The question of ammo capacity is often one of the first asked by people new to concealed carry, right behind “what gun should I buy?” For the novice shooter, the issue usually revolves around the tension between preparedness and convenience. You want to be prepared for the worst, but you still have to live your life, right? If carrying more ammo seems like it will be too much of a disruption in your life, you’re more likely to lean toward carrying a small, low capacity handgun.
But it’s not just novice handgun owners who are concerned with ammo capacity. Shooters with decades of training and experience, including survivors of actual gunfights, frequently debate this topic with others and even mentally wrestle with it themselves. For the skilled shooter, it may be a question of whether to carry the gun they’re most familiar with, like, for instance, the relatively low-capacity Colt 1911, versus a gun they don’t shoot quite as well, but offers more than double the ammo capacity like a Glock 17. Or perhaps they believe that their skill with a handgun will negate the disadvantage of lower ammo capacity, so they can get away with carrying a small pocket pistol.
For either group, this is a complex topic with lots of factors to consider. In the video below, I’m not trying to offer any definitive answers, but I’ve got a few thoughts to add to the debate.
Full video transcript below:
How much ammo capacity do you need in your concealed carry gun? A lot of people out there will tell you that the odds of needing to use that firearm at all are extremely low, and if you do, a small, five-shot revolver should be more than enough to take care of the problem in all but the most extreme cases.
On the other hand, you’ve got people who say it’s not so much the odds, but the stakes that matter. Because it’s your life or the lives of your family members on the line, you shouldn’t compromise so easily just for the sake of convenience. You should carry a medium or full-size double stack handgun with a spare magazine and maybe even a backup gun.
The problem with these two perspectives is that we can’t easily dismiss either one of them because they’re both perfectly reasonable ways to approach the question of ammo capacity. So I’m going to tell you right up front: I can’t give you a clear cut answer here. But I’m going to share a few of the factors to consider when you’re thinking about this issue.
First, let’s talk about the numbers. How many rounds are actually fired in real-world incidents where civilians use a gun in self-defense? Unfortunately, there is not any comprehensive database for statistics on these kind of encounters. But when we look at some of the informal data that has been gathered from various sources, there are some pretty clear trends that start to emerge.
In the overwhelming majority of the incidents where an armed civilian fires a shot in self-defense, probably 70 to 90% of them are able to resolve the situation within 3 or 4 rounds, and usually closer to one or two rounds. Every once in awhile, the good guy fires more like 5 to 8 rounds. And in some very rare instances, we see round counts in the low double digits. And if you look more closely into those instances with the higher round counts, in many cases, the suspect was actually disabled after the first couple of shots, but that wasn’t immediately obvious to the good guy, so they kept firing until the gun was empty or it was clear there was no more threat.
That would seem to support the idea that a low capacity gun is adequate most of the time. But I would be reluctant to jump to that conclusion because we can’t just consider ammo capacity by itself. Low ammo capacity is usually a quality of small handguns. Small guns are harder to draw from concealment, and they’re harder to shoot quickly and accurately.
Karl Rehn is a shooting instructor who’s done a lot of research on this kind of thing, and a couple of years ago, he put together a little exercise. He had students of various skill levels shoot a drill that’s designed to replicate the conditions of the typical close-range gunfight. First, they shot the drill with a medium or full-size pistol and then they did it again with a smaller pocket pistol. For the most skilled shooters, there was an average of just 3% difference between their two scores. The gap was a little wider with intermediate students. The novice shooters — they didn’t have great scores with the larger guns to begin with, and then their scores dropped an average of 20% when they used the pocket guns. This suggests that the less skilled you are with a handgun in general, the more likely it is that a small gun is going to be a handicap for you.
On the other hand, every year there are hundreds — probably thousands of untrained gun owners who manage to defend themselves with small, low capacity underpowered handguns. How is this possible? It’s at least partly thanks to what we call the psychological stop. The attacker sees the gun, or gets shot at, or even gets hit by a bullet that’s not immediately fatal, and he decides that he would rather be somewhere else. Psychological stops are great, but we cannot count on them. Some people don’t care that they’ve got a gun in their face or that you just shot their buddy, and those people are very dangerous. They will not stop attacking unless we make their body stop working and that requires us to put bullets in the right place very quickly. Is a handful of rounds out of a pocket pistol adequate to do that? Again, probably so. But sometimes it’s not and nobody knows for sure how likely that kind of encounter is.
I do think it’s safe to say, however, that ammo capacity — and gun choice in general — is rarely the deciding factor in an armed encounter. When an armed citizen loses a fight, it’s often because they failed to recognize danger early enough or because they failed to act quickly and decisively. These are the results of inadequate training and mental preparation, not inadequate equipment.
So, back to the ammo capacity thing, I think a highly skilled shooter with a lot of training can probably get away with carrying a small, low capacity handgun like a snub nose revolver or a single stack pocket 9mm.
If you haven’t had much training, then statistically, there’s a better than average chance that if you get into trouble, you can also get away with carrying a small, low capacity handgun. But you’re really playing the odds. Most people are capable of carrying a bigger gun than they think they can, but if you really believe you can only carry a small gun, if that’s what allows you to carry every day, then go for it. Just understand that it’s possible the small gun will not be adequate. It could be that there’s not enough ammo, or you might have a hard time hitting your target, or you might not be able to grab that small grip quick enough. There is just more than can go wrong with a small gun, and under-trained people somehow end up more often being the victims of bad luck. Don’t let the mere fact that you are armed lull you into a false sense of over-confidence.
I think the bigger problem with a novice shooter using a small gun is not the ammo capacity and not that it’s inadequate for self-defense. It’s that learning how to shoot is a lot more difficult if all you have is a small handgun. There is more recoil, and people tend to develop issues with flinching and other bad habits. At the range they fatigue more easily and really, shooting these small guns is just not as fun. Newer gun owners are a lot more likely to lose interest or get discouraged if they are trying to learn with a small gun – I see this happen in shooting classes all the time. I would much rather see people learn the basics on a medium or full-size gun, and if they don’t want to carry that, then maybe they can carry a small gun with the same type of action and trigger as their training gun. Or if they don’t want to buy two guns, maybe compromise and look into a double-stack subcompact 9mm. Something like a Glock 26 is much more forgiving for a new shooter than a Glock 43, or a snub nose revolver.
I realize I’ve just scratched the surface of the capacity debate here — I didn’t talk about reloads or larger low-capacity revolvers. But I think the bottom line is that concerns about capacity should take a back seat to getting relevant training from a qualified instructor. Carrying around lots of ammo is good, knowing how to shoot is better, and avoiding trouble altogether is best.