Hunting season? The .22 for squirrels, the shotgun for birds, the serious rifle for deer or bigger.
For those of us who carry guns, the weather dictates what we wear that covers, well, what we wear.
Since July or so I’ve been mostly carrying a Glock 19, a 15+1 capacity 9mm semiautomatic. It’s actually much the same footprint as the classic “snub-nose .38,” the Colt Detective Special introduced circa 1927, but two and a half times the old revolver’s six-shot capacity (and more than three times the round count of Smith & Wesson’s five-shot equivalent small frame .38 snubby.
When I had to teach in a state with the draconian 10-round magazine capacity limit, I downsized from the “compact” G19 to its “subcompact baby Glock” sibling, the Glock 26. Designed for 10+1, it not only concealed a little better but saved me the irritation of having to download my carry gun.
Now we’re getting into the cold weather with heavier garments, and I’m thinking about teaching my next class with the larger (“standard size”) Glock 17 with 17+1 capacity with the same ammo as the 26 or the 19. That’s either Speer Gold Dot 124 grain +P, rated for 1220 feet per second out of the 19’s four-inch barrel, or Winchester Ranger 127 grain +P+ at 1250 foot-seconds. That’s about the same velocity as a 125 grain full power .357 Magnum out of a two-inch barrel (chronograph it yourself, as I did, if you don’t believe me) and it takes the worry out of carrying a medium caliber gun.
Almost 30 years ago, the department I served issued the Smith & Wesson 4506 .45 auto for duty. I carried it at work and on my own time in the winter, when heavy clothing discreetly concealed a big gun. In spring and fall my off-duty gun was the same maker’s lightweight compact in .40 S&W, and in the summer my un-tucked polo or tee shirt concealed the little S&W Model 3913 9mm. All held 8+1 rounds of their designated caliber, all worked Identically, and that wardrobe of pistols worked pretty darn well.
What are your “seasons of the gun”? As always, your input is invited in the comments.
I’m just thankful to be living in the Golden Age of Technology. We have wonderful tools with which to defend ourselves, AND, we rarely have to use them to defend our lives. So, we are armed and safe, and we have a lot more fun than most of the people in the world, whose governments refuse to trust them with firearms.
I’ll bet Christians in Nigeria wish they could walk around armed and safe.