Essential Guide to Handguns

HS - Jason Hartman Income Property InvestingJason Hartman talks with firearms instructor, Dr. Bruce Eimer, a licensed clinical psychologist, a nationally renowned NRA Certified Law Enforcement Firearms Instructor and a published author. A “non-martial artist”, Dr. Eimer emphasizes the practical, the realistic and the lawful components of armed and unarmed self-defense. More at: https://holisticsurvival.com/category/audio-podcast/ and on iTunes. Dr. Eimer’s work includes: Essential Guide to Handguns, Personal Defense Solutions, a new DVD set entitled Basic Defensive Handgun, the online forum www.DefensiveHandguns.com and a column in Concealed Carry Magazine. His classes teach people what they need to know to use a firearm competently for self-protection. He teaches people: weapons operation, safe weapon handling and care, marksmanship fundamentals, basic tactical skills, and the laws pertaining to deadly force.

Jason Hartman: Welcome to the Holistic Survival Show. This is your host Jason Hartman and this is episode #31 where we will interview Bruce Eimer on the essential guide to handguns. I think you’ll really enjoy this important, important topic. A couple of shows ago, we had John R. Lott talk about More Guns, Less Crime. That was the philosophical side of our second amendment rights. But here we’re gonna talk about the tactical side of it, the strategic side of it as well. So I think you’ll really enjoy this interview as we continue to talk about how to protect the people, places, and profits you care about in these uncertain times. Hope you enjoyed the last show where we introduced our new tradition from the Creating Wealth Show and that was show number 30 where we did an every 10th show topic that doesn’t have to do directly with modern survivalism but it has to do with how to just live a better life, and that always relates back to survivalism in some ways because being productive in a survival situation is a must. And so on show number 30 we had David Allen, the productivity expert on getting things done. And show number 40, we will also do a not directly related modern survival topic.

And if you would like to know more about the third pillar of Holistic Survival, profits, economics, protecting your investments, protecting your money, protecting your savings, or earning more money, listen to the Creating Wealth show. You can find that on ITunes by just typing my name, Jason Hartman, or you can find it at JasonHartman.com. There’s a lot of great free content, well over 180 episodes where we talk about that third pillar of holistic survival, which is protecting the profits you care about in these uncertain times. Also, I wanted to mention that we have one of our semi-annual events coming up. It’s only twice a year that we do this. And it’s called the Master’s Weekend, and it’s here in Orange County, California. And it will be in mid-October. You should really, really attend this where we have experts come in from all over the country and guests come in from all over the place, and we spend two full days over the Master’s Weekend where we have this what we call gathering of experts to talk all about how to protect and grow your financial life. So very, very important. You can find out more on that at JasonHartman.com. Now let’s go to the interview with Bruce Eimer on the Essential Guide to Handguns and we’ll be back with that in less than 60 seconds.

Jason Hartman: It’s my pleasure to welcome Dr. Bruce Eimer to the show. He is the president of Personal Defense Solutions. And he is an author, a trainer, and a very, very qualified gentleman to talk to us about firearms and self-defense safety. Bruce, welcome.

Bruce Eimer: Thank you. Very happy to be here with you.

Jason Hartman: Good to have you on the show. So tell us kind of a basics, maybe we’ll talk a little bit philosophically first as to why someone needs the great equalizer, and that is personal firearms. I always like to say guns cause freedom. That’s one of the side effects of them. And tell us a little bit about your background there if you would?

Bruce Eimer: Well, I grew up as a city kid on the streets of New York City. And back in the 50s and in the 60s, I didn’t know anything about guns. I only thought policemen and criminals had guns. Of course New York City back then had restrictions on firearm ownership, but nothing like they do today. And as a street kid, I got into my share of scuffles. However, in those days it was all fists and occasionally maybe a baseball bat and some chains or something like that. But that was pretty rare. It was very rare if a kid pulled a knife. You know, most of the time there weren’t weapons. It was you fought, and when the fight was over the fight was over. And somebody won and somebody lost, and somebody’s ego would be bruised. Today, kids come back with knives, guns, and who knows what? We live in a different world than we did when I was growing up, back in the 50s and in the 60s and it’s a lot more of a dangerous world.

Jason Hartman: It sure is. There’s such a move in so many cities, especially in very left wing type cities. They’re really, really trying to restrict firearms. The Obama administration has been trying to do it with the ammunition angle. What’s going on in the regulatory climate that people need to know about?

Bruce Eimer: Well, we need to know that the politicians don’t think that they work for us, they think that we’re there to serve them. And the politicians are entitled. They have this entitlement complex. And unfortunately it seems to run along party lines with the majority of those people that are anti-gun rights being on the democratic side and the majority of those that support gun rights and the second amendment as well as supporting the constitution being on the Republican side. Although politicians across the board do tend to develop this complex that they’re there to basically rule as opposed to serve.

The gun control legislation that are lobbied for by organizations like Brady and some of the other more radical leftist gun control activist organizations, some of them have political agendas which is power. Some of them truly have this naïve Pollyannaish view that the world would be a better place, kumbaya, if guns didn’t exist or people could get them. And what they don’t realize is that, number 1, when you outlaw guns you just outlaw guns in the hand of law-abiding citizens. What outlawing guns does is it gives guns to outlaws, because criminals, they don’t obey the law. Number 2, what they don’t realize is that their very own political icons have bodyguards, and their very own celebrity icons have armed bodyguards, and there’s a reason for that. So their icons, the politicians, the celebrities, etcetera, their lives aren’t worth any more than yours or mine. They don’t deserve to be protected any more than you or I do. They don’t understand that the police can’t protect everybody. The police…It’s been ruled by the Supreme Court don’t have a duty to protect individuals and the police can’t be there when a crime’s going on. So we have to take care of ourselves and ultimately what happens is that in countries where firearms have been confiscated, like England, crime has gone up. In countries where firearms have been band, like England, in many cases even the street patrols, the bobbies, don’t have firearms and are limited in terms of their ability to intervene in crime, and only the elite have armed bodyguards and have elite, literally elite police units that are there to guard them and use firearms to do so. So firearms are a tool to save live. And in the right hands, that’s in fact what they do. But bottom line is when people don’t have firearms, then you are going to be victimized by people who have greater strength than you and greater numbers.

Jason Hartman: You are so right. Guns are the great equalizer. I mean think about it. If everybody wants to be equal, then you equalize it with an equal weapon. For example, a small petite woman who cannot protect herself compared to a big man, the gun is the equalizer. And it is equal rights to protection and safety. No question about it. And to your earlier point, when you outlaw the guns, only the outlaws will have the guns. And that is by definition true, just by definition.

Bruce Eimer: By definition. And, in fact, it now comes to me. The saying is that God made man, and I would add woman. God made man and women. But Sam Colt made all men and women equal. That’s the great equalizer concept.

Jason Hartman: It is. It really equalizes it. And I remember a funny story. I’ll just tell you. I was in a movie, and this was a few years back, and I was on a date and I think it was that funny sort of spoof mob movie The Whole Ten Yards or something like that. I can’t remember the name of the movie, but you might have seen it, and one of the guns that I have was in the movie and I leaned over at my date and said “Oh, I have that same gun.” She leans back to me and says “I hate guns” and I lean back over and I go “Yeah, they cause freedom.” And that’s the true thing. It’s the great equalizer. It’s an equal opportunity for protection.

Bruce Eimer: Oil regimes in the world that oppress people, the first thing that they do in their plan to put people under the yoke of their oppression is to confiscate firearms from the hands of citizens.

Jason Hartman: Yep, no question about it.

Bruce Eimer: And that’s why the second amendment was formulated and written into the bill of rights so that it could protect the citizens of the newly formed United States, colonial America, protect the citizens that n longer served the people. It wasn’t to fight the British. It wasn’t so that militias can be ready in a minute’s notice, the minute men. It was so that the mistakes that the colonial Americans wanted to escape in terms of divine right and all those kind of oppression rules that people lived under in Europe, that those mistakes wouldn’t be repeated in this new experimental democracy that young America was, that people would be able to stand up to a government if it became a monarchy that began to oppress them. And unfortunately, under the liberals of today, the socialistic liberals that are in power today, they do believe in a big government that knows all and has all power to make decisions and to decide how we’re to live. And that means that we are considered the best citizens according to the Obama administration, in their hearts, and of course I can’t read what’s in their hearts, but I know from their actions and from their propaganda and from their programs that they believe that best citizens are citizens who need the government to protect them, to feed them, to take care of them, and who don’t have the power to do anything really.

In fact, another thing that I want to say to you is this, that this may sound really Machiavellian, and it is, that a lot of leftist politicians, and of course in regimes around the world at different points in history, rightist politicians just talk about demagogues. Demagogues love criminals. Because what do criminals in fact do? What criminals do is they terrorize people and they make people more and more dependent upon the police state to protect them. So that’s exactly what gun control does. It puts guns in the hands of the outlaws and it makes law abiding citizens like you and I, outlaws, if we illegally own guns. So those of us that have too much to lose to own guns don’t own guns and now we’re vulnerable to the outlaws who are gonna victimize us and us poor people have to now depend upon the police state to protect us against the criminals, in many cases who are cohorts of the government.

Jason Hartman: So we’ve got to depend on big brother to protect us. I understand that concept. And certainly, politicians buy votes from dependent people. Over and over, every election cycle that happens.

Bruce Eimer: That’s how Obama got elected.

Jason Hartman: Of course it is. Whoever’s giving out the free goodies, that’s who they vote for. And it’s very unfortunate that they’ve just sold out like that. But got a question for you, and I had this debate actually last week with somebody, and I know when the second amendment was designed, our founding fathers, brilliant people of course, it made sense then that the citizens, if they ever had to, if they government became oppressive again they could rise up against their own government and keep the government in check. I think it was Jefferson who said when the people are afraid of the government there’s tyranny and when the government’s afraid of the people there’s liberty. I don’t know if it was Jefferson for sure, but someone.

Bruce Eimer: Sounds right.

Jason Hartman: And that was true back then. But just owning basic firearms today would really protect people from a really, really evil oppressive government anymore, would it? With the modern weaponry that governments have now?

Bruce Eimer: Well, you’ve got a point. You’ve got a point. You’ve got a very, very good point. I’d like to kind of think about that for a moment and reflect. First of all, did you ever ask yourself why Switzerland remained neutral during World War II?

Jason Hartman: No, not really.

Bruce Eimer: Okay. Do you know that it was a law that all families, and males especially, in Switzerland, that they owned firearms?

Jason Hartman: I know that they have that rule, yes.

Bruce Eimer: So given the fact that the citizenry of Switzerland owned firearms and had training in the use of firearms and the fact that Switzerland is a mountainous country, I believe, and I can only speculate, and I’ve read this opinion elsewhere and I think it has some validity, that that gave Hitler pause in regards to trying to take Switzerland over, the idea that people had arms, that they were armed. Whereas all the other countries that Germany rolled over in the late 30s and the 40s when they took over Europe, people didn’t own guns. I mean it was France, Poland. Yeah, there were people that owned guns, but really the regimes were oppressive. And Switzerland was a country of free people. And these people were expected to be armed . And that I think was an issue for Hitler in terms of not taking over Switzerland. But getting back to the question which you just raised, which is a really, really good one, of course the government of today has so many modern weaponry and such power in terms of its military, that would owning firearms with the people, with the fact that people owned firearms, would that help if the government suddenly was mobilized to become a police state? And my thinking on that is I can’t really say…I can’t really answer it. I mean I don’t think that if the government was gonna…This is pure speculation, if somehow or another we ended up in a dictatorship or martial law and the executive branch of the government decided to mobilize the military as a police force and to enforce martial law across the land what would happen? I think that there would be a lot of unrest and there would be a lot of violence. And I believe that a lot of people would die. And I believe that’s ultimately what would happen. I think it would probably be better.

It’s my point of view if somebody were to come for me, being not a criminal, somebody who’s innocent, you know, I’m not a criminal, and somebody were to come for me from the government to take me away or to whatever, I think I’d rather not just go like a sheep. I’m also a son of a Holocaust survivor I have to tell you. And we have to of course understand that we have to be very careful in terms of like what we say. We don’t want to imply that we want to do anything that’s seditious or terroristic, of course not. But in Nazi Germany they passed laws to prevent Jewish people from living. And the Jewish people were law-abiding citizens. And so they obeyed the law and the laws got more and more pressing and they did nothing and they did nothing. And the Nazi government, the regime, got more and more oppressive. First it was having to wear yellow stars and then arm bands and then they took away their businesses and they took away their homes and they took away their freedom and then they put them in concentration camps in the cattle cars. And so it was like a progressive desensitization, Jason, to essentially being treated like a none person of none value that is total shadow of the state. And it’s almost too horrific to think of that ever happening in America, but all I can say is that it’s easy for me to put myself in the place of those people that marched to their concentration camp deaths in Nazi Germany and say I wouldn’t have been one of those people, I would have been a resister. But today, if it were to happen here, what would I do? And I have to tell you I don’t know. I don’t know.

Jason Hartman: The thing that you would hope would happen today is that because of what America stands for, because it stands for liberty, it stands for freedom, at least that was its original intent and that’s become very diluted today, you would hope that the people carrying out the oppression would have a conscience. Now history has not shown that at all, but you would hope that America would be different because all of those soldiers, all of those police offers grew up with these thoughts in their head that fairness and freedom are sort of intrinsic and engrained in the American spirit. And of course that’s been terribly diluted under the regime we have now and many others before that. I mean, listen, I’m not taking sides on left and right here. Bush was no…He was problematic too. Obama I think is worse. But both sides, it all seems like they’ve sold out 100 times over. And you would just hope that they wouldn’t obey the rules, and if there was enough resistance from people, it would give pause for people to stop and think. If we ever got, God forbid, to that horrific place, I don’t see it happening, but just in case. I mean if nothing else it’s just for personal self-defense against regular street crime and hoodlums and so forth.

And you know the example you didn’t mention by the way, earlier when we started to talk, is I believe Australia had that same problem just a few years back, didn’t it? When they took restricted guns heavily and crime soared and people were defenseless, wasn’t that in Australia a few years back?

Bruce Eimer: Yes. Australia’s also banned ownership of handguns and severely restricted the ownership of long arms as is the case in England, which it’s almost impossible in England to own a shotgun that holds more than two shells and to own a rifle that has a capacity greater than two rounds. Semi-automatic rifles are not allowed in England, and of course handguns are banned. I’m not sure exactly what the exact deal is in Australia, but it’s pretty restricted. And crime has in fact soared subsequent to the banning. But what’s interesting in light of what we’re focusing on at the moment, is if you look at Chicago, recently one of the legislators, award leaders from Chicago who is a leftist lunatic, anti-gun maniac, including the mayor of Chicago, Daley, who is all of the above, they called for the United States government to bring in military forces, that is The National Guard and Army Reserve and so on, into the city of Chicago to supplement and support the police force which is overstressed and stretched beyond its limits because of the terrible crime problem that they have there, which they admit. Yet on the other hand, if they admit that they have some of the worst crime in the entire country, of any city in the entire country, how can they explain that when in fact they’ve gotten their way and they’ve managed to make Chicago a gun free zone. They don’t understand or they don’t want to admit, I think that is the case, that what they’ve done is they’ve given the power to criminals. And what they in fact want is state control. And that is how they do it. They say well we have a crime problem. The problem has not yet been solved. We’ve done everything we can to solve it including taking away guns from people. But there are still criminals out there who have guns, who have knives, who kill people and the murder rate of Chicago is up there in the top 5 in the nation amongst large cities. So now they can now justify asking for a military regime to take over and control the people in Chicago, and I think that’s what they want.

Jason Hartman: Yep. Just more and more Draconian laws. We’ve talked about philosophy and I appreciate everything you’re saying. That’s a great discussion. Let’s talk about some tactical, if you will, things. So what are some of the best tactical self-protection tools? We’ve got a few minutes left. I want to get into some more specifics.

Bruce Eimer: Well, first of all, my company Personal Defense Solutions, what we do is we train people to learn how to use firearms for self-protection. And what we do is provide training, we teach classes, we offer individualized training and we have a very extensive website and we also have an online discussion form which is a question and answer discussion form for everything related to armed self-defense. And so what we do is we train people to learn the importance of owning firearms, the obligation in fact that people have to take responsibility for their own self-defense, and we teach them how to do it. And that involves learning about firearms. It involves learning about first usually people want to learn about how to use handguns because handguns are the most portable. They’re typically the most easily learned and practical from the standpoint of self-defense both in the home and in terms of outside the home if the particular jurisdiction in which you live allows for concealed carry. And most people are interested in learning how to shoot a handgun. So we teach everything that people need to know. We help people get concealed carry permits. We teach classes for people who want to get permits from states that where in their particular permits, those states’ permits are recognized by a lot of states. For example, the Florida permit, which is issued to not just Florida residents, but any citizen or permanent resident alien from any state in the United States can apply for a Florida permit and get it as long as they take a handgun safety course, learn about the use of deadly force and learn about the law, and don’t have a criminal record. And they get that permit and that permit is recognized by 31 states, so it’s the closest thing to a national carry permit which doesn’t look to be too likely in the near future that you can get. But before you get the right or the privilege should I say to carry a gun outside and to of course carry it in different states, you know, one needs to get training. And a lot of people get gun permits, a lot of people buy guns and they don’t get any training. You know, they just stick it in their draw. And that’s a big mistake because of course a firearm is a deadly weapon. And it’s just like a snake. If you don’t watch it, it’s gonna bite you and its venom is deadly. So people, just like they need to get driver’s ed training and need to learn how to drive and need to prove that they know how to drive in order to get a license, they need to also get training when they purchase a gun and when they apply for a carry permit. Now I’m not an advocate of requiring training for people who want to buy a gun. I am an advocate of requiring training for people who want to apply for the privilege of carrying a gun outside the home. And that is because if somebody was to want to use a gun in self-defense in a crowded area, let’s say, or a public place where a terrorist incident could happen or some nut just starts shooting people, and someone is carrying a gun, as I’m sure there’s always people carrying guns that you don’t know, like me, and they were to then…You know, some person decides they’re going to now take out the maniac, which is a good idea, but if they have no training, right, then they may not be able to hit the broadside of a barn and instead of hitting the gun wielding maniac they kill somebody innocent. So that’s not a good thing. So you need training. So the first thing that you gotta do is you gotta get training. And you get training by taking a class at a reliable school that offers such training that has a reputation that it offers good training. So that’s very, very important. And I’ve also written a book called Essential Guide to Handguns: Firearm Instruction for Personal Defense and Protection. It came out in 2005. I co-authored it with a Philadelphia police veteran, a fellow by the name Steve Romenter, who has been a police officer in Philly for about 30 years. He was one of the founding members of the Philadelphia SWAT team. It was a lot of stuff. And we co-authored this book together. It came out in ’05 and basically a primer or a primmer, and it’s pretty encyclopedic and it’s a very good introduction for newbies about handguns, as well as a source of information for people who know stuff but just want a book that they can turn to.

Jason Hartman: Let me ask you a question. In terms of the actual equipment, I want to get some specifics in here. So revolver, semi-automatic, I mean a revolver’s much simpler. What do you suggest for someone’s first gun?

Bruce Eimer: It depends. I think that it’s hard to make a blanket statement what is the best first gun for someone, but revolvers versus semi-automatic pistols, they each have their distinct advantages. Number one, a revolver is simpler to learn its manual of operations. Number two, a revolver is less likely to malfunction or experience a stoppage. Number three, a revolver is easier to learn how to shoot and maintain, and therefore it does have merit for a lot of folks. Now, the other thing about a revolver that I really like, especially I’m talking now about snub nose revolvers, you know, the classic like detective specials, like the colt detective special Dick Tracy carried or the classic small frame Smith and Wesson snubbies. We call them snub nose because they have short barrels and they’re meant for concealment. Usually they’re five shot, some are six shot.

And what the advantage of a revolver is for self-defense, and a lot of people will mention this, is this: Let’s say you’re lying in bed at night and you’re awakened by a home invader or home invaders, and it takes a half a minute to wake up, to wipe the sleep from your eyes, and they’re on top of you, and you don’t have any time. And let’s say you grab that semi-automatic pistol that you have by your bedside in your night table, and now you want to use it and the bad guy grabs that slide of that semi-automatic pistol and you get off one shot and it is deflected and now the gun is inoperable. Okay, well same thing of course if you’re on the street and you draw the gun and you’re dealing with somebody that knows how to fight and you grab that gun, and you after that one shot the gun’s inoperable because they’re holding the slide out of battery. But if you have a revolver on the other hand, especially a snub nose which is hard for somebody to grab because there’s not much to grab onto, the barrel is so short, the advantages are number 1, that bad guy can grab that revolver and you can get off that shot, and the first thing that’s gonna happen is he’s gonna get burned by the flash gap between the cylinder and the barrel chamber. And his hands are gonna come off that real fast, but even if they don’t, your cylinder is still gonna turn and you’re gonna be able to get off the next shot and the next shot and the next shot or the next shot if it’s 5 shots, or the next shot and the next shot if it’s 6 or 7 shots. And the other thing about it is is that if a woman let’s say is attacked on the street and now the guy is on top of her, God forbid, and she has a semi-automatic pistol like a glock let’s say or a Smith and Wesson or an HK or whatever, or a berretta, and she sticks it into the guy’s gut and presses the trigger, maybe one round may get off, maybe the gun jams. The gun will jam. The gun will jam on a contact shot and she is in big trouble. But with the revolver, she can stick it in the bad guy’s gut and she can go bang-bang-bang-bang-bang, and that guy is gonna roll off her because you can take contact shots with a revolver. So revolvers are wonderful for close quarter combat, and therefore I recommend revolvers to almost everyone. And I myself carry a revolver practically all the time, and that’s of course separate from other pistols that I may be carrying. But I’m different and I’m over the top.

Jason Hartman: Bruce, do you recommend laser sights? Like, I just got a little laser sight on my revolver. And I thought they were sort of gimmicky before that, but I watched a DVD that Crimson Trace made and it really convinced me that that’s a great idea.

Bruce Eimer: Well, I want to recommend to your listeners, I want to recommend that you log onto the handgun discussion forum that we run called DefensiveHandguns.com and search for Crimson Trace Laser Grips or just lasers or anything like that, and there’s a whole bunch of discussions, a whole bunch of threads about the utility of lasers. But in a nutshell, to answer your question, I think that the crimson Trace Laser Grips are wonderful and that their utility especially shines with snub nose revolvers because snub nose revolvers have vestigial sights. They have short frame radiuses between the rear sight which is really just a little nub in the back of the frame and the front sight which is a little tiny, tiny, tiny ramp. And so it’s very hard to accomplish any kind of accurate sighted fire with those revolvers. They’re pretty much point and shoot guns. So what the laser does is it provides a very, very useful tool for point shooting with a snub nose revolver and they work. They really work very well and I know somebody in fact who saved themselves. They were attacked by a vicious dog, and that person, that guy had a little snub nose on them, and it did have the Crimson Trace Laser Grip sights and he remembers just shining that laser dot on the dog’s face and pulling the trigger. And even though it was shaking and that little laser dot was moving around, you know, like real fast, it still hit true. And it stopped the dog and killed the dog in its tracks and probably saved his you know what.

So I’m a big believer in the laser. Some people talk about the fact that bad guys see the laser on his chest and that’s a deterrent. It may be, it may not be. I don’t know. But I certainly would stop in my tracks if I saw a laser dot on my chest.

Jason Hartman: Don’t forget the other thing. First of all, they’re a lot cheaper than I thought they were. It was only about $170 and the most feature of all, it’s just darn cool. I feel like a high tech spy.

Bruce Eimer: Well, you know, it’s cool. It’s cool because it’s useful. It’s cool because it works. And it’s cool because it takes a revolver which I want to make sure you understand that if you shoot a revolver…You know this, revolvers are pretty and they’re easy to carry, and especially if you have a lightweight revolver, a snub revolver, looks like the kind of gun…Like, my wife looked at one once and said that’s the gun for me, and then once she shot it she said “No, I don’t want that gun” because the lighter the gun, the smaller the gun, the more vestigial the sights and so forth, the harder the gun is to shoot. And revolvers are very hard recoiling. So it’s a challenge to shoot them effectively. They do require significant training in order to use defensively. And of course I provide that training, and there are other people that specialize in snubbies.
We provide training. We actually teach a snub nose revolver class for both men and women, it’s a day long class, and it teaches people what they need to know about revolvers and sub nose revolvers in terms of both their use, their care, their maintenance, proper handling, and how to shoot them effectively. And I do believe that people need to learn that.

Jason Hartman: No question about it. Just quickly tell us about ammunition, what people need to know about ammo and then we gotta wrap up.

Bruce Eimer: Well, I feel sorry for the people of New Jersey where they can’t use hollow point bullets, because hollow point bullets were designed so that they stay in the bad guy and they don’t over-penetrate and exit the bad guy and keep flying until they hit grandma down the street. If you’re going to buy ammunition, what you need to look for, first of all, of course you need to make sure you buy the proper caliber for your particular firearm or handgun. Secondly, you want to understand of course that there’s full metal jackets or hard boil which is essentially the bullet, the lead bullet is completely encased in a copper jacket or some other alloy and that the full metal jacket is a lot cheaper than its hollow point where there is usually a metal jacket that surrounds the bullet but that there’s a crater or a core at the top of the bullet which is why it’s called a hollow point that is designed such that the bullet expands when it penetrates into human flesh. And by expanding, it creates more tissue damage and destruction, but it also slows the path of the bullet so that it stays in the object in which it is shot into and doesn’t over-penetrate. So hollow point, specifically jacketed hollow point ammunition is the ticket for self-defense as opposed to full metal jacket or just plain lead bullets.

Now, with that said, since hollow point is much more expensive, people will have a tendency to just practice with the cheap stuff and then load and stoke their firearm with the hollow points but never shoot the hollow points, and that’s a big mistake. A lot of firearms, semi-automatic pistols, are very finicky about the ammo that they eat. So they will often shoot full metal jacket very reliably, but they’ll hiccup a lot and cough and jam up with hollow points. And of course they’ll have their preferences. So you might have a firearm, especially if you shoot a .45 like a 1911 that likes one brand of hollow points, doesn’t like another brand. So my point is make sure that you shot at least a box of 50 rounds of the hollow points that you intend to carry in your gun before your carry it. Don’t just go on face.

The other thing I want to say is that the nice thing about revolvers is they’re not ammo finicky because you don’t have a slide to cycle and a seed ramp to take the bullet off of the follower from the magazine and all this kind of stuff, so there’s no jamming. With a revolver, you don’t have to worry about hollow point or full metal jacket. The bottom line is that you know with a revolver that it’s going to feed any kind of ammo. And so with a revolver you have that advantage. And you still shoot the particular load that you intend to use for self-defense at the range for several reasons besides the reliability aspect.

Number 1, you want to make sure that you can handle that load because a very hot load, let’s say something that’s loaded with very hot powder, like a 9MM plus key plus which is loaded beyond SAAMI specifications is going to give you a lot more recoil and it may be too much for a person. So that may not be a good choice because shot placement is everything. So you need to, number one, know that you can handle that particular load. Number 2, you have to know that you can handle that particular caliber. You know, granny shouldn’t be shooting a 44 mag, of course if it depends on who granny is. If she’s Granny Oakley, maybe she should. Number 3, you also want to take a look at the patterning of that ammo with that firearm. In other words, certain firearms are just not very accurate with certain loads. So I, for example, know that I should glocks and I shoot sigs a lot. And I know that my glock 17 which is a 9MM full size pistol, it likes certain loads and shoots them a lot more accurately than other loads. And so I kind of want to have a load that I’m carrying that I know is gonna shoot very tight groups so that God forbid I’m ever in a restaurant and some maniac comes busting into the joint with his pickup truck and a rifle and starts murdering people like what happened in ’92 in Killeen, Texas at Luby’s Cafeteria. I want to know that I can take that sucker out. And if I have a load that’s not very accurate in my glock 17 or whatever gun I’m carrying, it’s gonna be a problem.

Jason Hartman: Good point. Hey, wrap this all up for us if you would, Bruce. We’ve covered a lot and this is of course a very important topic. Anything else you want to tell us?

Bruce Eimer: Well, yeah. I want to tell the audience don’t be a victim. I want to tell the audience this, that you are responsible for your own safety and the safety of the people that you love. And the police are not here to protect you. They’re here to investigate crimes after the fact, and in fact most of the time that’s all that they can do. I want to tell you folks out there listening and perhaps reading the transcript of this interview that you don’t want to be a victim. And the way that you refuse to be a victim is by arming yourself. Buy a firearm, buy a handgun, buy a rifle, buy a shotgun. A shotgun is a great home defense tool along with a handgun.

And get some training. And don’t just assume that because you had a little bit of feedback from your uncle who was a cop or was a marine when you were a kid that you know what to do, because that’s not true. Don’t assume that because maybe 30 years ago when you were in the military, you have some experience in bulls eye shooting that you know what to do. Get some current training. And get feedback from a trainer on what firearm is right for you, for your particular place in life, from your context.
Not only get training, practice. Develop your skill. You can learn knowledge, but knowledge is only power if it’s backed up by skill, and the shooting skills are perishable skills. They need to be practiced, just like you need to go to the gym regularly in order to keep your muscles. And learn the laws of the jurisdiction in which you live so that you are not inadvertently a law breaker because ignorance is no use for breaking the law. And of course there are some bad laws that should be broken, they should be abolished, but you need to know what the laws are. There are people who live in places like unfortunately where you live, Jason, and in the state adjacent to my state, which is Pennsylvania which is a pretty free state, we had New Jersey, we had New York, we had Maryland. These are states that are abhor freedom. These are states that don’t allow for free firearm ownership, that New Jersey doesn’t allow concealed carry. New York City, of course which is ruled by Mayor Bloomberg who is an enemy of freedom, doesn’t allow handgun ownership. Hopefully that’ll be successfully challenged with some of the seminal cases that have gone through the United States Supreme Court recently.

And where you live is a big factor in terms of whether or not you can be a free person and exercise your God given rights to self-defense. Self-preservation comes first above all else. And you need to really think about how are you gonna take care care of yourself and your loved ones if the balloon goes up?

And I’ll tell you what. You are an expert probably more at this than I am, Jason, but you know that our economy is in the toilet, that we live in a society where the separation between the classes have become more and more stark. I think chaos is unavoidably ahead. I think that we are looking at a situation where if you’re not prepared to weather the coming storm, which is going to be a storm of more economic trouble, and economic trouble breeds more anger and discontent which breeds more violence, and you’re not prepared to take care of yourself and your loved ones, and you live in a jurisdiction where you’re not allowed to take care of yourself or your loved ones, I’m afraid that you might be food for those who prey on law abiding innocent people.

So don’t be a sheeple. Go buy a gun. If you’re not allowed to buy a gun or carry a gun where you live, then I would probably say move. I would never move to a state, no matter what kind of job I was offered, where my freedoms are infringed upon.

Jason Hartman: Good advice.

Bruce Eimer: That’s basically my advice.

Jason Hartman: I agree. Okay, good. Well Bruce Eimer, thanks for joining us today and thanks for the insights on this very important topic. Appreciate it.

Bruce Eimer: You’re welcome, and thank you so much for having me.

Jason Hartman: My pleasure.

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Transcribed by Ralph