If I Could Only Own One Firearm

I rot on the rain Siddhas please bear with gunfire you hear in the background and today I'm going to answer the academic question of if I could only have one firearm what would my choice be now this comes with a long list of disclaimers and I want to mention three of them first it is an academic question because I live in a jurisdiction where I can order more than one firearm secondly people live in different jurisdictions and are subject to different laws people have different capabilities and limitations different budgets and different needs so my choice for the one may be very different than yours which brings us to 0.3 which is nothing I say today should be inferred as a recommendation I'm only answering the question what would my choice be if I could only have one so let me show you some of the firearms that were nominated to be that one and explain some of the reasoning behind it now when you talk about the subject of if you could only have one firearm the first thing a lot of people will think of is versatility and when you think of versatility you think of a shotgun which is a good way to think a nominee would be this Remington 870 you can get different barrels and you have a full length hunting barrel a rifled barrel with sights on it and extension to the magazine aftermarket stock the list goes on and need 70 in 12-gauge which would be the most common 12-gauge ammunition comes in a vast array of different birdshot buckshot slugs Sabo slugs flechette flares the list goes on at Astra so guns like the Remington 870 or a Mossberg 500 or 590 series may be a very good choice if you could only have one now a lot of people would select a rifle and many people would select some kind of military type platform which for me of course would be some kind of AR platform very well suited to target shooting you can hunt with it you can wage war with it it's good for home defense especially if you have one with a shorter stock and a carbine length barrel but there's one other type of rifle that many people will immediately dismiss and I don't think you should and that is something in caliber 22 long-rifle 22 is low powered but the ammunition is readily available inexpensive small and light and not always but usually the guns are relatively small in light reasonably priced for a 22 my choice would be a Ruger 10/22 specifically this takedown model being able to take it apart like that adds a degree of versatility to it it comes with a 10 shot magazine aftermarket 25 shot magazines are readily available you can even get magazines with a capacity of a hundred or more and there's one other aspect to shooting a 22 rifle that a lot of people don't think of but is absolutely germane to this topic let me show you what I mean and this is a very important aspect of 22 rifle and that is that 22 rifles are fun to shoot in the discussion of only having one firearm and talking about rifles and shotguns one of the topics that will come up is the combination gun now the term combination gun can mean a lot of different things to different people but here in the United States what you're typically talking about is a double-barreled firearm that's over and under where the top barrel is a rifle in the bottom barrel is a shotgun there's many different configurations recently I saw one that was 357 Magnum over 20 gauge I've seen 3030 over 20 gauge here in the United States what's probably the most common is 22 long-rifle over 20 gauge or 22 Winchester Magnum rimfire over 20 gauge and for some people in some situations a firearm like that might be a great choice when I've fired them when I've hunted with them what I have found is that combining a single-shot rifle and a single shot shotgun leaves me with a firearm that's really not quite enough of either on the same concept as the combination gun there's an entire genre of firearms that's been popular in Europe for a long time where there's different configurations of trying to combine a rifle and a shotgun and according to the sources I read there's many configurations and they all have different names even though they're really mostly different twists on the same theme what's probably best known is the drilling double barreled side-by-side shotgun with the addition of a rifled barrel however if you have in over an under shotgun with a single rifle barrel on the side that's just a different way of filling the same niche but it has a different name there's the double barreled rifle and a single shotgun barrel again different twist on the same theme and a different name I've even seen one that was a double-barreled side-by-side shotgun with the addition of an over-and-under rifle again different twist on the same theme and a different name and the vast array of different names different calibers different configurations is staggering and for some people in some situations one of the firearms of the many in that genre might be a good choice however for me if I could only have one firearm one of the niches it has to fill is concealed carry so for me my one firearm is going to be a handgun and here's some of the nominees one of which is the Ruger Mark 3 pistol caliber 22 long rifle semi-auto with a 10 shot magazine and I might select this for the same reason I might select a 22 rifle but again with only one gun a lot of people are going to be thinking versatility okay for versatility you might think of something like this Smith & Wesson Model 686 6 357 magnum revolver there's a wide variety of 357 Magnum ammo available it can shoot 38 special there's a degree of versatility this Glock model 31 is a caliber 357 sig well some of the Glocks you can trade out the barrel and use 40 Smith & Wesson again a degree of versatility but when talking about handguns and we're talking about versatility and trying to combine the two one thing that will immediately come to many people's minds is some version of the tourist judge revolver because it can shoot 45 colt and 410 more shot shells some people will consider this the epitome of versatility and if you could only have one handgun or just one gun there are many people that are of the opinion that the Taurus judge revolver would be the good choice and that's an opinion those people are free to have and it's an opinion I disagree with and of course everything I'm saying today are just my opinions and my opinions are based on my training my education my experience different people have different experiences so they have different opinions now we've done several presentations on the tourist judge revolver so I don't want to rehash all of that but there is one short demonstration I want to do with the judge let me show you what I mean one of the reasons people advocate the tourist judge revolver is the idea that when it's loaded with buckshot the pattern spread will increase your hit probability this is a point of view that I disagree with let me illustrate what I'm talking about I have to shoot and see targets set up at a distance of 5 yards I'll shoot the lower one with this 357 magnum revolver and then shoot the upper one with the tourist judge which is loaded with triple a buck let's take a closer look at the targets so on our lower target with our 357 we of course see single projectile impacts on our upper target this impact down here is the shot Cup that doesn't count but with our triple up buck we do see a little bit of pattern spread but only a little bit the idea that this minimal pattern spread is going to in any meaningful way increase your hit probability is something I consider to be fiction however we are only shooting at five yards I'll paste up these shot holes and we'll do this drill again from a greater distance now this was four shots from the 357 and two from the tourist judge fired at a distance of 25 yards and as we can see the tourist judge is still not enhancing my hit probability and the buck shot is significantly less powerful than 357 Magnum now some people will argue that you could load the tourist judge with 45 cold ammunition yes you can but that still would not enhance my hit probability and it would still be less powerful than the 357 Magnum so in the academic question of what would you have if you could only have one handgun for some people the tourist judge might be the right choice for me it is not another disadvantage of the tourist judge revolver as it relates to concealed carries that it's very bulky a disadvantage it shares with handguns like this Smith & Wesson Model 686 357 and the Smith & Wesson Model 29 44 Magnum both of these handguns are accurate and powerful but they are very bulky so it looks like I'm going to go with an autoloader even a full-sized auto loader is going to have less bulk than a full sized revolver so in the genre of full-size Auto loaders a lot of people would go for one of the many different versions of Glock and that's a good choice however I don't like the sights on Glocks and I really don't like the grip so yes this one does fit my hand and this one fits my hand better than this one does so it looks like we've narrowed down our finalists to the beretta 92fs in California and when I came in the Colt government model in caliber 38 super automatic both of these are very different formats and one of the important things would be which one can I shoot that let's see if we can find out so I'll shoot from 20 yards and I'll shoot the beretta 92fs 9-millimeter at the upper target and the Colt government model 38 super at the lower target and let's see how they compare well it would appear I got a better group with the nine-millimeter than I did with the 38 super however if you look at the scoring rings the scores were 37 and 38 so I'll put up a couple of new targets do this drill again and see if we can confirm these results so it looks like with the 9 I had a better group than I did with the 38 super with the exception of that one flier but if we look at the scoring rings it's 46 versus 39 and again that's because of that one flier but what this tells me is that I am shooting the 92fs a little better than I am the Colt government model but this is slow fire let's try a fast shooting drill and see how they compare now I have some fairly big targets and I'll shoot the nine at the upper target to 38 at the lower target I'll shoot from ten yards firing as fast as I think I can hit the target and we'll see how the two pistols compare for accuracy and speed and we'll start with the 92f now let's see how that compares to the government model now let's take a closer look at the targets and I may have shot just a little bit faster with the 38 super but we see that the group with the nine-millimeter is significantly better in previous presentations we've shot 38 super Auto plus P side-by-side with nine by 19 we've chronograph both of them shot them both of various targets so we don't have to rehash all of that here today but I do want to briefly discuss the comparative power of 38 super Auto Plus P and 9 by 19 in any fair comparison where the a munitions from the same manufacturer you have similar projectile weights handguns with similar barrel lengths 38 super auto plus P is significantly more powerful than 9 by 19 I've shot deer with 9 by 19 and gotten poor results I've shot deer with 38 super auto and gotten very good results but when I say fair comparison there are people who will point out that it isn't fair because I'm comparing plus P ammunition with standard pressure ammunition and to explain why that is fair requires the short version of the history of 38 super auto in the early days of Auto loading pistols caliber 38 auto was introduced well a couple of decades later 38 auto was revamped with a much hotter powder charge making a much more powerful cartridge and it was called 38 super auto you can see the potential hazard of having ammunition with identical external dimensions one being a lot more powerful than the other you wouldn't want to put the more powerful ammo into a gun made for the less powerful animal so decades after that the designator + P was added to all 38 super ammunition just to further differentiate it from thirty-eight Auto making it hopefully less likely someone with have an ammunition mishap so when you buy 38 special plus P that plus P means something when you buy 38 super auto fuss P that's just a designator and it doesn't really mean anything so comparing the plus P to the standard pressure is fair however some 9 by 19 a munition does carry the designator plus P or plus P plus and as we've seen in previous presentations sometimes that just doesn't mean but in some cases it does and if you have ammunition where it does mean something and you have the right plus P or plus P plus nine by nineteen eighty ssin you can really close the power gap between nine and thirty eight super so although this is more powerful and this will be the gun that I'll be carrying when I go deer hunting this fall if I could only have one firearm it would be a handgun and it would be the beretta 92fs and caliber nine by nineteen because this is the handgun that I'm going to be able to shoot reliably and accurately and there's no replacement for shot placement I assume if you could only have one gun your choice would be different than mine and if it is I'd love to hear about it so as always don't try this at home on what you call a professional and thanks for watching the if I could only have one gun video

Channel: Paul Harrell

Views: 500,004

Rating: 4.9715691 out of 5

Keywords: paul harrell, paul harrell favorite gun, paul harrell one gun, paul harrell one firearm

Id: qcrKJI5JYtQ

Length: 17min 23sec (1043 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 27 2019