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1911: The classic
homeland security pistol

By Massad Ayoob


If you’ve read American firearms history at all, you know the lore of the .45 automatic. How during the Philippine insurrection, the newly issued .38 revolver failed miserably against psyched-up Moro warriors, and ancient .45 revolvers were dragged out of mothballs and re-issued to embattled American troops in the Pacific. How this led to the Thompson/LaGarde study of handgun ammunition effectiveness in 1907 that indicated nothing of less than .45 caliber should be issued as a sidearm to US troops. And how John Browning’s brilliant design of a semiautomatic pistol in that caliber, as manufactured by Colt, was subsequently adopted as “Pistol, US, calibre .45, Model of 1911.”

With modern techniques, even the lightest, hardest kicking 1911 .45s are controllable. Here Ayoob fires the tiny Springfield Micro Compact. Spent .45 case is in mid-air above gun, but recoil has barely lifted the muzzle from the centerline of the target.
With modern techniques, even the lightest, hardest kicking 1911 .45s are controllable. Here Ayoob fires the tiny Springfield Micro Compact. Spent .45 case is in mid-air above gun, but recoil has barely lifted the muzzle from the centerline of the target.

In the trenches of WWI, for the first and the last time in American military history, it was determined that every single one of America’s troops needed to carry a .45 caliber handgun at the front. Though the “.45 automatic” was the first choice, the industry couldn’t make enough of them and both Colt and Smith & Wesson pressed their revolver lines into production for the classic Model 1917 double action revolvers. These used ingenious half-moon clips developed by S&W to hold three of the “rimless” .45 auto cartridges together for fast reloading of these “revolvers using autoloader ammo.” Not until the last quarter of the 20th century would shooters figure out that a full moon clip could hold six such cartridges at once. This allowed the fastest possible revolver reload…right about the time all the cops decided they wanted semiautomatic pistols, which were faster still to reload.

Time marched on. In the early 1920s, a US military board convened to determine what had been learned in the Great War that could improve the design of the nation’s military small arms. It was determined that about half the soldiers thought the 1911 pistol had too long a trigger, too short a grip tang safety, and sights that were just about useless. Before 1930, this advice coalesced into the improved Model 1911A1. Its trigger was much shorter and easier to reach, and this was aided by new scalloping around the trigger guard area of the frame. Bigger sights that were easier to see were added. The hammer was reconfigured and the grip safety’s tang lengthened in hopes of preventing the pinch at the web of the hand that many doughboys had reported when the gun was cycling. The 1911A1 would remain the classic shape of this classic pistol for the remainder of the century.
“Legendary Manstopper”

The bolt-action 1903 Springfield and 1917 Enfield .30/06 battle rifles had proven themselves splendidly rugged and accurate when sniping at enemy soldiers across the battlefield. But, when the enemy was right there in the trenches with you, ready to spear you with the blood-stained bayonet of his Mauser, these long, heavy rifles that needed a four-step process to hand-cycle another cartridge into the firing chamber were not the optimum defensive tools. The 1911 pistol, on the other hand, proved to be in its element there. Eight quick flicks of the index finger unleashed eight heavy 230-grain bullets, almost half an inch in diameter and traveling some 830 feet per second. At close range, when a single .45 slug struck the enemy in the wishbone, he tended to be immediately rendered hors de combat. To hell with bayoneted rifles, said the doughboys; this Colt .45 automatic was the ticket to getting out of the trenches alive once the enemy hordes had flowed into those trenches with you.

A “snubby” with 3-inch barrel, the Springfield Armory Micro Compact 1911 .45 shot this impressive group in a police-style qualification.
A “snubby” with 3-inch barrel, the Springfield Armory Micro Compact 1911 .45 shot this impressive group in a police-style qualification.

Countless tales of up close and personal pistol fighting emerged from WWI. The bottom line was that when Americans shot Germans with Colt .45 automatics, the Germans tended to fall down and die. When Germans shot Americans with their 9mm Luger pistols, the Americans tended to become indignant and kill the German who shot them, and then walk to an aid station to either die a lingering death or recover completely. Thus was born the reputation of the .45 automatic as a “legendary manstopper,” and the long-standing American conviction that the 9mm automatic was an impotent wimp thing that would make your wife a widow if you trusted your life to it.

Then came WWII. The .45 automatic was the standard military weapon then as well. Used heavily in both theaters of the war, it was particularly valued in the Pacific, where Japanese sappers tended to infiltrate through the wires and be on top of the Yank soldier with knife in hand when the American woke up to deal with it. And the legend of the .45 as the “one shot, one kill” weapon was reinforced. It did not hurt that reputation that the average target in the Pacific was a rice-fed, half-starved biped who weighed about 130 pounds.

Then came Korea, and then Vietnam. Nothing happened to change the image of the .45 automatic as a deadly manstopper. In the mid-1980s, several trends converged upon the one firearm that had served the American military the longest. NATO was pushing the USA for complete compatibility in small arms ammo, and every other nation carried 9mm pistols. Except for target pistols for the pistol teams, the US government had not purchased new 1911s since before the Korean War, and the old guns were getting pretty clapped out. Finally, it is said, the Pentagon wanted cruise missiles in Italy and Italy wanted a lucrative US military contract in return. In any case, it was at that time that the United States armed services adopted the Italian Beretta Model 92F, caliber 9mm, as the official US service handgun that would be designated the M9 and would replace the 1911.

Fast forward to the present. When the War Against Terrorism went into the caves of Afghanistan, pistols became the weapons of choice for soldiers working on point in very close quarters. It became apparent that the 9mm with full metal jacket Geneva Convention ammo was as impotent as it was in WWI, with Al-Queda fanatics soaking up several rounds before they gave up the ghost. Those Yanks fortunate enough to have .45s—Army Delta Force, who purchase their own 1911s out of a stipend provided, and all the Special Operations Command elite who have access to the HK SOCOM pistol in that caliber—found that one or two full metal jacket .45 hardball rounds were all it took to drop a terrorist in his tracks. The call went out again: “We need .45s.”

For those who don’t like cocked and locked, ParaOrdnance offers their LDA series in double action only. This is one of their concealed-carry models.
For those who don’t like cocked and locked, ParaOrdnance offers their LDA series in double action only. This is one of their concealed-carry models.

What goes around comes around. Santayana was right. Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
Contemporary perspective

Back to the present: the United States in the time of the long-foretold terrorism. The time of Homeland Security.

It is simple common sense to tailor the tool to the predictable task. If we start getting what Israel got, suicide bombers and cowards who open fire in public on what they think are a herd of helpless victims, all you can expect to have with you to interdict the threat is a concealable pistol. It will have to deliver a powerful blow that will stop the recipient in his tracks, a factor we’ve already discussed, and it will have to deliver that shot unerringly in a close time frame, which is a 1911 design advantage we’ll discuss shortly.

With modern American ammunition, the 9mm is perfectly adequate. This means a 115-grain hollow point bullet in the 1300 foot second velocity range, or a 124 to 127-grain hollow point bullet in the 1250 feet per second range. The former is readily available to police as the Winchester “Illinois State Police Load,” the Remington equivalent that was long standard with the Secret Service, or the Federal 9BPLE round that was favored by the Border Patrol when that agency allowed the 9mm as an optional sidearm. The latter is available to police as the Winchester SXT Ranger +P+ 127-grain, or the CCI Gold Dot 124-grain +P+.

Training is the best way to master the .45. Here, 1911s jump on the indoor firing line of the ''Dark House'' at Firearms Academy of Seattle as master instructor Marty Hayes, left, observes.
Training is the best way to master the .45. Here, 1911s jump on the indoor firing line of the “Dark House” at Firearms Academy of Seattle as master instructor Marty Hayes, left, observes.

Sadly, most of this high performance ammo is sold only to police. Remington offers the public a 115-grain +P 9mm hollowpoint at 1250 fps. CCI will sell you the +P+ 124-grain Gold Dot 9mm they sell to police. Pro-Load will sell you their Tactical 115-grain hollow point 9mm at 1300 fps that actually out-performs most of the police loads. The problem is, in times of crisis the exact brand of ammo you want is often unavailable, and it’s not wise to buy a gun that only performs at its best with one specific type of ammunition.

The cheapest, most widely available 230-grain full metal jacket .45 hardball will still probably solve your anti-personnel needs. No ball round is ideal for self-defense, because it tends to overpenetrate excessively. A .45 ball round can go through the bad guy, through and through the poor sucker behind him, and lodge in the body of an unseen innocent bystander who is third in the row. Hollow point ammo, designed to open up and stay in the body of the intended target while at the same time dumping all its energy into that designated target, remains the ammo of choice.

The good news with the .45 Auto caliber is that the better hollow points will do exactly that: stay in the bad guy and not exit with enough power to kill a good guy behind him. We’re talking for the most part something between a 185-grain hollow point at 935 to 1150 feet per second, a 200-grain hollow point at somewhere between 900 and 1050 feet per second, or a 230-grain hollow point at a velocity range from 830 to 950 feet per second.

My police department issues .45 automatics. Black Hills makes our ammo at their factory on special contract, guaranteeing 850 to 880 feet per second velocity with a 230-grain Gold Dot bonded-jacket hollow point. Whether in gelatin or in flesh, the bullets expand impressively, stopping at an optimum penetration depth. The ammunition is accurate and feeds reliably.

Analogous loads are available as (in alphabetical order) CCI’s Gold Dot, Federal’s Hydra-Shok, PMC’s StarFire, Remington’s Golden Saber, and Winchester’s SXT series. Since these 230 grain “standard pressure” loads effectively duplicate the recoil and trajectory of inexpensive 230 grain full metal jacket training ammo, they shoot to the same point of aim/point of impact coordinates. This means that once you’ve put a couple of hundred hollow points through the gun and know it will feed, you can save a bunch of money by practicing with inexpensive “generic hardball” of the same bullet weight and velocity, and have totally relevant practice.
Specific 1911 advantages

The 1911 pistol is testimony to John Browning’s engineering genius, written in steel. It is slimmer and flatter than any of the more “modern” .45s. When you tuck it into your waistband, it doesn’t dig on the side toward you nor bulge on the side away. It’s grip-to-barrel angle is natural for most people, meaning that if you close your eyes and point your hand at the target, when you open your eyes you’ll see that your 1911 pistol is pretty much aligned to hit that target. If you buy into the “point-shooting” theory of handgun self-defense, a gun that points where you look is absolutely essential. If, like me, you believe that the gun should be visually aligned with its target, a gun that points “automatically” where you look gets you to line of sight quicker. It’s a win-win situation.

1911 .45s come in all shapes and sizes. This is one of the author’s favorites, the Colt CCO, with 4¼-inch barrel of the Colt Commander and the short grip frame of the Colt Officers.
1911 .45s come in all shapes and sizes. This is one of the author’s favorites, the Colt CCO, with a 4-1/4-inch barrel of the Colt Commander and the short grip frame of the Colt Officers.

The handgun is a defensive weapon, meaning that it is reactive rather than offensive. The great trainer of fighter pilots Col. John Boyd defined the OODA Loop: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. When you Observe danger and Orient yourself to the fact that only gunfire can save you, and then Decide to respond and Act out that response, you want a quick, reactive handgun. Since the 1911 is best carried fully loaded with a round in the chamber and “cocked and locked”—the hammer cocked on the live round, and the thumb safety “on safe”—you want to learn to wipe that safety lever into the “fire” position as you bring the gun up on target.

With a pre-cocked, single action trigger pull, the 1911 now puts only a short, easy trigger press between you and the necessary hit. Repeat as necessary: the same easy pull will follow for each subsequent shot.

One big advantage of cocked and locked carry is that it mandates the gun be “on safe.” If the wrong person gets the gun away from you, he has to figure out which of those little levers “turns on the gun.” This will buy you time to either rectify the situation up close and personal or run a considerable distance, either of which beats hell out of the bad guy holding a “point gun, pull trigger” weapon on you at contact distance.

In the hands of such seasoned, well-trained lawmen as the LAPD SWAT team, the 1911 .45 pistol has historically delivered an extremely high percentage of hits for the shots fired in life-threatening close combat. The pistol is simply easy to use well when in the grip of hand-shaking, gut-clenching “fight or flight response.” Browning built it to perform exactly that way. The design succeeded.

For those who like everything about the 1911 design except the cocked and locked part, ParaOrdnance makes their excellent LDA .45 in sizes small, medium, and large. The hammer rests in the down position, and a double action only trigger requires a long but light and silky smooth trigger pull for each shot.
Selecting the 1911

There are more good brands of 1911 pistol than ever. Being a pessimist, and a police supervisor, I like guns that are SNAFU-proof and drop-safe. That means pistols with a design that physically prevents the gun from discharging if it is dropped to the ground or struck sharply while in the officer’s holster.

Good ergonomics in action. Short 1911A1 trigger of Springfield Armory Micro Compact allows deep finger placement for good leverage.
Good ergonomics in action. Short 1911A1 trigger of Springfield Armory Micro Compact allows deep finger placement for good leverage.

This brings you, basically, to four commercially available 1911 handguns. There is the Colt Series ‘80, which uses a trigger-activated firing pin block. There is the Para-Ordnance series of pistols made in Canada, which licenses the exact same design from Colt. There is the Kimber II series, which uses the grip safety activated Swartz principle from the 1930s as reworked by modern handgun design genius Nehemiah Sirkis. Finally, there are Springfield Armory 1911 pistols as produced circa 2001 and later which use a combination of a lightweight titanium firing pin and an extra-strong firing pin spring to make unintended “inertia discharge” physically impossible.

Within these four brands, you can get everything from literally pocket-sized subcompact .45 1911s that hold six rounds in the magazine and a seventh in the chamber, to the “wide-body” Para-Ordnance P14, which with “grandfathered pre-ban” magazines can hold a total of 14 .45 ACP rounds.
The 1911 in the backwoods

Backwoods folk have been using the 1911 pistol to good advantage since WWI, when that quintessential backwoodsman Alvin York fired six or seven shots from his Colt .45 auto and killed as many charging enemy infantrymen. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for that feat.

Generations of worn-out guns made of GI parts just thrown together, coupled with training that was deemed “good enough for Government work,” has given the 1911 pistol a reputation for poor accuracy. By and large, that reputation is not deserved. Your better 1911s, as manufactured today, will stay in 2½ inches or better at 25 yards with ammunition of top quality.

With frame rail for InSight M3 light, Springfield Armory TRP Operator is ideal for home defense. This is one of the most highly evolved of today’s 1911s.
With frame rail for InSight M3 light, Springfield Armory TRP Operator is ideal for home defense. This is one of the most highly evolved of today’s 1911s.

I have two custom Colt 1911A1 .45 pistols, one crafted by Mark Morris and the other by Dave Lauck, that will each put 5 shots in an inch or better at 25 yards when loaded with Federal Match hardball or Federal 230-grain Hydra-Shok. Nor do you need the attentions of a custom pistolsmith to achieve that kind of accuracy. My Springfield Operator TRP (Tactical Response Pistol) cut a one-inch group at 25 yards out of its factory box with 5 rounds of Winchester 185-grain Mid-Range Match ammunition. My Kimber Custom stainless (the least expensive pistol that company makes) put 5 rounds of Winchester Ranger 230-grain +P police ammunition into an inch and a quarter at the same distance. Both of my Colt CCO pistols will do about 2 inches at 25 yards with the ammo they like best. CCO stands for “Concealed Carry Officers” model and comprises the short 4¼-inch barrel/slide assembly of the Commander pistol on the even shorter frame of the little Officers ACP. Finally, I’ve had several Para-Ordnance pistols that would hit the one-inch mark for a 5 shot group from 25 paces.

When I first visited hunting ranches in Texas, I had expected to see the hands and the guides carrying Colt Peacemakers and Magnum revolvers. Not hardly; almost every man-jack among these working cowboys wore a 1911 .45 auto tucked in the waistband of their jeans or on the front seat of the pickup truck beside them.

The woodsman has to consider the long range shot. An accurate 1911 .45 can deliver the goods here; the secret is to know how much that slow, heavy bullet drops as the range extends. As one observer put it, “The standard 230-grain .45 slug has the trajectory of a basketball.” Save yourself some computation and do what I do. In the woods as opposed to on the street, I load my .45 auto with Remington’s deliciously accurate 185-grain +P .45 jacketed hollow point. I discovered long ago that if my .45 was sighted in spot on at 25 yards with standard 230-grain ammo, it would put the shot where the sights were at 75 to 100 yards. The 1140 foot-second muzzle velocity of that 185-grain Remington .45 +P really flattens the trajectory.

Because of its short trigger pull and cocked n’ locked condition of readiness, the 1911 .45 auto is better suited to the skilled and dedicated practitioner than to the amateur. That said, nearly a century of history has made the 1911 .45 automatic the quintessential “homeland security” pistol, from the rural game fields to house to house combat, and nothing is going to change that.

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In time of war
The Israeli answer to terrorism

By Massad Ayoob


When war seems imminent, citizens think about protecting themselves. The war of the moment involves a declared enemy that has already used unconventional tactics to murder some three thousand innocent civilians within these borders. Closer to their own turf, they have a long and well-documented history of using terror tactics—mass shootings and suicide bombings—directed against innocent and unarmed women, children, and men rather than military targets.

We have seen the previews in Israel and Pakistan. We have seen them in captured Al-Qaeda training tapes. In one such tape, a carload of guerrillas is pulled over on what appears to be a four-lane highway. As a police officer approaches, the trunk lid pops open and he is sprayed with automatic weapons fire. One guerrilla walks up to the downed policeman’s body and executes him with a head shot, then gets in the car and drives away with the rest of his band.

With current terrorism alerts, readiness for many will include being constantly armed, if only with a small handgun like this light S&W Titanium .38.
With current terrorism alerts, readiness for many will include being constantly armed, if only with a small handgun like this light S&W Titanium .38.

There are not a whole lot of four-lane highways in Afghanistan. It is clear that this is training for atrocities committed within the United States.

Early in the wake of September 11, 2001, the Israeli intelligence service Debka warned that Osama bin Laden had probably acquired at least four small, “dirty” nuclear devices, known as “suitcase nukes,” from sources connected to the Russian Mafia. In a recent book, a researcher suggested that the Al-Qaeda arsenal of these devices might number more than 30. Given the history of other contraband brought into North America in ship containers and by other smuggling routes, there is ample reason to believe that nuclear bombs are already in place here, waiting to be triggered by the fanatics who control them.

The problem is clear. It’s time to look at solutions.
When homeland security hits home

Since 9/11, a popular bumper sticker has circulated among gun owners. It reads, “The Second Amendment Is Homeland Security.” This is more than just empty rhetoric.

In the last two years especially, street terrorist attacks in Israel have repeatedly been shortstopped by armed Israeli citizens. A terrorist opens fire at a crowded bus stop; a passing Israeli motorist draws his 9mm pistol and cuts him down. A late-arriving security man with an M-16 hoses the twitching terrorist just to make sure.

The 1911 .45 automatic remains the quintessential American combat handgun. This one is the excellent, affordable Kimber Custom II.
The 1911 .45 automatic remains the quintessential American combat handgun. This one is the excellent, affordable Kimber Custom II.

Another terrorist attempts to trigger an explosive device in a public place. An Israeli housewife draws her pistol and shoots him dead before he can detonate the bomb. The would-be martyr dies alone.

A third terrorist opens fire with an automatic weapon in an Israeli school. What could have been a mass murder on the scale of Columbine or greater is limited to a very short casualty list when Israeli parents and grandparents, who have provided volunteer armed security after receiving state training, open fire and kill him with their concealed pistols.

Note that in each of these episodes, it was an armed citizen who stopped the terror. Not a soldier. Not a security guard. Not a police officer. Just as wolves do not try to seize a lamb under the nose of the sheepdog, terrorists do not strike where armed protectors are known to be present. They scout the turf and select their victims more carefully than that.

Israel began the program of armed citizen guards in the schools after the Maalot massacre in the 1970s, when a large number of children were slain in a terrorist incident. The volunteer parents work in plain clothes, armed with concealed semi-automatic pistols, and are trained by Israel’s home guard. It is significant that in the more than a quarter century between Maalot and the incident mentioned above when the citizen guards shot down the terrorist in the school in 2002, not a single child was murdered in an Israeli school!

The reason is that Israel wisely publicized the fact that the civilian volunteer guards, indistinguishable from the regular teaching and administrative staff, would be in place. It served as a tremendously effective deterrent. No Moslem fanatic who wants to go to Allah as a successful warrior who has slain many infidels visualizes himself making the trip after having been shot down by some geriatric with a gun before completing his mission. Any head trip as arrogant as that of a self-styled martyr cannot tolerate the thought of an ignominious death at the hands of an ordinary victim. It would be like a wolf picturing its own throat being torn out by a sheep: simply unthinkable, and therefore a natural deterrent.

More cops are carrying guns off duty than ever with current terrorism alerts. Here, author has been practicing 'surgical' brain shots with a Kimber .45.
More cops are carrying guns off duty than ever with current terrorism alerts. Here, author has been practicing “surgical” brain shots with a Kimber .45.

Of course, the politically correct hand-wringers want nothing to do with this. Sadly, being helpless themselves, sheep tend to instinctively fear anything with canine teeth. Many of them cannot distinguish between the wolf and the sheepdog, and thus fear them both equally. We have seen this phenomenon in the knee-jerk reaction against arming pilots, for example, in the wake of 9/11. Never mind that it has worked remarkably well for the commercial air fleets of Israel and Russia in preventing hijackings. We have seen it in the adamant refusal of many to even think about armed protectors inside schools. Never mind that from Peru to the Philippines, as well as in Israel, institutional arming of school personnel or selected volunteers with appropriate training has put an end to murderous armed attacks on school grounds.

America’s approach to its own fledgling Homeland Security program has been marked by some counterproductive decisions. I write this in Missouri, a couple of days after teaching a class to local police. I spent much of yesterday on the range, shooting with SWAT cops from the area.

Until 9/11, these officers had frequently trained at the Army’s Fort Leonard Wood. They were grateful for the opportunity, and considered it some of the best Special Weapons and Tactics training they had ever received. “Your tax dollars in action” in a very effective way.

Alas, shortly after September 11, these services to local police were cut off and military facilities were dedicated strictly to training the military. Certainly, when America’s response to Al-Qaeda ramped up, it was necessary to take maximum advantage of extant facilities for training designated personnel. At the same time, however, are not the domestic police the first line against terrorism in a homeland security program? It was law enforcement, not military, who captured those Al-Qaeda operatives who were arrested in the United States and are now in custody. It was an Oklahoma state trooper, not SEAL Team Six or Delta Force, who captured the most infamous of home-grown terrorists, Timothy McVeigh, after the bombing of the Federal building in Oklahoma City.

Shutting off US Government training to the cops, the front-line troops in the Homeland Security effort, is not a good thing. It also gives you an idea where Federal support for self-reliant American citizens stands on the current list of official priorities.
“By their nature”: tools for the task

For decades, Israeli citizens in what Yanks would call “tough neighborhoods”—communes where there had been heavy terrorist activity—were allowed to check out Government-owned Uzi submachineguns. Are we going to see that in the United States? Not bloody likely. But, don’t worry about it. You probably aren’t going to need an Uzi.

In use by counter-terrorist groups world wide, the Glock 17 holds 18 rounds of 9mm in pre-ban magazines. Author strongly recommends high speed hollow point ammo if 9mm is chosen.
In use by counter-terrorist groups world wide, the Glock 17 holds 18 rounds of 9mm in pre-ban magazines. Author strongly recommends high speed hollow point ammo if 9mm is chosen.

The overwhelming majority of terrorist incidents in Israel that have been shortstopped by armed citizens have involved one particular type of defensive firearm: the 9mm semiautomatic pistol, usually with a high capacity magazine design. By its nature, the handgun is portable. It can always be with you when danger threatens without warning, and remember, by their nature terrorists strike without warning at times and in places where they know the attack will not be expected. By its nature, the handgun is concealable and invisible until deployed. Remember that by their nature, terrorists scope out their battleground before they initiate violence there, and make a point of avoiding attack sites that are conspicuously well-defended. It’s that “wolf and sheepdog” thing again.

Fortunately, the last 15 years have seen a dramatic increase in the number of jurisdictions in which law-abiding private citizens in the United States can obtain a permit to carry a loaded and concealed handgun in public. The trend continues, with Missouri and some other states actively fielding legislation this year that would grant them the privilege. Given the profile of the threat, the timing is excellent.

A defensive firearm is a special purpose tool, and the selection of the tool must always be tailored to the task. The terrorists under discussion here seek target rich environments. Crowded schools. Crowded marketplaces. Crowded restaurants and nightclubs. This means that the private citizen engaging one in defense of himself and others will have a very narrow “firing corridor” through which the rescuing gunfire will have to be delivered without harming any of the many innocent bystanders who will predictably be at the scene.

Anyone carrying a firearm that might remotely be used for this purpose should spend plenty of time training in what is often called “surgical” shooting. The sights on the pistol should be true, that is, the gun should be perfectly sighted in to deliver the bullet’s point of impact exactly to the handgun’s point of aim.

We are talking about hitting very small body parts to instantly shut off the lethal danger which the target organism poses to a large group of innocent humans. A shot to the chest may not be enough. A man shot through the lung can stay up and running for a considerable period of time. If the brain is fully oxygenated, even a man whose cardiac function has been completely shut off by a bullet through the heart (and not every gunshot wound of the heart will shut that organ down completely) can continue purposeful, violent activity for as much as 14 or 15 seconds.

'Old-fashioned' service revolvers have the match-grade accuracy for surgical rescue shooting in capable hands. This is S&W’s classic Combat Masterpiece .38 Special, with Remington +P 125 grain hollow points in a Safariland speedloader.
“Old-fashioned” service revolvers have the match-grade accuracy for surgical rescue shooting in capable hands. This is S&W’s classic Combat Masterpiece .38 Special, with Remington +P 125 grain hollow points in a Safariland speedloader.

A shot to the upper central nervous system is more certain to stop violent activity immediately, but is also much more difficult to deliver. The spinal cord is only about as thick as its owner’s little finger, and is encased in a serpentine column of bone. Even a shot to the brain is not 100% guaranteed to instantly shut off the action. The only certain “instant one shot stop” is a hit to the stem area of the brain, which destroys the medulla oblongata or pons. This is in line with the ears when aimed at from the side, and with the base of the skull when the shot must be fired from behind. The external anatomic landmark for a frontal shot will vary depending upon the position of the head.

If the head is erect in the normal posture, the deep brain target will lie directly behind the nose. If the head is forward in an aggressive posture, the level of the eye sockets will be in line with the primal brain target that must be hit. If the head is thrown back as in a triumphant shout, aiming through the mouth will guide the bullet to the brain stem.

The 9mm pistol has become virtually standard among civilians in Israel. However, that does not make it the best choice. Anecdotal reports of shootings of terrorists there by citizens and by police and soldiers (who have also standardized on the 9mm handgun) frequently show the bad guy to take many hits before he goes down. This is why the high capacity gun has become the 9mm of choice there. The most common brands are the old classic Browning, the Beretta, the Glock, and the Jericho (an Israeli-made clone of the Czech CZ75 design). One cannot help but notice a corollary fact: the high performance hollow point bullets that brought the 9mm Luger cartridge up off its knees and made it an acceptable fighting round are thin on the ground in Israel. Many citizens and police are likely to carry military style full metal jacket (“ball”) ammunition. This stuff tends to just punch through the body, making little dimpled holes like ice-pick wounds and endangering those behind the target with exiting bullets.

Recent events in Afghanistan have shown the relative impotence of 9mm ball compared to the same style of .45 caliber ammunition that has been in historical evidence since before WWI. GIs in Afghanistan report that Al-Qaeda fighters are absorbing multiple 9mm ball rounds from the issue Berettas before going down, but tend to drop to one or two solid hits with .45 ball fired from the old 1911 style guns still in use by Delta Force.

The medium-caliber handgun cartridge such as the 9mm (.355” bullet diameter) or the .38 Special (.357” bullet diameter) requires an expanding bullet to best do its job of stopping human assault, while the .45 (.452” bullet diameter) has a long history of shutting off attacks with ball type ammo. Take a quick look at three US shootouts reported in the Armed Citizen column of the National Rifle Association’s new magazine, Women’s Outlook.

Case One: Finding a home invader in the bedroom of his 18-month-old son, Ronald Dixon “pulled a 9mm handgun out of his closet and confronted the stranger in the child’s room. When the interloper advanced on him, Dixon fired his gun, hitting the man twice. The intruder, later identified by police as Ivan Thompson, then fell down the stairs and ran out of the house, but collapsed outside. According to police, Thompson has a record of 19 arrests, mostly for burglary. He was critically wounded in the chest and groin.” (New York Daily News, 12/15/02.)

Case Two: US Marine Corps Sgt. James Lowery was at the drive-in window of a McDonalds in Gardendale, Alabama, while home on leave. “That’s when a man with a .38-cal. handgun ordered him out of his customized Chevy suburban. Lowery complied and got out of his SUV, but the man then shot the Marine in the face. Lowery reached back into his vehicle, drew a .45-cal. pistol and shot his assailant several times. The robber, Thaddeus Antone, was pronounced dead at the scene. Lowery was listed in fair condition at a local hospital.” (Birmingham News, 12/19/02.)

Case Three: Medgar Flowers was home alone with his wife when two armed home invaders entered shooting. Flowers struggled with one of them and finally the homeowner got close enough to the coffee table where he kept his own 9mm automatic. “Flowers was able to retrieve his gun and fired several times at the intruder. ‘I didn’t even know if I had hit him,’ he said. ‘There was no blood, and he never fell. It was like I hadn’t shot him.’ The struggle ended when Flowers’ tormentor stumbled out of the house and died a short time later. The second gunman was not found.” (Baton Rouge Morning Advocate, 01/04/03.)

In every caliber, author recommends hollow point bullets for safety to bystanders.
In every caliber, author recommends hollow point bullets for safety to bystanders.

Note that the Marine’s .45 decisively ended the encounter in his favor. Note that the man shot in the face with a .38 responded by killing the man who shot him, and that two criminals shot with 9mms were able to perform considerable physical activity before collapsing of their wounds. Cowardly predators surprised at being shot in self-defense, they chose flight instead of fight. A committed, fanatical terrorist would be more likely to keep fighting and shoot innocent victims or trigger an explosive device before collapsing.

In a scenario where terrorism has struck the United States hard and ammunition is no longer readily available in stores, inexpensive “ball” ammunition, stocked in quantity for customers who practice with it extensively, will be the last to disappear from the shelves. Ball ammo in a .45 will probably get the job done; ball ammo in a .38 or 9mm often will not.

In any case, all such handguns should be loaded with expanding-bullet hollowpoint ammunition that is designed to stay in the body of the offender and not exit to strike an innocent bystander hidden from view behind him. While exotic high speed, low bullet weight, frangible projectiles can be had, they are too expensive to practice with, they often do not hit to point of aim, and quality control and accuracy are iffy with some brands.

Even a small .38 Special revolver is better than nothing when lethal danger threatens. Snub-nosed revolvers are harder to shoot than larger guns. With a full size service revolver, surgical accuracy is absolutely possible in trained and confident hands. With a small frame snub-nose, the shooter will often have to get closer to make an accurate precision shot. However, in some of our more tropical climates, it’s carry a very small gun or carry nothing at all.
Bottom line

Our government has sent us a very clear message: Be Prepared. There is every reason to believe that more terrorist activity will take place in the American homeland. No, a pistol is no defense against a nuclear device that detonates downtown. But looking to the Israeli model tells us that the same monsters they have fought will be fighting us the same way.

Santayana was right. “Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.”