Re: Looking for a new .45 CCW
Nope, but I still feel it's best to error on the side of caution and appear as innocent and typical to a jury as possible. It's like illegally modifying a benelli M4 with an extended magazine tube. Has anyone been prosecuted for it? Nope, not that I know of....do I want to be the first guy that is? Nope. Would I want to have to go to court with an illegally modified M4 that I shot someone with in my defense, nope. It's all hypothetical though, I'm not a lawyer and I've never shot anyone.
However it's a pretty easy argument to make. It looks much better if you have to defend yourself in court (and if you shoot someone you will have to DEFEND yourself and your actions in court) with a stock gun and plain old ammo. Lawyers are not stupid, and they know all the tricks and sneaky ways to make you look bad to a jury. If I can think of it, I guarantee you lawyers have and will.
As opposed to say defending yourself with a gun that's been modified by the user. Which the safety and reliability of which can easy be called into question. Which is different than having a qualified gunsmith perform work on your gun.
It's amazing what can come out in court. The other side will try to paint you as a gun nut maniac who was just hoping someone would give you the opportunity to shoot them. For example, if they find (even jokingly made) posts, blogs, angry ex-gfs, that paint you in such a manner you will have to defend those posts, and they will find them. Ask any divorce lawyer how much they can and will dig up. If they can get all the dirt on you off of forums, facebook, emails etc. (and they do) you can bet a lawyer for a shooting can and will.
For example they may ask why you carried such and such ammo in your CCW. The best response is probably "Well I went to the gun store and asked for some good protection ammo and this is what they gave me". Not "Well I tried to find the most destructive and effective killing ammo against body armor wearing criminals I could find and this is what the research showed made the biggest baddest holes".
On the same note I'd much rather be able to go into court saying "Well I went to the gun store (one with a good wholesome family rep, not a class III or huge AR dealer etc) and asked for a good self defense gun and they showed me a few and I picked out the glock 30SF. I then asked about training and they recommended X, I then went to a CCW course or took other recommended training to become proficient with it. Again I wouldn't want to get trained by a place that advertises itself as a psudo military or tactical gun nut place to attract mall ninja types.
You want to be able to deflect your actions onto the recommendations of reputable wholesome businesses that will look good to the jury and paint you as a rational logical typical person who is the victim trying to protect yourself. Not as someone who went out of their way to research and build a better killing weapon who laid awake nights hoping to get the opportunity to shoot someone. Does that suck...yep sure does, but that's the reality these days.
Now lets get really ugly.....lets say that you are attacked, you shoot and things go wrong. Maybe you put a round through the guy attacking you and it hits someone else, or maybe one round goes astray and strikes an innocent. Now if you modified that gun, lets say you reduced the trigger pull, well they can easily get people to testify that in such a situation your fine motor skills are GONE and having a hair trigger caused that round to go off when you didn't want it to, and by reducing the trigger pull that's your fault. Or that ammo you so extensively tested was known to over penetrate and you should have known that having done all your research on it.
It's all hypothetical, 99.9999% of people that carry never have to use it anyway. But you are in a much better position if you simply buy a stock gun, leave it alone, and buy some nice boring ammo that a gun store recommended, get some good training, and carry it.