Some good points
Kleanbore (as usual).
While the FoF training is rapidly becoming understood to be an excellent training venue, albeit one that may be hard and/or expensive for prospective students to find and use (especially one supervised by a properly trained instructor), there's still the issue of having acquired and developed the foundation skillset with the weapon in order to really benefit from the specialized FoF training venue, and understand) some of the things to be learned.
Kind of like how students in the martial arts still have to develop and continue to refine their foundation techniques & skillset before best benefiting from more advanced contact training & practice. You can cut some corners and acquire "self-defense" skills of a more limited scope and range (but hopefully varied enough for "most" anticipated needs), but the serious student might better benefit from continued mat time. A combination of training methods evolves at some point.
Yep, if more folks took some time to grasp human anatomy, and understood how the body worked and reacted to injury, they might have a more realistic approach to their expectations when it involves gunshot wounding effects.
The potential for their to be a "significant likelihood" of more than one attacker being involved is hard to predict. Then again, look how many folks looking to learn a "serious" martial art for "defense" become attracted to some form of grappling ... which pretty much limits your ability to defend against more than a single attacker at any one time.
How many chokes and locks would you see if MMA fighters faced more than a single opponent at a time during a round? (But hey, there's money in MMA.)
The whole risk assessment process is where many folks seem to start to veer off in weird, or perhaps just impractical, directions, I think. Learning to ask the right questions may not directly lead to the "right" definitive answers, but it is a good place to start. The whole self-assessment and risk assessment process might vary among folks.
I use a similar process to yours. I often carry a J-frame, although I also have any number of increasingly larger pistols from which I can choose. I train, practice & qual with them often enough
for me to remain confident in their use. If I discover, or just start to suspect, that I've lost that level of "unconscious competence" with any of them, I'll emphasize my attention on it while working range sessions.
The other thing I've done over the years is meld my arts training and practice to my firearms, especially the handguns. It worked with blades and bodily weapons. Why not with guns? Of course, I started my arts training back in '71, and it's been a lifelong pursuit & discipline, so I've had some time to refine and learn to apply it to my daily life.
You're absolutely right about remaining aware of our ever changing environment. Not easy, but ignored at our peril (maybe literally). "Situational awareness" and learning to recognize potential danger situations can help, huh?
Oh yeah, somewhere far down the list of considerations and concerns is that pesky "ammunition capacity" factor, I suppose, right?
For some of the other folks participating in this thread topic?
You're fortunate if you've never had the tragic experience of knowing someone, like another cop, who died after exhausting a "hi-cap" pistol, without incapacitating their murderer. Or someone who was seriously injured while burning through most of their duty pistol magazine loadout, only being able to incapacitate their attacker after realizing they had to stop "shooting instinctively", and start actually aiming, so they could get solid hits. (And then stopping their attackers after only 1-3 further
aimed shots.)
How about the folks who have faced down, and stopped, anywhere from 2 or 3 to 8 attackers using "limited" capacity 1911's and S&W K-frame .38's? You can slip a few users of 5-shot .38's in there, too.
I've listened to a lot of cops who were involved in shootings ... on & off-duty, some seriously injured and some not ... discuss their realization of the importance of being able to
accurately & effectively hit their attackers, and a surprising number of them haven't put nearly the emphasis on either caliber or specific magazine capacity as the private citizens who seem to frequent the internet firearms forums.
I suspect that none of us have all, or even most, of the "answers". I sure don't.
I make my choices based upon my own training, knowledge, experience and best judgment. I realize the potential consequences of those choices.
That's why I only make them for myself, and let other folks shoulder the same responsibilities and potential consequences for themselves.
Maybe it would be easier if I was somebody's idea of an "expert", but I'm not.
