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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022

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I don't think I did a good enough job of explaining exactly why I think a .22 would be effective enough. Even though small caliber, low velocity firearms look puny compared to their bigger brothers, they're still powerful enough that the consequences of getting shot with one at close range probably, in 99% of cases, outweigh the benefits of whatever objective the attacker is trying to achieve, and if they don't, it's hard to conceive of a situation in which the attacker would be deterred by a larger caliber. In other words, I don't think there would be many situations where an attacker would say to himself "He's armed, but it's only a .22 so I'll continue". This is much different than a situation where the attacker knows it's an unloaded gun or a pellet gun or some other sham. That's why I'd hesitate to categorize it as "fake deterrence", since the deterrence factor is very real, just not quite as high as it theoretically could be. When I hear justifications from gun advocates for more powerful weapons it's usually along the lines of that a .22 wouldn't have the stopping power of a .45, or a revolver wouldn't provide enough shots or the ease of reloading necessary to involve a shootout involving multiple assailants, or some other rare situation. In most random attacks, the deterrence doesn't come so much from fear of the weapon physically being capable of stopping the person but the knowledge that even in the second-best case scenario, where the victim successfully lands one shot to a non-critical part of the body, it's going to result in a hospital visit and a chat with a detective. Out of curiosity, I checked the actual information available about the efficacy of various calibers in self-defense situations, and the benefits of going bigger appear to be marginal. I can go into it further if you'd like, but it's not really essential to my argument, so I'll leave it there for now.

I see what you're trying to say, but the issue as I see it is the assumption that all criminal attackers can be easily deterred. For the average individual in most places, the majority risk of attack is indeed the opportunistic thief. That's someone who is somewhat rational in that they have no particular reason to target you, they're just looking for an easy buck. If they see you as harder or riskier than average, say by pulling any kind of gun, then they're going to get out of there for easier prey. While these are the most common threat for most people most of the time, and probably the great majority of all, it certainly doesn't cover everything.

There's plenty of reports of attackers who are irrational and will continue to attack until dealt injuries that are immediately serious or lethal. These people may be serial killers out for the blood, or on lots of drugs, or mentally ill in various ways. They might be much more motivated to attack you in particular, maybe due to being an abusive ex or stalker, or a gang hit, or a mob informant, or some other personal grudge. These sorts of things may be a small minority of cases overall, but they're definitely out there.

From everything I've seen on caliber effectiveness, the benefits of going bigger are only marginal within the group of what's considered "major calibers". There are many reports of small calibers such as 22LR or 25ACP doing essentially nothing at all to stop an attacker immediately, even if they might need medical care later. I would be surprised to see data indicating that the difference between these calibers and, say, 9mm is marginal.

For these reasons, I don't think it's right for the state to mandate or regulate things like caliber of defensive weapons, since they can't easily know what threat you might be facing and what your needs might be. If you personally choose to carry a 22 because you think it's good enough plus light and cheap, and are willing to risk it not being enough someday, then that's your right. You're welcome to try to convince others of this, but not to mandate it IMO.

Although, to go back a bit, I think I'd be okay with some higher level of licensing or training being required to carry larger caliber guns. I don't think they do anymore, but Texas used to have concealed carry permits with different levels, depending on the type of handgun that you qualified with - I think revolver and pistol were the only ones commonly used.