Another Range Report
John (not YJ but a guy I work with) and I went to the range with his new Kel-Tec PLR-16 as well as his .44 snub and my Glock 23. We had a blast. The kel-tec has a flash supressor, barely kicks at all, and will put lead downrange fairly accurately just as fast as you can pull the trigger. Man that was fun. I couldn't stop grinning. The sights need a little work though--they're too open for my taste. I put a few rounds through the .44 as well, just because I hadn't shot that yet...I still like my Glock .40 cal better, although I'm getting to the point where I can control the bigger handguns more effectively.
We had the range to ourselves for half an hour or so, so I worked on my draw-and-fire. I have absolutely no benchmark for this, except to know that faster and more accurate are better, but I can reliably draw from an exposed hip carry and hit a 9" target at about 15 feet in (I think) about a second. Plenty of room for improvement, but also raises an important question:
When will this be useful?
I don't carry exposed (I can't, by law). So it will take me even longer to get to my weapon in a "live" situation (yes, I practice drawing from concealment, but currently I cannot do so safely with a loaded weapon). I can't imagine being in a situation where I would feel the need to draw down on someone who is not brandishing a deadly weapon. Human reaction time is, if I remember correctly, about 1/5th of a second. This implies that a goblin would be able to shoot me 5 times before I could defend myself with a firearm (obviously, other factors involved will reduce this number, but not to zero). It still looks like I'm better off disarming the goblin (I know/practice a few hand-to-hand moves for this, and can reliably deflect a handgun before the trigger is pulled in non-lethal tests*) if I'm in hand-to-hand range, and just running otherwise (tried this once, it worked well).
There's a lot of firearm enthusiasts out there who espouse the use of handguns for self-defense. I ask of you: what non-apocalyptic scenario am I missing where a handgun will actually be useful? Should I, with practice, expect to be able to draw and fire accurately before a goblin can pull his trigger? As a budding firearm enthusiast, I am sincerely curious. This is not flame-bait.
*I've never tried disarming anyone who was trained to use a handgun in a hand-t0-hand situation. Does anyone know if police (and related personnel) are taught anything about handgun retention?