I’m getting a .22, the perfect gun for home protection.
He thought he kept the universe alone;
For all the voice in answer he could wake
Was but the mocking echo of his own
From some tree-hidden cliff across the lake.
Some morning from the boulder-broken beach
He would cry out on life, that what it wants
Is not its own love back in copy speech,
But counter-love, original response.
And nothing ever came of what he cried
Unless it was the embodiment that crashed
In the cliff’s talus on the other side,
And then in the far distant water splashed,
But after a time allowed for it to swim,
Instead of proving human when it neared
And someone else additional to him,
As a great buck it powerfully appeared,
Pushing the crumpled water up ahead,
And landed pouring like a waterfall,
And stumbled through the rocks with horny tread,
And forced the underbrush–and that was all.
When all Earth’s seas shall Levitate,
Dark shawled within the skies,
Upon our eyes will Starfish dance
Their waltz of Blind surprise.
The sun will Rise within wine Dark
As Argonauts imbibed,
Whose drunken arms embrace that sleep
Where Phaeton’s horses Stride.
Upon all of Earth’s wind-sanded shores,
As dolphins Learn to soar,
All we once were on the land
Shall be sealed behind the door
Of Ivory and Chastened Gold,
That the Mystery solved complete
Shall never til the seas’ Long fall
Wake mariners from their sleep.
— Van der Leun
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this
air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
— Walt Whitman
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
— The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot
Gerard Van der Leun
Comments on this entry are closed.
.22LR- ammo is cheaper than any other, likely won’t wake the neighbors, and H.P. Rounds will leave very little if any ballistic evidence for the forensics team. Just saying.
.22 caliber is fine for close proximity assassinations by trained killers, but for home protection you will probably just make the drug crazed intruder mad with a .22cal. You need a 9mm or better to stop the intruder, you might just want to get a pump shotgun with home defense rounds in it. The sound of your racking a shell in the chamber will make the intruder’ sphincter tighten, and the home defense round will probably not kill people in the next room if you miss.
Shotgun all the way. A former NJ cop who lives down the road made this decision for me, even though I have been shooting a 38 at a range of late. I prefer the 38 but if I am shaking, and I would be shaking at the prospect of a home invasion, I can’t hit squat.
Live in the country….5.56 for long range deterent, 12-ga for intermediate deterrent, and 9mm for up close and personal. And yes, all three are at my bedsidee.
Ignore the naysayers flexing their dix.
A .22 can be a decent gun and far better than any knife or club or nothing at all. Besides, ammo is so rare and expensive now .22 may be all you can find. I just had another 2000 rds delivered on Fri.
One suggestion, get a high capacity semiautomatic.
Oh yeah, all that nonsense about the “racking sound” illustrates the writers naivete.
A shotgun “unracked” is just a club and almost useless.
Anyway, when you pull the shotgun out it is to go to work, not scare people that are wanting to kill you.
Now, the web is inundated with little gurlz.
Bill in Tennessee is talking about the “professional’s choice” and a fine choice it is, in fact, it is my choice. Notice I said professional. That’s not the same thing as a single gun owner with a recent acquisition.
I love pistols and shoot them regularly, from .22 through my .45s. People might laugh at the diminutive .22 but my little 10 shot Browning 1911-22, stoked with CCI-HP MiniMags, is a bad piece of news and those little pills will chew through a lot of hide. I can shoot 10 rounds in as many seconds and cover most of them with a baseball at 9-10 yards. That means that I can dump those things into a perps head and face with no problem. I also own that model in .380 and with good defensive ammunition it is the cat’s whacker. I carry it all of the time and never feel undergunned.
May I add a suggestion. There seems to be a missing piece of equipment (at least for any White Blue Stater), a shovel. I wouldn’t plan for any involvement by the authorities.
Dig the hole in advance. At Halloween time buy a few bales of straw, for ‘decoration’, and after digging a suitable hole in the back forty then throw the bales of straw in to hold the shape. Cover the top with a thin sheet of plywood and the mound of dirt with a tarp.
If used, after filling the hole with the dirt, cover with the tarp and pile the bales of hay on top. The hay you are ‘saving’ for next Halloween.
Burr’s “Ooo-ooooo” from unprotected natural hearing of a .38 fired outdoors doesn’t happen to every shooter.
I learned to shoot before ear protection was a thing, long before it became de rigueur, and after discharging one, two, three, or even and hundred or two hundred rounds of centerfire pistol and rifle ammo I never had that “Ooo-ooooo” thing happen.
In navy boot camp they let us shoot indoors nothing more than single-shot bolt action Mossberg .22 rifles. To me these were already small potatoes, so they sounded like cap pistols fired in a echo-ey stairwell.
Later, on a 12-degree day while I was bundled in a sweater beneath service dress overcoat, my unit qualified on the M-16, and if it hadn’t been for feeling bitterly cold to the marrow after waiting for an hour on the range for the Gunners Mates to show up with the rifles & ammo, and for having been clad in service dress coat, I’d have shot better than I did (I shot Marksman, missed Sharpshooter by two points, and those M-16’s had seen better days, they were pretty well clapped out). Up and down the range the unit fired constantly, and I never had that “Ooo-ooooo.”
Same on plenty of other ranges with shooters loosing off rounds from .22’s to .44’s, from 12 ga. shotguns to big belted magnums: no hearing protection, indoor and outdoor ranges, and I never had that “Ooo-ooooo.” Even at machine gun shoots, right beside a Ma Deuce hammering away, I never got that “Ooo-ooooo.” I’m pushing seventy now and have no hearing trouble, although for the last two decades I’ve worn “ears” when shooting.
Some people get that “Ooo-ooooo,” others don’t. Hearing intensity and hearing damage seem to vary among people.
Racking a shotgun is dumb. My 12 gauge is loaded and the safety is off. I don’t care what the safety nazis say. I am ready and I sleep with the bedroom door locked.
Jim Brady was shot in the head with a .22. The gun I have is a .22 revolver. It’s not the best gun for self defense but better than no gun at all.
Teri, Robert Kennedy was assassinated, and five others wounded, by a guy with an eight shot 22LR revolver.
No love for a .40 S&W? I like the idea, for home defense of a hollowpoint round that has enough power to hit but not blow through the target. In fact, I’d say any home defense weapon should be loaded with hollowppoints.
Talking about bear, which I don’t hunt (Look too much like a person when you field dress them & hang them.) but I try to be ready for: I like my Winchester model 12 best as a cabin or canoe gun but a wee bit unhandy when fly fishing. My Desert Eagle .41 mag. in a shoulder holster tain’t bad when waist deep in a steam or a couple of miles from camp on a river bank. My little Judge is comfortable around the property, in the taiga. Not accurate much beyond 10 feet but twice that’s about as far as you can see in the brush anyway, and 410 shot or .45 cal rounds pack a lot of stopping power at short range. If I were to carry in town (One should always be ready for bear, anywhere.) a nice 95 grain .380 auto container is a paddle holster doesn’t print badly (Not obvious under a long shirt or a jacket.) and can be moved to the left side, cross draw, readily when driving, hence not obstructed by a seat belt.
Like Auntie Analogue, I learned to shoot long before ear protection. I’ll put the muffs on for 40-50 round target practice but wouldn’t even think of carrying them hunting or fishing.
Whatever, practice is important so the little thingies comin’ out the barrel go where you want them when you pull the trigger. During our long winters I, inside my house, toss a lot of pellets out of two air pistols, one with iron sights, the other red dot, at 20 to 40 feet. My target/stop is around 8 by 10 inches, no problem keeping all the pellets well within that space, hence my windows, walls , etc. are still intact.
.22 cal.? Hey great for anything smaller than a beaver and at least a wee bit better than a blunt stick if you gotta deal with anything bigger.
9-shot Taurus .22 revolver
Aguila SSS 64 grain loads
Crimson Trace grip panels
Shoot someone 9 times in the ‘Golden Triangle’ ( base of nose out to nipples, line across )
use to work in Chicago suburban ER … nites … Good Samaritan Downers Grove
one .22 round, let alone 9, can mess you up; nothing in that zone is not very very ungood
Why rack a shotgun when you can have the Mossberg 930 SPX semi-auto by your bed? The only sound they might hear is when the safety comes off.