Having had to qualify with a .38 caliber and a .45 caliber pistol while serving in the Army Intelligence Service, I have been convinced how difficult it is to be 100 percent accurate at distances greater than across a table for four. Training has to be intensive, and I don’t believe that most civilians can dedicate that much time.
A good example was recently reported by the media where a woman with a child hid in a closet when an intruder broke into her home. The intruder, after ransacking the rest of the house, came to the closet and opened it. The woman, armed with a pistol, had been trained and fired six shots at the intruder. According to the media, she hit him once in the neck and he got away.
She could not have been more than three or four feet away, and she had been trained.
I am a firm believer that having a rifle or a shotgun offers much more protection than a handgun, even with minimum training.
I think that sometimes we are impressed with movies and TV shows where either law enforcement officers or criminals fire a handgun from even long distances and make a hit every time they fire. What fantasies!
Samuel Lombardo
Destin