I like that story, but I'll tell you that I would probably have to spend maybe the time
waiting for the police to try to get the taste of Diet Coke out of my mouth and I'd probably
go get a beer in order to do it.
Welcome to episode 11 of the Fugal Firearms Podcast.
The Firearms Podcast that is different than anyone else's because we focus on the value
proposition.
What we're here to do is help you get the most for your shooting dollar.
And today we're going to go into a subject that probably a lot of you are going to find
controversial because we're going to dive right to the deep end of frugal by talking
about little calibers, mouse guns and 22s and things like that as a valid form of self-defense.
Now before you click next and go to your next podcast, you want to listen to our guest tonight.
Our guest is Dr. Sherman House, a person who I have known of for over 10 years now when
he first appeared on Ballistic Radio with John Johnston.
And by the way, if you don't know, Ballistic Radio was the inspiration for this podcast.
So I highly recommend going back and listening to those past episodes.
If you're inclined, there's something like 370 of them.
But Dr. House is unique in that I think that he does an excellent job of being maybe a
clearinghouse for a lot of expert opinions, his included, but he also has had a lot of
discussions with some of the best and brightest in the shooting community, Paul Gomez, Claude
Werner, Darrell Bulkey, people that you may or may not be familiar with, and all people,
minus Paul Gomez, who sadly passed a number of years ago, who we would like to have as
future guests on the show.
But jumping right into it, I'll introduce my first, my co-host, Ken.
Ken, how are you tonight?
Doing well.
Doing very well.
Looking forward to this conversation.
I'm a person who both likes small calibers as well as mouse guns, as I have quite a few
of them myself.
So with that, why don't we go ahead and start?
Yeah, and I will remind the listeners too, that nothing you're hearing here is legal
advice.
Nothing you're hearing here is other than our opinions and the opinions of our guests.
And tonight, the opinions are going to be a little bit different than maybe what you're
used to.
So, you know, do your own research, you know, be smart and make the right decisions, but
make the informed decisions.
And that's what we're here to help.
So without further ado, Dr. House, tell us a little bit about yourself, how you got into
this and who you are and what you do.
Well, so my name is Sherman House.
I kind of came into this business in sort of a weird way.
I originally as a young man had designs on becoming a police officer.
And I was a law enforcement cadet for a few years and then ended up kind of getting distracted
by the fire service and ended up going into the fire service and EMS for a total of about
10 years and then went to professional school to become a dentist.
And so that wasn't a radical departure by any means.
I was the only person in my class of 75 people who came from that background.
So let's see, I spent about five, almost six years as a reserve peace officer in the state
of Tennessee when I was in practice as a dentist.
So I did that until May of 2023, just last year.
And so I kind of have a broad base of experience also in there.
I spent a number of years in the armored truck service, working, riding shotgun on our armored
truck.
And that was how I paid for my tuition through junior college.
So I went to junior college, got a transfer degree and then transferred to a full-time
university, Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington.
And while I was at school, I played rugby for Gonzaga, go Bulldogs.
And I also worked at an emergency room there as an EMT.
So did you see any gunshot victims while you were working as an EMT at all?
Oh yeah.
Like in the pre-hospital service where you're on an ambulance and then also in the emergency
room.
Yeah.
I mean, in fact, we always joke and say that the hospital in Spokane that I worked at, we
called it the Deaconess Gun and Knife Club.
Just because it was such a frequent occurrence.
I mean, Spokane, Washington, unfortunately, it hasn't gotten any better, but 20 years
ago it was still a pretty violent place.
And with the fentanyl issues these days, it hasn't gotten any better.
So you being a dentist, I think, well, Doc Holliday was a dentist.
So there's something, you have a little bit of lineage there, I suppose.
Was Dr. Martin Flackler also a dentist?
No, he was an MD, but Gary K. Roberts is also a hospital dentist like I am.
He's basically Faakler's modern day protege and has recapitulated a lot of Dr. Faakler's
work, but also created a pretty wide body of experience and knowledge based on his work
as well.
So for those who don't know, the people that we're talking about, Dr. Martin Flackler was
one of the, I think, probably original long theses on gunshot wounds and has written extensively
about that.
And now you're saying his protege is also a dentist, interestingly enough.
I guess it just runs in dentistry.
Runs in your family too, Craig.
It does.
My son is an aspiring dentist currently doing, he is a dentist technically, doing his residency
in Tucson, Arizona.
What's his residency in?
In general dentistry.
He's got an AEGD and he's doing that and then looking for his more permanent position when
he rolls out of that in a few months.
But back to the topic at hand, you've written extensively and you have a website, which
by the way, I do recommend, highly recommend our listeners to go give a read at the civilian
defender.
I like the format of your website, Dr. House.
It's an easy read because essentially your articles are all serialized and you don't
have to jump around to different things along the website.
It's easy to follow the train of thinking and the evolution of the thinking, the way
you've laid it out.
But one of the things that when you talk to John Johnston about back in 2014, I think
originally in his season two and then again in season four had to do with, I think it
was maybe best captured in your more recent article about the mouse gun mindset.
We were hoping you could talk about that a little bit for people who think that, you
know, if I don't have a nine millimeter or better, then I'm going to get myself killed
on the street for lack of a better, you know, larger caliber.
So can you run with that for a little while?
Sure.
So the gist of that is mouse gun mindset is not my terminology.
That's Darryl Bulkey's terminology.
And the thesis of his argument there is that, you know, there's basically two kinds of guns
in defensive firearms usage for regular civilians.
There's getting into trouble guns and getting out of trouble guns.
So getting out of trouble gun is a mouse gun, you know, something that is small caliber,
you know, sub caliber, generally like 38 special or smaller readily concealable in the lightest
of clothing, lightweight enough so that it doesn't create issues with being retained
with holsters that aren't reliant on a belt for retention.
So generally guns that weigh under a pound and are shorter in length.
So the whole idea being that, you know, as in Darryl's case, you know, in my case and
a few other the other guys, Greg Elefratz and such that we're not actively working in
law enforcement anymore.
So our enforcement capabilities or desire to do that is nil.
And if we are faced with a defensive scenario, it's because someone has misjudged us and
chosen us incorrectly through victim selection.
And now we're, you know, being forced to respond.
So they're a not a proactive weapon.
They're a reactive weapon that is meant for portability, concealability, and I'd also
say possibly like ease of use.
So the problem is, is when you get into large, larger caliber guns, so like even say just
the common subcompact or micro compact nine millimeters, like even a sig 365, you know,
it's a, you know, it's a riddle, original iteration, it was a 10 shot nine millimeter
and it's pretty small.
You know, it's on order of the size of a J frame, but you have 10 rounds of nine millimeter
in the butt of the gun, which makes it heavy on one end and light on the other and relatively
short.
So if you carry it like with drawstring shorts or, you know, drawstring pants or in a coat
pocket, it's going to sag because it weighs more than a pound, even if it's just a little
bit more.
So contrast that to something like, you know, Ruger LCP max or Ruger LCP or a Kel-Tec P32
or a Beretta Bobcat or something of that style where it's well under a pound.
It's relatively balanced because it's so small.
There's it is of course, if it's a semi-automatic pistol, it's still going to be butt heavy.
But if it's an alloy framed revolver, you know, with a steel cylinder and a steel barrel,
then it could still come in well with under a pound and be comfortable to carry in a variety
of situations.
So the whole idea being that if you're forced into a defensive scenario, you have not necessarily
the best gun for it, but in most civilian defensive scenarios, any gun will do.
The best gun is the gun you have with you, basically.
Yeah, I myself, I'm also a bit old school probably.
And I have my daily carry is a 38 special, but I also have nines that are available too.
And I'm also a wheel gun guy.
I just like revolvers, always have, probably always will.
They're reliable.
The nice thing about them is there's no buttons, tabs, this to push or anything.
I can also hand it if I ever had to, not that I would, but if I ever had to hand it to somebody,
anybody in the world could figure out how to use it.
They just pull the trigger.
Yeah, the manual of arms is very short.
Manual arms is almost nothing.
You hand them with something, you know, somebody's SIGs with a de-cocker and a this and a that
and a button and you know, no, no clue what's going to happen.
So we may have already touched on it, Dr. House, but when on your website, you talk
about the pragmatic approach to self-defense, is that, it sounds like you've kind of already
roundly touched on it to begin with that maybe there people are conflating two different
things.
They're conflating the need for lethality and the need for let's say combat effectiveness
or maybe you could even call it civilian effectiveness in the context of a self-defense scenario
where you want the action to stop and no further because anything beyond that might be irresponsible,
unnecessary, create civil liability or criminal liability, all those things.
Maybe you could talk about that a little bit too.
Sure.
So you, people conflate the idea of lethality, stopping power, combat effectiveness, all
these things that are really militaristic for sure, but also possibly like law enforcement
terminology and the mission of a civilian defender versus a law enforcement officer
or agent versus a military person is three completely different missions.
So you know, the military's job is to, you know, essentially destroy an objective and
break things largely.
I mean, I know it was never in the military, so I can't, you know, be any more specific
than that, but it's a different mission than civilians.
And then as far as law enforcement, I have done that, you know, and that is essentially,
you know, either deterring or pursuing someone who is thought to have committed a crime and
then physically seizing that person, whether that's with hands-on capability or, you know,
in the eyes of the law using lethal force against a suspect is also regarded as a seizure.
You're seizing that person.
So for the civilian, none of those things apply.
That's not our job.
You know, your job, my job is we're supposed to go home at the end of the day or anything
that precludes us from doing that.
That's, you know, done of course in a threatening manner.
That's what we concern ourselves with.
So the most likely scenarios that civilians find themselves in are, you know, related
to being a victim of some kind of assault or robbery or sexual assault, you know, which
also counts as assault.
So those are the, and then of course things like road rage incidents are fairly common
these days too, unfortunately.
So those are the most common things that a civilian is faced with.
And in any of those situations, your goal as the defender is to make the person that
is trying to impose their will upon you, stop what they're doing and go away.
So a lot of those cases, and I'm talking like the estimates are somewhere between, you know,
50,000 to more than a million times a year result in, you know, somebody walks up to
you in a parking lot and says, Hey buddy, stick them up and give me your wallet.
And then you reach into your pocket and pull out your 38 and say, no.
And then they go, Oh, Hey, my car is running.
I got to go.
And they, you know, turn 180 degrees and they take off.
And that's the whole defensive gun use.
Like it's over with all the way up to, you know, somebody sticks a gun in your face and
you're like, okay, okay, okay.
And you feign compliance and then a gun comes into play or, you know, a carjacking the list
goes on and on as far as scenarios.
But the whole mission for the civilian is to force a break in contact and be, and be
able to get away.
And to that point, do you think that, well, let's, let's cut to the core of the controversial
side of this.
I mean, a lot of people are thinking, yeah, great.
What you said is good, but I need stopping power in order to achieve that.
And I ain't getting that.
I'm not stopping the fight with the 22.
Now your background as, I mean, you have a scientific and the law enforcement and EMT
background.
Um, and I imagine that you look at things through the lens of objective reality and
evidence.
What evidence do you have that supports the idea that subcaliber guns?
And I'm not challenging you.
I'm just asking that subcaliber guns are effective.
Is it just the binary of gun versus no gun?
Is it that simple or are they effective?
Yeah, it can be.
Yeah, they are effective.
And here's the thing that, that a lot of people get twisted.
They know they'll look at gel results and clear gel results and think that they're indicative
of something that they're not necessarily, that they not necessarily are.
So all, you know, to quote Dr. Gary Roberts, you know, all pistol bullets do is poke holes.
It doesn't matter if it's a 22, which pokes a small hole or a nine millimeter, which pokes
an intermediate size hole or a 44 magnum or a 44 special that pokes a larger diameter
hole.
All pistol bullets, um, when fired through handgun rounds, um, are, you know, relatively
poke holes.
When you get into rifle caliber bullets, you know, like things that are moving faster than,
you know, 2100, 2200 feet per second or so, then there's a change in the dynamics there
as far as how human tissue responds to that animal tissue of any kind, really.
So when you are using a pistol of any kind, the premier thing that you need to concern
yourself with is shot placement.
It's kind of weird to have people think that, you know, a dentist does a lot of things with
trauma.
But when I was working as a professor at a school, you know, there were attached to a
teaching hospital that's in an urban area of a large city and anything that came in
to the emergency room, you know, the body is broken up by real estate essentially.
So you know, certain damage or issues with a certain part of the body go to certain types
of specialists.
So anything that was from the floor of the orbits, you know, the base of the eyeballs
to the Adam's apple in the neck fell into the category of oral maxillofacial surgery
and hospital dentistry.
So anybody that was, that was, you know, shot, stabbed, crushed, stomped, um, in that area
ends up falling into us.
So we saw, uh, sub caliber wounds to the face pretty regularly.
Um, because a lot, just like, you know, a lot of us choose to carry these sub caliber
guns.
So do a lot of people who are, you know, working about the world with criminal intent because
they're small, they're easy to hide.
They're, you know, all of the reasons that we like to use them, they like to use them
too.
But that goes both ways.
So obviously we don't see people in the hospital service that expire before they arrive at
the hospital.
Um, so there are people that are shot with sub caliber wounds that we never see because
they're dead.
And I did see, you know, several cases of that when I worked on, you know, the ambulance
and in law enforcement, but it is, you know, we saw a good number of people, um, on our
service during my time there that, um, had been shot, you know, somewhere between the
floor of the orbits and the Adam's apple with 22s, 25s, 32s, three eighties, 38s.
Um, and you know, while they weren't necessarily, uh, you know, I mean, they weren't obviously
killed, they were still alive for us to be able to treat them.
I wouldn't say that they were in awesome condition and most of them, you know, you have pretty
good rapport with them, even the ones that are, uh, you know, there because they're now
guests of the, uh, state.
Um, they are also pretty honest with us, you know, they, I mean, I think a lot of them
are kind of lonely and they just want somebody to talk to.
So they would be pretty honest about like what was going on when that happened.
And you know, if you've ever the criminal element before, they'll often tell you, you
know, fairly honestly.
And there was a number of people that we saw that, you know, when they realized that they
had been shot, it did make them have an immediate change in what they had been doing previous
to them being shot.
So you know, call that a psychological stop.
Um, a few of these people, you know, lost a good amount of blood.
So there was a hematologic or a hemorrhagic factor to it.
So there was some substantial blood loss, but you know, in, in very few of these cases,
that, uh, we saw in, in, even in cases I saw where they were not sub caliber wounds, where
they were large caliber wounds.
Like I've treated people before that were shot with nine millimeters, people that were
shot with 45s and the damage while it was different, it was essentially like Dr. Robert
says it's just drilling holes in people.
So it just depends on where the hole is and what it hits as it passes through, um, as
to the physical damage that is done.
And while a lot of these people, I guess you would say that they had, you know, physical
deformities after that, or they were, you could tell that something had traumatic had
happened to them.
Um, with rare exception, were they disabled permanently?
Like to the point where, uh, I can think of a couple where people, you know, were shot
like in the eyes.
Um, so obviously, you know, eyeballs that are made out of mostly fluid don't do well
when a high speed projectile passes through them.
Um, so, you know, I've seen enough of those firsthand to not feel like carrying even a
22, um, you know, with effective ammunition in it is unsubstantial.
Yeah, I was just, I was just going to say, I mean, cause basically in the defensive situation,
you know, we're not military, we're not police.
Uh, you want to get them to change their attitude if they're doing something bad.
And it seems like, uh, almost anybody, at least if you're not, uh, under the influence
of drugs or alcohol or both, uh, if you get shot, even if it's a relatively minor thing,
it's going to be a pretty good indicator that I think for most people, most sane people
that they're going to change whatever they were doing so they don't continue to get shot
or get worse or pass away or they're going to stop and probably hopefully leave and walk
away, which is really what you're trying to accomplish anyway.
If you have to, but there's, but there's, there's people now yelling at their, at their
radio or phone or whatever they're listening to our podcast on saying, but, but, but, and
it's because these people are insane or they are on drugs or something like that.
I mean, Dr. House, you, you once recalled, uh, I mean, to quote a quote that you were
quoting, um, Claude Warner, that the tactical professor, um, that about roughly a third,
he said 34% in cases of people being shot with a 22, which by the way, is a great argument
for frugal, right?
Because what could be cheaper than 22?
Um, but about, but a third of the people died instantly.
Now, I mean, I imagine that as calibers go up, the number goes up, but it sounds to me
like you're intimating that not necessarily it's not linear in other words.
Uh, and shot placement has a lot more to do with it.
And maybe what you've experienced in terms of seeing people with facial injuries from
small calibers is that perhaps people are more proficient with small calibers because
they don't anticipate recoil as much, or they have perhaps practiced with it or something
like that, that allows them, or, or maybe going, if you were to give someone advice,
would you be able to say that, um, get proficient with the small caliber gun because proficiency
matters more than caliber?
Yeah.
I mean, you know, if you have the means to be able to carry, you know, a full size or
a compact size service pistol, I mean, why wouldn't you, you know, like they're easier
to shoot there.
They're more ergonomic.
You know, we have things now like the SIG macro and the XL type series where you have
a gun that has almost the capacity, uh, or, you know, like a macro has the capacity of
a Glock 17, but it's 70% the size of the gun.
You know, it's one inch thick.
It's markedly smaller than a Glock 17, but you know, I'm six foot four and, and, you
know, 260 pounds.
Like I can hide a Glock 17 on my body if I want to, you know, someone who is a 105 pound
female or 115 pound female, it doesn't have that same luxury, you know, unless they have
to say hide it in a handbag or something like that.
It's not going to be something that they're able to keep on their body.
But when you talk about that same size frame person being able to hide, you know, a P365
XL or smaller gun on them, and that allows them to have some capability, then obviously
that would be a better thing.
I think that it still boils down to accuracy though, and shot placement, you know, like
I don't care if people carry, you know, a Beretta Bobcat with eight rounds of federal
punch in it, or if somebody carries, you know, a Sig fuse with 22 round magazines in it.
Like if you're able to shoot those and, and have a, a respectable level of accuracy, then
that's where you really need to focus at.
So you know, I think a pretty good benchmark for that is like the five by five by five.
So a five inch circle at five yards and being able to place five shots into that circle
is a good barometer of performance.
I take it one degree smaller than that.
I shoot it regular Las Vegas sized playing cards and do five rounds into the card in
five seconds from five yards off the draw.
So if I have a pistol that I'm evaluating, I think that last article, Craig, that you
mentioned about the preoccupation with the inconsequential increments, I think I did
put a picture of a playing card up there, but I can't remember if I did or not.
But anyway, that's how I test a pistol.
Like, you know, is this red dot like relatively zeroed?
Does it shoot to the sites?
If the gun's just an iron sight gun, are the sites, you know, decipherable enough under
mixed lighting conditions that I can pick up that level of accuracy.
If I, if I can hit a playing card at five yards, five times in five seconds or less
from the draw, I feel like I can worry about other things at that point.
And to your point, sir, actually that, that preoccupation with incremental, no, inconsequential
increments, right?
Attributed to, I believe Jeff Cooper.
That particular statement kind of resonates really well into, into a segue of this podcast.
Let's be honest, this podcast is listened to by people who are 2A and gun advocates.
Most people who carry aren't going to be listening to this podcast because they're not that
invested and therefore they're not interested in the, well, I have a better red dot than
you or I have suppressor height sites and you don't or whatever the case might be.
How many people that you've encountered, because it looks like, sounds like you've encountered
a number of them were trained.
I mean, beyond maybe the legal requirement to carry in their state and maybe not even
that because they're constitutional carry or they're criminals and they didn't care
and they didn't train at all.
Well I'd say in the, in the training circles that I run and obviously like the majority
of those people are either already trained or they're there getting their first training,
you know, in the places that I've worked as an instructor.
But you know, in the general shooting world, you know, there's probably 10,000 people in
the whole country that train on a regular basis, like actually seek out, you know, training
where they're, you know, paying somebody to teach them something that they don't know.
So it's a pretty small community and I've kind of tested that hypothesis by, you know,
I lived in Tennessee for almost 20 years and taught for, you know, one of the major training
brands there tactical response.
And it didn't matter if I was there or if I was in Shehalis, Washington, I'd run into
some of the same people.
So you know, or going up the East Coast, you'd run into the same people or down into Florida,
you'd run into the same people like there's very few people that are the heavy civilian
centric hobbyists slash.
I don't mean hobbyist is a pejorative.
I mean, I consider myself a hobbyist, you know, that the train to that level, like where
they're taking, you know, one or more paid classes a year.
Yeah, I agree.
Because I mean, we are frugal firearms and most people don't have the financial wherewithal
to be able to do that.
So you get a certain amount of training, obviously, oftentimes initially from family members and
friends and yes, I think Craig's taken far more formal training than I have ever had
the opportunity to.
But again, I don't have quite the financial resources to be able to do it.
But that doesn't mean it can be bad.
I mean, one of the things that we did, we had on here a couple episodes back was the
Mantis X10, which was a way of doing effectively dry fire practicing in your house without
having to pay a range fee, which can be 25 bucks or 40 bucks depends on where you go.
Plus, you know, boxes of ammunition and you want to put at least 100, maybe 200 grams
down range every time you go to the range if you can, and on caliber and so forth.
And that adds up.
And for some people, it's prohibitive, can't be done.
That's why I really like that Mantis X10 system for practicing at home.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I mean, you know, the merits of dry fire, like whether you're using an electronic
system or whether you're using, you know, just a safe backstop and snap caps or, you
know, if it's a center fire pistol, just, you know, simply hand cycling it or using
like a dry fire mag.
You know, the benefits of dry fire, especially on first shot and manipulations is, you know,
goes without saying it's important.
Yeah, they always say that it's what, two to three rounds as your typical defensive
firearms, less than five seconds and like less than three or less rounds, I believe
the statistic anyway.
Yeah, they always used to say, you know, like three rounds, three seconds within three yards.
And I, you know, I don't know if that's like something that's based in fact, or if it's
something that's just been kind of, you know, twisted into an idea over time.
But I mean, that's not a, that's not a ridiculous standard to hold yourself to.
Do you think Dr. House that there's a certain percentage of our community and by our community,
I'm probably talking more about people who work at gun stores or at gun ranges who disenfranchise
new young or maybe disabled or less able shooters because it's like, well, if it's not a nine
millimeter, then you know, why are you bothering?
And that then essentially not literally, but effectively disarms people who should otherwise
I mean, I think I have a buddy here that I shoot with pretty regularly and he's a fantastic
instructor named Rick Remington.
And he teaches here at the Skagit shooting range in Burlington, Washington.
And he has had people come through his class that are, you know, differently abled and
or physically infirm or elderly or have severe arthritis.
And he's gotten them set up with, you know, like a Glock 44 in 22 caliber.
It's the size of a Glock 19.
So it's, you know, essentially a compact size service pistol in 22.
You can put any other Glock sites on it so you can put high visibility sites on it.
I think for this particular person, he put a set of excess big dots on it.
And then I believe he had them loading it with either federal punch or CCI mini mag.
And both of those are, you know, the punches is more expensive, but CCI mini mag is ubiquitous.
I mean, you can buy that at any Walmart coast to coast and you can even buy it at some truck
stops.
So, you know, for that person to be able to, you know, shoot to the five by five by five
standard and do it comfortably, like without it being a chore for them.
I mean, I think that that person's just as capable as someone with that exact same pistol,
but in nine millimeter in the Glock version with, you know, a 10 round magazine.
Like I don't think that there's any discernible difference you're going to see even necessarily
in performance.
I appreciate you mentioning some of those various models.
Sadly, being here on the left coast in the state of California, we have a very limited
register of things that are available to us.
And it was only until very recently that they started adding some more things on it, but
we went 12, I think it was 12 years without a new version of a fire, any type of a handgun
being added to the register.
And I think the only reason Glock makes Gen threes, Gen three Glock's feel brand new is
because of the California market.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I think that they're probably also pretty common for overseas sales.
I feel like Glock, Gen three Glock 19s are pretty ubiquitous throughout the world.
So, so Dr. House, you're, you've been consistent on message since the first time I heard you,
which I indicated was around a decade ago.
And I thought I'd just ask this question.
I think that you, like I'm an engineer and, and you're, you're in the medical field.
So we both view things through an objective lens, but I imagine you have absorbed a lot
of grief from people over the years for, for your, your perspectives on, on sub caliber
as maybe not the go-to cause you didn't say that, but as a viable alternative for self
defenses.
Am I reading that?
Yeah.
I mean, I, you know, I've, I've gotten pushback on those kinds of things, but I think that
a lot of it, you know, even if you find somebody who's a real hardcore advocate for, you know,
carrying a full size or, you know, a compact size service pistol and two spare magazines
and such, you know, like as if you're kidding up, you know, in the capacity of a domestic
law enforcement officer, I think that very few of them would argue with performance.
So what I mean by that is if I'm like, okay, well that's great, but this person is also
capable of this level of accuracy within these time constraints with this sub caliber less
than optimal in your eyes pistol that's utterly reliable.
What's the problem?
You know, like to each their own, you know, ultimately the choice of what people carry
is, is up to them.
You know, it's like, I'm not going to get on here and tell you Craig, or you can like
what kind of underwear you should be wearing, you know, like I don't care.
It has zero effect on my life.
Just like your choice in what you choose to EDC has zero effect on my life.
You know, it's ultimately something that only affects that person.
And you could say like, well, yeah, but it also affects the people that you carry or
that you are responsible for.
Well, that's sort of true, but think of it from the flip side, like, so, you know, I'm
a big guy if I'm carrying a five inch M and P with 20 round magazines in it.
And I have, you know, a weapon mounted light and an optic attached to it, just like the
kind that I, you know, that's the pistol that I carried, like, you know, for law enforcement
duty.
So if I give that gun to my significant other and expect, you know, a hundred and twelve
pound woman to be able to wield that same almost three pound pistol with all the crap
hanging off of it that I do with the plume with that same level of accuracy.
Am I really being honest with myself?
If this is a pool weapon that we're all supposed to be able to use, you know, I don't know.
Conversely, like if somebody said, well, you know, you're doing your family a disservice
by carrying a sub caliber pistol.
I don't know.
I just don't, I just don't really buy that.
I mean, I think that if you are someone who is acutely aware of your surroundings and
what goes on, you don't necessarily need to make up for it with, you know, equipment.
I think you can do a lot with, with quite a little.
And I, you know, like you were saying, Craig, about the engineering thing, like I always
used to joke and tell people that I went to the Angus MacGyver school of dentistry because
the school that I went to was, you know, chronically underfunded.
We didn't have state of the art equipment, but we were trained in such a way that we
could go, you know, anywhere and do good work with just a modicum of a very simple low technology
tools.
And that served me really well when I got out into the rural world and went to work
in prisons, you know, like where I'm working on correctional patients only with the simplest
of tools, but still being able to be a hundred percent effective in my job.
And then same thing with my time, you know, working as a contractor for the national guard,
providing dental services to deploying troops through all of that.
I had really simple gear, gear that was state of the art 40 years ago.
And I was still able to provide, you know, very good care to all of these groups of people.
I think that that mindset carries over to defensive tactics as well.
You don't need the latest greatest thing.
Like yes, technology is great.
If you have the means, you should avail yourself of it.
But if you don't, it doesn't mean that you have to go sit somewhere and cry, you know,
like for example, like I really enjoy, you know, the history behind certain pistols and
there's like pistols that I think, you know, to myself, like if I ever see this at a local
gun shop, you know, in the use case or something, it's something I'm going to get.
Well, when I was a cadet, the sergeant that I worked for, he was, you know, had just an
impressive gun collection back in the day.
And recently he asked me if I'd be interested in purchasing a Smith and Wesson Model 39-2
that he had.
And I was like, the 39-2, of course I want the gun that was, you know, that was the very
first widely issued police semi-automatic pistol ever, you know, to the Illinois state
police.
So I was like, yeah, of course I want it.
And then of course, you know, guys in our generation, you remember the coolest guy in
film and TV that carried that was of course, Colonel Hannibal Smith from the A-Team.
So I got that.
So I bought that gun.
I put period correct wood grips on it and I took it to the range and shot it with standard
pressure nine millimeter ammo.
And I probably shot, oh, I don't know, about 200 rounds through it.
Love it when a plan comes together.
Exactly.
And I was like, you know, if I had no other defensive pistol other than this thing, it's
flat, you know, it's an alloy frame.
It carries very easily.
It's well balanced.
I mean, yeah, it holds eight rounds in the magazine and of course one round in the chamber,
but you know, it's double action, single action, you know, traditional pistol.
And if that's what I had to use for self-defense purposes, I wouldn't lose a wink of sleep
over it.
Like, yeah, it has old, you know, fixed or sorry, adjustable rear like K38 type rear
sight and then, you know, a big Smith and Wesson type blade on the front side that is
integral with the slide.
But I put a couple, you know, I degreased it, put a couple coats of white fingernail
polish and then orange fingernail polish over the top of it.
And I can see it clearly in, you know, any of the lighting conditions that most civilians
would encounter.
Yeah, it doesn't have a provision for a weapon mounted light, but I think that weapon mounted
lights for civilians are really overrated.
Yeah.
Honestly.
One of the guns that I'm going to point out a specific one here, which I've recommended
to a person who I know is only going to have one firearm in their entire life.
And it happens to be an LCR, a light compact revolver from Ruger.
And I recommended a particular caliber, which is the new 327 Federal caliber, which is,
does very well from a high, they say it's almost the equivalent to like a 38 plus P
or even a mildly loaded 357 ballistically.
But the reason why I suggested is number one is a six shot revolver instead of the typical
five for the LCR.
But as this person ages and gets older, they can step down from a 327, if they don't want
to shoot that down to the 32 H&R Magnum, if they wanted to use that, or step it back down
to the 32 Smith and Wesson Long, which is a very mild shooting and very old cartridge,
very accurate, still produced today.
And if you couldn't even handle that, you could step it all the way down to, I think
it's a 32 short.
All of those fit in the exact same, those four calibers fit in that one revolver.
And I recommended this as a revolver.
You don't think about it too much and practice with it.
It's got power from the top all the way to the bottom and it's one gun for your whole
life.
And that for me, it's frugal for that woman.
You forgot one caliber though, Ken, that it'll also shoot.
Oh, which one?
32 ACP.
Oh, because it's a semi rimmed.
32 ACP is semi rimmed.
That's correct.
Yeah.
I have an LCR 327 and I also have a SP 101 327.
And I'm a big fan of Ruger products.
I know that they've gotten a lot of grief over the years, but my first handgun that
I ever owned was a Ruger standard, like pre-mark one that I inherited from my grandfather in
22.
And that was the gun that I used as my only handgun until I was able to purchase a service
sized pistol once I started in uniform service.
So I think that there's a lot of wisdom in that, having a gun that is, and I mean, I'm
an able bodied 50 year old man and I shoot 32 Smith and Wesson long and 32 Smith and
Wesson short.
I've shot the federal mags out of it and I've shot the H&R mags out of it.
And I prefer to shoot 32 Smith and Wesson long, wide cutters out of it.
So Dr. House, do you think that, I mean, that said, actually I didn't know that that gun
would carry that many different calibers.
So I just learned something.
Do you think that the equipment and equipment by the way can mean rounds?
And you mentioned like, for example, the punch route, are things improving in ways that make
sub caliber choice as a primary or perhaps only defensive weapon more valid over time
than it used to be?
I mean, much as you'd say that, you know, the nine millimeter when they finally did
something other than FMJ became a lot more viable is the same thing essentially working
its way down the caliber.
Yeah, I think, I mean, you know, for a long time, 22 performance ammunition was either
made to be very quiet, you know, like for suppressed use, it was made to be very accurate
for competition use.
You know, like I'm talking like, you know, one whole groups at 10 yard kind of accuracy,
you know, with 22s, if you have a match grade 22.
And then, you know, rounds that are suitable for for small hunting, small critter hunting,
you know, squirrels and rodents and what have you.
So now we have performance based ammunition that is specifically targeted towards the
self defense community and things like the punch.
So the punch is essentially almost a 22 watt cutter, and it cuts like a very small, relatively
straight hole, because it's got, you know, a meat platter on the front of it that that
allows it to have almost the cutting edge instead of something that just pushes tissue
out of the way it actually punches a hole.
So if you place it in the right spot, anatomically, it will do what it's supposed to do.
So yeah, I think it's it's one of those things where maybe people have realized the utility
and like, hey, if we have a small, you know, 22 that is like the Glock 44, like the new
Taurus products where, you know, it's essentially a compact size service pistol range gun, you
know, that is relatively high capacity, works reliably, and has usable sights on it that
people can, you know, achieve good results on it.
That's, that's the big thing.
You know, if you have an old Beretta Bobcat that's got that semi, you know, half moon
front sight on it, you know, where, and then just a little tiny notch that's cut into the
back of the slide, like those are very hard to use.
But if you have, you know, like I have a Smith and Wesson model 20 or 20 M&P 22 compact,
you know, that is basically a full size M&P that you put in the dryer for too long, you
know, it's about 60% the size of a full size M&P pistol, but it's utterly reliable with
any 22s that I've shot through it.
And it works great.
I wouldn't have, you know, any concerns like you were saying, Ken, about that being my
old man gun.
And if you really wanted to like make it super old man gun, you could put a, you know, like
a silencer co sparrow on it.
And it, you know, if you shoot ammunition that is, you know, most 22 ammunition, that's
not, you know, like stingers or as we call them in Tennessee, Steiners, then, then it's
going to be like ridiculously quiet.
Yes.
And we live sadly, Greg and I, and not a free state.
So we're not allowed to have safety equipment that would protect our ears.
Yeah.
So that's, that's, that's one of the things about Washington state is odd.
You know, you can basically have like nothing else, including like a, you know, they have
like some restrictions on folding knives and stuff, but like, you can actually buy a can
here relatively easily.
So maybe because they want the, you know, the tax stamp money or something like that.
Could be the background on that.
So another kind of circling back to the, to the start of the conversation a little bit,
you talked about your background as an EMT as a proportion.
And I'm, I'm leading with the assumption that you're going to agree with my idea that training
beyond what's necessary to get your license or whatever is still a valid use of your money.
And in fact, frugal in the longterm, because all the money you'll save, particularly carry
insurance.
But how often have you come across situations that required medical attention that could
have used some training in opposition to how many times have you thought that you would
wish you had more training in firearms?
And I'm imagining that it's a big proportion toward medical and people don't get that very
much at all.
You know, you asked me in the, in the questions before about my use of things, you know, and
I've, I've, yeah, I've been in defensive gun uses before, but like that's happened, you
know, a handful of times.
And those were work related with a couple of exceptions.
One exception was interdicting an active shooter.
But the majority of the things that I've dealt with before CPR, AED use, you know, an automated
external defibrillator, the Heimlich maneuver, rescue breathing and controlling life threatening
bleeding were literally things that like save people's lives.
Oh, I also have to add on Narcan Narcan music just because of the amount of opiates that
are out floating around in the streets now is unprecedented.
But those skills, I think are more important than, you know, high level defensive gun use
type skills.
Yeah.
And I think that it just, it just isn't, I mean, maybe it's hard to have a fun podcast
about it.
Nobody wants to do it.
I mean, like, you know, I've taught hundreds of those types of classes, you know, but the
only time that those classes are really, I don't know, for lack of a better term, hot
is right after a major mass casualty incident.
So I taught a whole bunch right after, you know, the Route 91 harvest festival shooting
in Las Vegas back in 17.
I think that was, you know, when there's a school shooting, people get real interested
in that kinds of thing.
But you know, I can't tell you how many classes for like my hemorrhage arrest course that
I put on the books and nobody signs up because there's like no urgency.
There's no ego service that really happens in medical training classes.
You know, I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but you know, people in shooting
classes, you know, they get to work towards the performance goal of, you know, being the
best shooter on the line or they get some, you know, as Brian Eastridge calls them, like
a range Pokemon, you know, they get like a challenge coin or, you know, some kind of
thing as, or a patch as a recognition of their performance, you know, in medical training,
like congratulations, like hopefully your child or your loved one doesn't have to bleed
out in front of you when they get, you know, hit by a propeller strike while you're out
water skiing, you know, like relatively simple and innocuous things.
And I have had several students, I can't tell you the exact number because, you know, it's
not something that I record in my resume, but you know, I've had a number of students
have defensive gun uses or, you know, actual shootings and or gunfights that they've been,
you know, the victors of. So I know that what I've taught works. I've also had far more
people like call me sometimes and be like, dude, while I was driving home from the class
that you taught, I happened upon a car accident where someone's arm went through the closed
pass or the closed driver's side, side window. And they had, you know, a severe radial artery
laceration that was squirting, you know, three feet out of their arm when I walked upon them.
And if I hadn't just taken your class on how to fix that, I probably would have watched
that person weed out because it took 15 or 20 minutes for the volunteer fire department
to get there. So it's like, good job, you know, like I've had students in the past that
work as range safety officers at places where people have had self-inflicted, you know,
not self-inflicted accidental gunshot wounds, you know, from a from a negligent discharge
where they've had to treat them at the scene until the fire department gets there. So these
things happen and they happen with staunch regularity. I mean, unfortunately, you know,
I was at a conference last year where one of the attendees suffered a cardiac event
while we were there and me and a few other, you know, medical and first responder professionals
worked on that guy, you know, with CPR and AED skills. So that, you know, there's there's
nobody that's safe from that kind of stuff. I always tell people that when, when they
take that class, they are essentially like, you know, I call it like adult scouting, you
know, like, and I mean, like, in terms of like Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Cub Scouts,
like you're becoming a better citizen of the world because of the knowledge that you have
because there's been, I can't even tell you that, I mean, I've probably done CPR at this
point in my life, both in a professional and off duty capacity, like more than a thousand
times. And, and I've happened to pawn like hundreds of car accidents to this point, you
know, driving coast to coast. And, you know, there's times where I'm like, you know, I
drive up and I look, and then I, you know, see the dust or I see blood. And then I just
think like, you know, I've got, you know, places to be and things to do and people to
see but then I think like, I might buy the only person for, you know, 25 minutes and
25 miles that knows what the heck to do here. So I better do it. You know, luckily people
give me grace if I'm trying to make a deadline or something. So that's, I think that that,
yeah, that's a valid reason to be late saving someone's life and you get, and you get to
sleep at night. It's always kind of convincing when you, you know, when you show up at a
place with, you know, well, James Yeager always used to tease me and, you know, God rest
his soul. He always used to say, you know, you've never had a normal job in your life
where you don't go home with other people's blood on you at the end of the day. And I'd
say, yeah, I guess you're right. You know, even now your son will experience that at
some point, Craig, I have a lot of messy days where I'm supposed to go meet my family for
dinner after work. And I say, hang on, I got to run home, change my shirt and wipe and
wash my face. So, Hey, as we, as we finish out here, uh, with, with our last few minutes,
you got any, I mean, it sounds like you're already kind of touched on it, but you got
any funny, entertaining, weird stories that you've never told before, or you just love
telling that you want people to,
Yeah. I, I would say, um, well, this is kind of like self-referential. So forgive me for
that, but I wrote an article on my website. This is, you know, at least a decade ago.
And I talked about a case that I treated where a guy who was somehow tangential to the narcotics
importation business, we'll call it, um, took a contact shot from a 45 caliber pistol right
to his face, right to his right maxilla. So if you, you know, for the people at home,
if you touch the bottom of your right eyelid and then bring your finger down about an inch
and a half, kind of like where your cheekbone is most proudest. Um, the bullet went in there,
it hit the back of his maxillary sinus turned straight down, went through his maxillary
sinus punched out two teeth that are, you know, attached to the base of your skull,
which he either spit out or swallowed along with a pretty good size piece of his upper
jaw. Uh, the part that we call the tuberosity. And then it went down into his mandible, kind
of did another loop, did he loop and skidded all the way across his mouth and then lodged
itself in front of the hinge of his jaw joint. So when he came to me, this was an acute injury.
So it was kind of, you know, crusted over at this point. Uh, there was a 230 grain federal
hydro shock, which is, you know, as you guys both know, that's a long standing, you know,
like with 30 year history of, of solid performance, nobody's going to say, don't give me, you
know, a Glock 21 with 14 rounds of 230 grain hydro shocks in it. That's not going to kill
a thing. Uh, no one would say that. No one with, with an ounce of sense would say that,
but this guy took one to the face at contact distance. It instantly made him lose consciousness.
And then he woke up bleeding, uh, severely five minutes later. And then he promptly left
the country and came to the United States. So, uh, by bus. So made the trip. His first
action was to leave his country by bus. When you got to go, you got to go. So, I mean,
that's what he, that's what he told me too. I mean, the actual story of that, I mean,
for all I know, he could have been shot down the street from my office in Nashville. Uh,
but you know, who, who's to say, I don't know. I mean, you know, I was working in the doctor
capacity and not the law enforcement capacity at that point. So it didn't really make a
difference to me. But, um, so I wrote, you know, uh, a little writeup about it and, you
know, people said like, you know, this guy was, uh, you know, hurt so little by this
45 caliber round that, um, you know, shot to his face that the first thing he did was
go to a dentist. Well, I mean, that's kind of a simplistic view of it. This guy's complaint
was is when I take drinks of water, it comes out my nose and it did because he had a communication
between his mouth and his skull and that he couldn't open his mouth because he felt like
something was, you know, forcing it closed. And you know, there was a bullet that was
lodged into his jawbone, which was basically acting like a wheel chock, you know, preventing
it from opening. But I think people kind of missed the point because, you know, that,
that particular round, I don't know what like the percent effectiveness is. And I don't
really know if that's an accurate, uh, metric to apply to different rounds because there's
just so many variables involved. And, you know, like I said, kind of the base of my
thesis is that if you place rounds accurately, you know, I've been to murders and or homicides
before that were accomplished with a 0.177 caliber air gun pellet, you know, so if you
put a pellet into somebody's heart or put a pellet through somebody's eye and it goes
into their brainstem, you know, that's shows out like shows over lights out, like that's
it. So the, the whole point in this 45 caliber people are like, this is a massive failure
of this projectile and somebody send this to federal and all this kind of stuff. And
I said, you know, like from a civilian perspective, no, it's an absolute win. I mean, the guy
had an instantaneous loss of consciousness. So let's like take these, the same, you know,
this same story and change it around. So let's say, um, me and Craig and Ken decide we're
going to go over to round table pizza after this podcast and have a couple of slices and
some brewskis before we call it a night, right? So we get in my truck, we head down there,
have some pizza, uh, not brewskis, uh, we're having some diet cokes and, um, and so we
have some diet cokes and some pizza slices. We go back out to my truck and as we're walking
out to the truck, a dude pops out with a knife and you know, gets within two arms distances
of me and says, pal, give me your F and wallet. And I draw my pistol, let's say a Smith and
Wesson 4506 for nostalgia sake and, um, blast this guy right in the right cheekbone with
a 230 grain HydroShock and he's down and he's out for the count. And then I say, Craig,
Ken, holy smokes, let's get out of here. We jump in the truck. We drive two blocks away
across the street, call law enforcement, tell them that there's been a shooting that were
safely staged in an area and we're watching the guy from, uh, 200 feet away across the
street and he's still laying there. Um, what do you think boys mission accomplished? Like
we're going, we're, we're all, maybe I might go to jail for a time until they have the
state does its job and hammers out the details, but you guys, you might have to take a ride
to the police station too, to tell what you've seen, but that guy's not robbing us anymore.
So it's not a failure. It's not a failure to stop. Like it's not a failure of performance.
It did exactly what it did because all handgun rounds do is drill a hole. It just matters
where you place the hole. So that's all there is to it.
I like that story, but I'll, I'll tell you that, um, I would probably have to spend maybe
the time waiting for the police traffic, the taste of diet Coke out of my mouth. And I'd
probably go get a beer in order to do it. So give our listeners, uh, any contact information,
any upcoming articles you have events that you're going to be a civilian defender.com
is the best way I'm not a social media guy. Like, especially in this political season
that we're in, I've just sort of sworn off all social media and taken it off of my phone
because I find it endlessly just aggravating. And, um, anything that I'm doing or have upcoming,
um, is on civilian defender.com. So I put up all my podcast appearances there. Um, I
put up, um, any articles that I think, or any ideas that I have that I think are salient
or interesting for people to listen to.
Excellent. All right. Dr. House has been a very much of a pleasure listening to you and
interacting. So I'm so glad you were able to join us tonight. Thank you. Thank you for
having me. I appreciate it.
So Ken, that was, I think, an outstanding discussion with Dr. Sherman house on the validity
really of using sub caliber firearms as maybe not your go-to choice, but as a viable alternative
and certainly a better alternative than having nothing. Right?
Absolutely. Um, there have been many, many examples that I have studied over the years
about using sub caliber firearms in successfully to defend oneself, one's family. Uh, I know
the Israelis use them on their LL aircraft, uh, their, their version of their sky marshals.
So it can be done. It can be done effectively. Um, so it's nothing to be seen as that again,
the best gun to have is the gun that you have with you. And if that happens to be a sub
caliber, nothing wrong with that at all.
Yeah. And the biggest caliber in the world won't do any good if you can't wear it and
you leave it at home. Right?
Absolutely true. One, one last thing I'd like to say is we are here in election season here,
the end of October, uh, 2024, we only got a couple, a few weeks left. I would highly
encourage everybody who's a, if you're not registered to vote, go out and register right
away. Uh, and if you are, then I would encourage you very much to go to the polls and to vote,
uh, for your second, second amendment rights in defending those. And there's really only
one solution to that.
Even though, even though we're not a political show, but, uh, but we are, but we are talking
about absolutely really preservation of your freedom because if you don't preserve it,
you're going to lose it.
So, and how many, I mean, there's so many gun owners who either don't vote or aren't
even registered.
Right. Because they are frustrated and they believe they've been abandoned. Well, the
worst thing you can possibly do is to, is to give up your vote, uh, thinking it's not
worth anything. It is absolutely worth everything. It's worth not only your freedom, but my freedom
and that of our, of our progeny and the kids and grandkids and so forth. So go out and
vote.
Yeah. It happened. It happened in this County where, where we turned in a lot, where the
gun owners turned an election for sheriff. So yes, it does work. Absolutely.
So please do go out and vote and bring two, three, four, five of your friends and get
them out there voting too.
Or don't complain to us or anyone else if you don't. Right. And you lose. So what else
do we want people to do? We want people to like comment, subscribe, send us emails, comments,
questions, topics for shows. And that can be done at frugal firearms podcast, all one
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to do so. Please hit the like button on those things because it helps the, the aggregators
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listeners and far away places like Belarus and Singapore and parts of the world that,
that we're reaching that we never reached before. Any last, uh, saved rounds as they
say can
No, uh, pretty much. Thank you all for coming in and we hope to hear you here again.
Exactly. Good night folks.