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How much spare ammo is enough to have on you for your "emergency life saving tool"?

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  • Sasquatch

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    I carry enough shit with me - I don't need to add a specific less-lethal weapon. 32 years this year as a student of martial arts - if I need an impact weapon, I'm it. My brain is my #1 weapon, #2 are my eyes, #3 my ears, and #4 my mouth. Those four things have saved me from a lot of potentially bad situations before.

    I carry a small fixed blade knife for if things go really bad. I carry a folding knife because I use it almost daily, opening shit, cutting line, or scraping crap out from under my finger nails. I carry a flashlight that's used multiple times a day. I carry my gun because bad people do bad things and I've needed a gun before and know I don't want to find myself in a similar situation without it. I carry a spare magazine because the most common malfunctions with magazine fed pistols are magazine related, and to a lesser point yeah, if I have to face down zombies, I don't want to do it with *just* the 16 rounds in the gun. Gun has a light on it because if I need the gun at night, I'm going to 1.) use the light to ID potential threats and 2.) try to disorient or temporarily blind a potential attacker and I need my off hand for something besides holding a flashlight.

    I'm not carrying medical shit. I have thought about it - and I carry a first aid kit in the car. Yeah, I get it - if I get into a fight and we go to guns or knives, there's a damn good chance I'm getting slit or shot but I'm just not ready to make the jump to carrying a trauma kit everywhere I go. I'd rather carry a bottle of water everywhere, I'll certainly use that waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more often than anything else I could carry, and it gets lighter as you use it.
     

    DougC

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    For those who do carry such a 'tool' these comments by Massad Ayoob, gun guru, author, instructor and all-around good guy' provides some food for thought. While I have heard/read how few rounds are fired in a civilian gun fight having a spare mag in case of malfunction and/or drop by accident seems like a good idea.

    Years ago I took a basic pistol training course with Massad and was very impressed with his depth and breath of knowledge related to firearms.
    And here an online video rebuttal from the Active Protection Network on Massad Ayoob's comments about carrying a spare reload. Love it when the 'expert' start slinging hot views/opinions. Next up Massad.

    Back in the last century when I started carrying concealed the guns had a limited round capacity. So I got in the habit of having a reload and didn't change when higher capacity guns became available. Easy enough to carry that extra mag.

     

    seeker_two

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    That place east of Waco....
    And here an online video rebuttal from the Active Protection Network on Massad Ayoob's comments about carrying a spare reload. Love it when the 'expert' start slinging hot views/opinions. Next up Massad.



    Calling that guy an "expert" compared to Ayoob is like calling Evan Hafer an "expert" in public relations. Mas has socks that are older and more experienced than Lil' Johnny.....
     

    TAZ

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    I’d much rather have a gun with 100 round drum on me than 12 spare mags, but that just isn’t realistic.

    Even when I carried a higher capacity gun, I carried a spare mag. To me it was a simply better to have and not need than to need and not have. I read plenty of stories, seen plenty of video of officers and citizens shooting their guns dry at the primary threat. If another threat shows itself or the primary isn’t done a reload would be needed to stay in the fight. Yes, training and all that jazz comes into play, but when the fecal matter hits the impeller folks do stuff they might not have trained. I’ve yet to read a single story about someone who was involved in a gunfight and felt bad they had a spare mag they didn’t have to use.

    With that said, Ive also gone with no spare if there was just no place to store one.

    IMO, there is nothing written in stone. Aside from maybe to just have a gun. Beyond that it’s sets of compromises based on the situation.

    Carry the biggest capacity gun you can get away with. Carry as much ammo for that gun as you can get away with.


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    bigtex10mm

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    My minimum is two spares along with the one in the gun.
    Wilson Carry.jpg
     

    BiggyCat

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    Until you have a room of your house dedicated to ammo storage, it's not enough. For carry, 2 magazines holstered and one in the gun.
     

    DougC

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    From the Tessah Booth channel offers her point of view why she doesn't carry a spare mag anymore. She makes some valid points on the cost/benefit/options to have the spare mag vs some other every day carry item like flashlight, OC spray and/or tourniquet. If spare mag is not for you what if anything would you carry to go along with your 'emergency self-defense rescue tool'?

     

    vmax

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    I don’t care who your alleged expert is and what they are trying to sell you.

    There is no reason under the Sun for not carrying at least one spare magazine or reload.

    No, not one.
    I personally don't leave the house without 100 rounds for every gun I have on me.

    It just carry it in military ammo can and wear the guns

    I have a spare can with medical supplies..tourniquet, blow out kit and a field IV

    Then a backpack with 3 days rations and my HAM radio

    It's a pain but I don't feel right about anything less.
     

    WAA

    Sir, I decline to answer, respectfully.
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    I personally don't leave the house without 100 rounds for every gun I have on me.

    It just carry it in military ammo can and wear the guns

    I have a spare can with medical supplies..tourniquet, blow out kit and a field IV

    Then a backpack with 3 days rations and my HAM radio

    It's a pain but I don't feel right about anything less.
    Nicely trolled.
     

    Sasquatch

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    From the Tessah Booth channel offers her point of view why she doesn't carry a spare mag anymore. She makes some valid points on the cost/benefit/options to have the spare mag vs some other every day carry item like flashlight, OC spray and/or tourniquet. If spare mag is not for you what if anything would you carry to go along with your 'emergency self-defense rescue tool'?



    Yeah, homeboy whom she's basing her decision off of is a dumbass. His expertise comes from watching YouTube videos of assaults, ignoring the cases where reloads actually were necessary.

    If you want to play the raw stats game - no one *needs* to carry a gun. Your chances of being targetted for violence and using a gun to defend yourself are already statistically low. Going down that same logical fallacy path - you don't need a semi-automatic if you DO carry a gun, because most gun fights are less than six rounds before they conclude. A J-Frame revolver would be plenty there, so there's no need for semi-automatics, "high capcity" magazines, etc. And since most gun fights are between contact distance and about fifteen feet - you don't even need sights on your gun as you could generally aim with body index, or press the gun into the bad guy and pull the trigger.

    You can apply the same logic to seat belts - how likely are you at any given time to *actually* be in a wreck that requires being secured?

    Fire extinguishers - how likely really is your car or your house to burn down? You don't need a big fire extinguisher. Or an ABC extinguisher - just one for electrical and wood, right? A small 2lb extinguisher should be plenty for most fires.

    If you play the stats game you could win - and most likely you will - until you don't.

    You wind up in a situation like Eli Dicken was - you need more than six rounds, and you need to be able to engage a target beyond fifteen or twenty feet. I'm sure he was glad to have a semi auto with an alright 5 lb trigger, versus a 12lb double action trigger, and 11 rounds in his gun that day (or 15 - I have not seen definitive evidence if he was shooting a Glock 43X or a Glock 19 that day)

    There are other accounts - plenty if you read through the old American Handgunner, Combat Handguns, or Guns magazine "It happened to me" sections. I remember one where a guy who was a competitive shooter wound up jumping in to save a police officer whom a badguy was attempting to murder - dude wound up reloading his 15-shot Glock 10mm during that engagement.

    If you're going to carry for the already low-likelihood of being violently assaulted, you may as well prepare for a really, really bad scenario instead of just really bad - a spare magazine doesn't add THAT much extra weight to your regimen, and magazines are easier to hide than guns. Murphy loves to show up when shit breaks bad, and with the most common semi auto malfunctions being magazine related, why wouldn't you have what you need to instantly fix the issue and get back into the fight?

    I realize I'm bigger than most people out there - my user name was a nickname given to me for a reason - but really, a full size magazine doesn't weigh much. You don't need a 33 round "Stendo" but at least carry a spare regular magazine for whatever gun you're toting, or a speed loader for reloading your low capacity wheelie. Or don't. Odds are in your favor. You could probably get by your whole like with a Beretta Jetfire in .22 short riding in your back pocket, and never even need to take it out let alone use it. But then again - you might.
     

    Steve In Texas

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    I do not carry a firearm for a normal day.

    I carry for the day where that goes completely to hell.

    I would prefer to face that day with more than sufficient firepower, technology, gear, experience, experienced allies, plans, and back ups as possible.

    I settle for a spare magazine.
     

    Sasquatch

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    grew up in kcmo.. And survived - a miracle.

    Having spent some time in KCMO - you are indeed lucky!

    If it weren't for the fact that KC gets both stupid hot & humid summers, and butt-ass-fucking cold winters, I was seriously tempted to move there and apply for the KCMO PD. My best friend when I was young lived in KC, I spent a month with her & her fiancee' there leading up to their wedding. Her FIL was retired KCMO PD and kept trying to get me to apply there, as he learned I wanted to become a cop. He was ready to give me a letter of recommendation for the application. Having spent the hottest month of the year there, and rarely going out during daylight hours because of the heat - I wasn't hot on the notion. Also - everywhere we went there were either armed security, or off-duty cops working side jobs. The first time I'd ever been to a shopping mall with armed security monkies. The grocery stores had armed security or off duty cops at all the doors.

    My friend's FIL told me what neighborhoods to avoid when exploring the city. It was an interesting, crazy trip. I did come to love Perkins restuarants during my stay there, and we had a lot of fun despite the humid, hot weather and crazy citizenry.
     
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