I have a clip on 1 of my compacts, use a pocket sleeve style for my pocket pistol. Both rarely leave the house anymore, new state and I haven't gotten around to getting my CCP here yet. Keep meaning to kind of thing.
Anyway, an unloaded gun is an inconvenient rock.
Raw numbers kind of thing.
Self defense happens at the end of your fingertips. That is most people won't know that they are about to die until the person about to kill them can literally boop their nose. At best. If they get behind you and are around your neck before you know they're there, it's worse.
No bad guy is going to emerge from the end of an alley 100 yards from you and announce they're about to attack. So if a bad guy is going to grab you, stab you, shoot you, rape you, boop your nose and try to sell you amway, whatever, you have to grab your pistol,rack the slid, and go to work. If you're trying to fight off mr badguy you have to either fight, or work your pistol, or be very adept at fighting with 1 hand and racking your pistol with the other. Fighting for your life and getting a pistol out and placing shots on target is hard enough to do even if you're ready to roll and capable of being of calm mind, which almost no-one is don't let the stories fool you into thinking otherwise.
Every panic situation training I've ever been part of always leaves out 1 common element. Panic. One of my favorite Mike Tyson quotes, and I could be totally giving credit where none is due, is this. "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face." Seen it, a lot. All the planning in the world, all the training in the world, can and will fall on its face in the event of the situation actually happening. I used to be a trained competitive fighter. I worked out with guys that were excellent of the floor, could do routines with their eyes closed, had perfect planning, and they would instantly go to pieces the first time they took one in the ribs. It takes a LOT of getting kicked in the ribs to shrug it off and keep working.
24 feet is the 'danger zone' (thank you kenny loggins for that being stuck in my head now). So 24 feet is the amount of ground an average man can cover in the time it takes for a WELL TRAINED AND READY POLICEMAN to draw his sidearm from a level 1 holster and place 1 shot on target. Those studies were done on cops in their usual uniform, knowing that they were being studied for something (no real ammo is a tipoff). At 24 feet they could on average get a shot off, inside they pretty much all had to buy amway brand toilet paper for life. It was a really F'd up study.
If you see me get out of my car and draw it's not because I'm planning to use the pistol. It's because I want to buy myself 10 feet of thinking time if things are about to go bad.
Action beats reaction, every time. I've drawn from a level 1 (that's belt mounted with only a thumb break) holster roughly 290 bajillion times. I started and ended my career with the same holster so I was well versed in it. Compared to drawing from any concealment holster I've ever compared it too is like comparing light speed to how fast your average 20 year old man makes an appointment to have his prostate checked by an extremely ugly and large fingered doctor.
For your average person with a concealed firearm that danger zone is a looooooot larger. Add chambering a round into that and you're zone is longer still.
Also fun fact, if you're facing a threat and decide to pull the trigger, the threat has enough time between you starting the pull and the gun discharging to turn around and be shot in the back, before you have enough time to acknowledge this and stop pulling the trigger. If you ever end up in court, might be handy to know. You didn't shoot a guy running away from you, he just got shot in the back. There's a difference.
What else can I rant about before I get off my soapbox... thinking, thinking.
Ok SD calibers start at 380acp with premium bullets(bare minimum and bigger is better).
Lasers are fun to play with your cat, but at SD ranges are slow to use. Faster than irons but TBH at SD ranges no sights are necessary.
Your grouping at 50 yards doesn't come into play, at all. Again end of your fingertips.
And of course keep your booger hook of the loud button until its time to make noise. Follow that 1 rule and the others don't really matter that much.
And I'm done ruffling feathers for a bit
Time for lunch.