This is about a gun store owner in Florida who defended himself with a .25 ACP Beretta. He posted the story himself after getting home from the hospital, because he didn't escape unscathed. It started when a prospective customer failed the NICS. This person, who the proprietor later said he probably wouldn't have sold to anyway because he didn't like the looks of him, or something like that, went outside and returned with a sword, which he used to attack the shop owner.
It's a long post, and I won't quote it all here, but here's a taste to convince you to go read the whole thing:
To give you an idea how much the mind goes during something like this-- I passed up my Beretta 92 lying on my reloading bench all ready to go, with one up the pipe. I passed up an AK all loaded up by the door. I didn't have time to get to my 870 in the 'ready rack' ( yeah, right) all ready to go. Couldn't make it to my AR all ready to go. There were a lot of things around the store that I couldn't just place my hands upon.Later, more (and more accurate) details came out as the police investigation went on. (I didn't go so far as to hunt down all of these posts, but they were all in October 2000 and later). One bullet missed and hit the door frame. Two bullets hit the attacker's skull and didn't penetrate sufficiently to stop him. The fourth bullet went in through his eye socket. The last bullet hit his hand because he had covered his eye with it in reflex due to bullet #4. The one bullet that went through his eye socket stopped the attack, and ultimately killed him.
Anyway, just as I arrived at the desk, I realized that the damn piece wasn't in the drawer, and I better change the plan-- again. I turned to face the attaker, and was greeted with the most serious of the blade thrusts, as it went into my lower left abdomen, and grabbed one of the intestines. In a fit of panic/stupidity/desperation/whatever, I grabbed the blade with my left hand, and kept him from running me all the way through. It was at this moment I finally remembered my Beretta in my right pocket.
This was a topic of heavy discussion for a long time on that newsgroup.
What lessons can be learned from it? Different people took away different lessons. Many said that if he had had a pocket gun bigger than a .25 it would have stopped the attacker faster. But that wasn't the lesson I learned.
The lesson I learned was this: No matter what you choose to carry, always--in addition--carry something small enough and light enough to go in your pocket. Something that goes there so easily and naturally that you have it with you every time you get dressed. Something that goes in there as automatically as your car keys (or whatever else you happen to carry habitually in your pockets). Make it as potent a caliber as possible, but if it's so big that it feels inconvenient to carry it that way, it's too big.
Which is why I sometimes halfway regret using my P-32 as trading fodder, and I plan on getting another pocket Kel-Tec before too much longer.
UPDATE: Came across a forgotten bookmark today, while looking for something else: mouseguns.com. Lots of information and comparisons there.
