This....karder wrote:I don't think it much matters. If you are in a situation serious enough that you need to shoot and kill someone through your car window, brass bouncing around or gas burns are going to be pretty low on your list of problems at that point.
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This....
Carry (and shoot) whatever you're comfortable with. Inside the confined space of a car, I don't think it's going to make much difference if it's a .45, a 9mm, a .40, or a .357. They're ALL going to be very loud and leave your ears ringing and/or temporarily deafened. I've had pistol brass hit me right between the eyes, or conk me on the noggin', and it isn't really anything more than a distraction. Setting your bare arm down on a freshly ejected piece of 5.56 brass is a lot worse. The cylinder gap flash from a magnum revolver is particularly vivid in lower-light, but I think that the worst of the "cutting" it can do is only within the 1st 2-3 inches. Also, getting injured by a revolver's gas ejection is as much a matter of bad technique as it is anything else. Even so, I'd rather survive an armed carjacking with a flayed thumb than have beautifully manicured thumbs at my own funeral. As far as a semiauto goes, I am left handed, so it is already difficult for me to deploy a gun toward the left side of the vehicle anyway. Shooting to my left ejects the brass toward the windshield. Shooting toward my right bounces the brass off of my shirt. Shooting through the windshield bounces the brass off my wife's noggin......and I'll hear about that later.ammoboy2 wrote:It was mentioned above the disadvantage of a semiauto in a clinch due to getting it out of battery (due to being pressed against opponent) and unable to fire. The revolver has a similar issue, if the opponent has a grip on the cylinder which prevents rotation of the cylinder not allowing it to fire. I really see no intrinsic advantage, use what you like, both work.
I've actually thought before about the Bond Arms pistols that b322da mentioned, and also that (relatively) new "Doubletap" pistol, which is sort of a modern derringer of sorts. But in the end, my "car gun" is pretty much always going to be whatever gun I am carrying on that day. I do own a stainless S&W Model 640 .357 magnum that would make a dandy "glovebox gun"..........if I cared to leave a gun in the car......