Re: how important is capacity in a handgun to you?
I hope I'm not coming across as macho or bloodthirsty or as massaging the facts. I'm no warrior.
There was a time when doing warrior things was part of the job description, and it took <span style="font-style: italic">something</span> to go out into Indian Country and troll for engagements.
Until one finds oneself in that first one, it's all a melange of sketchy expectations, wild imaginings, generic training, and a bit of a youthful sense of immortality.
Until it finally goes down, when it actually sinks in that people are deliberately trying to kill you and that they might actually succeed, mortality is an abstract concept. Standing over warm dead bodies and seeing the effects of your and others' handiwork, brutally unforgiving, absolutely pragmatic reality sinks in; doing it in a way that nothing else can make it do so. Mortality suddenly, finally has a specific relevance to your own existence.
It is only then, that going out into the bush again is an actual act of courage. Being scared is fine, you finally understand why being scared has a true basis. You don't want to do it, not if you have even a shred of intelligence. You still do it because you can't look your peers in the eye if you even intimate you'd really want to go home now. And then there's the brig, too.
Only the sickos craved a repeat performance. We all finally understood that anything that went before failed miserably to truly prepare one for the process. Inevitably, that failure translates into lives lost. Nothing succeeds like success, and nothing can explain to a 'virgin' what it's like to be there.
Guys understood that like the fighter pilot saying (accurately) that speed is life, and in the case of the ground pounder, we would go to remarkable lengths to augment our basic loadout. Mostly it amounted to a couple or three more loaded mags stuffed inside a utility blouse. The new motivation to stack your deck could be neither ignored nor can it be overestimated.
Frankenmags (not many, they were genuine abortions) made up of 20 rounder M-14 mags tack welded in line. Some guys carried AK's and SK's because the ammo took up less room, and they could carry more of it. They replenished off their kills. Same with Chicom 9mm handguns and 'combat scrounged' ammo. I managed to procure a black market Thompson M1A1 with the fanny pack holding a passel of 20rd stick mags. Heavy, but it went into the bush with me when I could get an 'amen'.
Despite my references to it, I don't favor 'spray and pray' either. It's contrary to the instilled dictum of accurate fire. When we were instructed in Squad Tactics at ITR, using directed massed fire as supporting fire for fire and maneuver tactics, one of the deliberate intents of our own massed fire against oncoming troop masses was to shoot short, kicking up dirt and splashing ricochets upward into the oncoming formation. By making the fire visibly perceptible to the enemy, the idea was to increase the mental perception of fire incoming on them.
This was actually another manifestation of the fallacy of teaching tactics developed after the fact to win the last war. Our enemy seldom committed to a massed assault, and seldom ever fired from anything but extensive concealment.
I would not characterize this as truly 'spray and pray', but rather as fire suppression. It might have some degree of duplication with a single or few shooters doing actual spray and pray', and in a manner that would likely not be as effective, for example, from a suppressed firearm firing over their heads.
Greg