, a “River” style holster and double-dump box. Doing the math, that’s six rounds in the gun and six in each of the dump boxes for a total of 18 rounds. In uniform, on the street, answering calls.
Well, could have answered calls. I was hired under a federal jobs program to cover a walking beat downtown over nights. So I was walking the streets, shaking doors looking for burglars and running teenagers off of the downtown lots -- with 18 rounds of 38 Special on board. Having a pair of young kids at home, there was no money for a backup gun but I did have a city nightstick.
How times have changed.
In those bad old days, no one – but no one – had a permit to carry and there was no thought of permit-free legal carry. Not saying that no one went heeled, but, if they did so, it was unsanctioned by society.
Safer? No, not that I could tell. We were losing lots of cops from the late 1960s and into the 1970s before the rates of on-duty death began to moderate. But does more ammo make you safer?
When I left uniform service in the early part of this century, I was wearing a S&W 4506-1. That was a 25-round loadout, superior in number to the 18 rounds from the wheelgun but far short of the standard pile of ammo now toted about. In the detective unit, I had some latitude in sidearms and selected the Glock 19. I’d been using one to teach with for a few years.
The gun was light, held lots of ammo and it was reliable. I strayed from the backup revolver, selecting a Glock 26 in a Lou Alessi Ankle Holster. It would feed from the pair of spare 15-round magazines on my belt and made a good backup to the Compact Glock.
That it was a good selection has been confirmed by the market: many other guns now mimic the size and capacity of the G19, including the new Ruger Security-9, the compact SIG P320, the S&W M&P9 M2.0 Compact and the CZ P10C, among others.
Did the increase in ammo load improve my life? I didn’t need any of it as it turns out. For that, I’ll be forever grateful.
I carry less ammo these days but I’m not out looking for trouble either. I now look to avoid trouble and “the near occasion of” trouble.
What’s the ideal loadout? Not sure I know. Pat Rogers, world class trainer, was known to say “Mission drives the gear train.” That says it better than I can.
Carry just enough to bring you home at the end of the day.
- - Rich Grassi