Nov 1, 2011

The sheriff pimps the Judge

Over in South Carolina, Sheriff Chuck Wright tells his people -- particularly his women -- "Get  a CCW. Get a gun."

Welcome aboard, Sheriff.

This will produce a zillion internet words, of course, but some folks will have missed his interview by an especially clueless* MSNBC head. The head asked the sheriff, "What kind of gun?"

"A .45 caliber handgun," he replied. " ... it shoots a .45 bullet or a shotgun shell ... you don't have to be accurate, just in the general vicinity."

Have at it, gang. However, we may want to quickly buy some Taurus stock before we start psyching ourselves up for the mother of all  ballistics rants.

At least he's planted the seed and, in fact, a .410 scatter load shares a virtue with the .22 short: it's better than nothing when some perv demands nonconsensual relations.



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*Sample, the teevee head says we're paying for cops so why should we get guns. The sheriff, slowly and carefully, as though to very slow child, says, "We can't be everywhere."

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have hope that very slow children can learn. Life experience gives me no such hope for the talking heads on the teewee...

Anonymous said...

I beg to differ on the .410. At about 10-15 feet, the usual distance of a "close encounter", a .410 load of buckshot carries mucho more punch that a .22 short. Try it sometime.

As to the "can't be everywhere" comment, most people will not accecpt the fact that in a large percentage of the cases, a cop is nothing more than a sanitation worker. They just clean up the mess. This is not a slam at the cops, it's just a fact of life. They do what they can, but like he said...........JAGSC

Jim said...

The post didn't compare the .410 to a .22 short. It just noted that anything was better than nothing.

The joke -- lamely enough -- responds to a round of Judge-bashing in gunny blogdom. A lot of words have been expended reporting the .410 isn't magic, or very magic, anyway.

I think the criticism is less of the Judge concept itself than of a popular view that it means you don't have to aim -- just sort sling off a shot in the general direction.

JohnW said...

By now there should be a plethora of lightly-used Judges crowding the second-hand gun cases. I'm still waiting.

Tam said...

JohnW,

You won't find it for the same reason you won't find a plethora of other lousy, inexpensive firearms there.

The Venn Diagram of people that buy cheap ballistic rabbit's feet and the people that actually expend enough ammunition to break a gun (or even fairly evaluate how well it works) contains practically no overlap.

An industry-sponsored study some years back figured that the average round count experienced by the average pistol sold in this country is fifty, that's five-zero, rounds.

Tam said...

(Incidentally, I'll note that when Tom Givens reviewed the Judge for S.W.A.T. Magazine, he noted several incidences of primers backing out and tying up the gun when using .410 buckshot or slug loads.

That'd be a heck of a thing to find out on your maiden voyage if the bad guy hadn't run away after the first *BANG!*)

Anonymous said...

Admittedly, the Judge is probably a flavor-of-the-month entry into the handgun market. Several years ago, in a gun shop in a small Pennsylvania town, I looked at a Bursa Thunder, in .410. (JMW, you were in the area.) If memory serves, that was the only one I ever saw. Predictions for the Judge's future are similar. JAGSC

JohnW said...

What you're saying is that I shouldn't expect that $50 pink Judge to show up anytime soon?