Since posting last week about the goofiness of some of the unarmed self defense classes aimed at college age women, I’ve been cruising some different sites about women, firearms, and self defense. One of the best I’ve found is by Janis Cortese, and is entitled Firearms for Self-Defense. There are overviews of handgun types, ammunition, holsters, and some considered advice about what to choose for your own situation. Here’s what she has to say about using a .357 magnum for home defense, for instance:

One of the things that people tend not to consider when they choose a handgun caliber for home defense is the noise that it makes when it is shot. When you are in your home at 2am, the noise from a Magnum round of any caliber may damage your hearing permanently. (Of course a .38 isn’t going to be terribly quiet either, but the Magnum calibers are staggeringly loud.) When you may well have to call for police and an ambulance, it’s not the time for a dull ear!

I hadn’t even thought about the noise factor, though when I’ve used my Ruger GP100 — which is what Ms. Cortese uses — for home defense I’ve always kept it loaded with .38 special to avoid over-penetration, and saved the .357 magnum rounds for target-shooting or hiking and camping.

There are also practical tips on how to handle having firearms around your kids that match up pretty well with what Massad Ayoob recommends. This stuck out:

Also, do NOT NOT NOT simply state, “Touch that gun and I’ll tan your hide!” This tells the kid that the gun is off-limits and therefore irresistible, and it does not impart knowledge! A far better approach, and that used by the parents of the man who taught me to shoot, is to involve your kids in the gun cleaning, show them what it looks like and how it works (Distasteful? Wake up — so is a white coffin), and tell them explicitly that they may look at the guns whenever they want — not to play with them, but to learn about them — as long as they have your supervision. They are not to take out or look at the guns alone. This approach imparts knowledge to offset the effects of TV, and removes some of that illicit veil from the devices. When the latest action hero holds one, it’s a thrill — when Mommy is taking it apart and explaining it, that illicit air is dissipated.

I’ve been taking that tack with my son, who is four-years-old, and, thanks to Batman comic books and such, is obsessed with guns. I’m not sure that letting him help me clean and work on them has made them any less irresistible, but it certainly doesn’t seem to have hurt.

A month or so ago he helped me install a long Cylinder & Slide trigger into the 1911, which was the first time I’d complete disassembled and reassembled the gun. He loved it, though he did make reference to how irritable I got at certain points of reassembly. (I told him afterwards that he did a very good job helping me, and he said, “You mean by being quiet?”) Still, he asks me every weekend if we can work on guns together. And that has actually been a great, unforeseen side benefit of this project. We get to work on something together with our hands that isn’t attached to a game console, and is, to a little boy, incredibly interesting.

Ms. Cortese also takes on some of the reasons one might want choose a firearm for self defense, ending with:

This is going to be short — would you defend your child if they were in danger?

You are probably nodding up and down — of course you would. Why?

Not because you are violent, but because you don’t like violence — you don’t want your child to be a victim of violence.

That same reasoning applies to you — we are all someone’s child, and we all deserve peace and safety. Learning to defend yourself isn’t the same as promoting violence. Being unable to defend yourself and being attacked, bloodied, raped, or sent to a hospital — or any of the above — because of it isn’t exactly a nonviolent option!

A surgeon isn’t the same as a knifewielding streetfighter because he has a knife as well. One hurts — one heals.

If you are a victim of violent crime, you have in a way, participated in violence. This isn’t to say that you “brought it on yourself” by any means. But violence against you is a bad thing! “Just” because it’s you doesn’t make it any less serious! Violence aimed at you is still violence, and it is still unacceptable. You have the absolute right to be outraged over it, and take reasonable steps to make sure that it doesn’t happen.

I can’t find anything there to argue with.