How To Not Get Reginald Denny’ed

I saw a pretty neat picture over at Oleg Volk’s place. It is my opinion that for a person driving a car a pistol is the only viable (well a sawed off shotgun or some sort of an SMG but those have legal hoops/ issues) weapon. Seriously if you have ever maneuvered a rifle in a vehicle you would know why. Unless you are driving with the muzzle hanging out the window there is no way you could get it onto target in time. At close ranges you can hit targets while moving slowly but it is probably not the best way to go.

Getting to your piece quickly is important. I would seriously look at the Universal Vehicle Handgun Mount. One of these is on my short list when we get back to the states. I wouldn’t store a gun in one of these as it is visible but putting it in the vehicle mounted holster for long drives and locking it up or putting it on your person when you leave the car is probably a darn good way to go.

For this very narrow scenario I am not convinced that kind of pistol really matters much. Especially if your concerns are somebody trying to hit you with an impact weapon or pull you out of the car it would almost be a contact shot. You probably don’t need that many bullets and the target is going to be aweful close. Even the uber common but rather unimpressive snubby .38 might just be fine for this job.
Beyond having a piece……

Pay attention to what is around you. You might not watch the local news in every place you could end up on a long drive and may miss the national news for a few days now and then. However you can look at what is going on in the area you are driving in. If there are large unhappy seeming groups of people on the sidewalks and in the street it is a sign that you need to consider another route. If there is an angry mob yelling and throwing stuff and burning things then haul butt to someplace else.
Lock your doors. Obviously this is not a cure all because cars have windows. Speaking of windows you might want to keep them rolled up in populated areas, admittedly a hard thing to do in a car without AC in the South during the summer. However it will prevent someone from just grabbing or hitting you. That split second will let you grab a piece or hit the gas or both.

Speed is security. I have never heard of somebody driving 40 miles an hour getting pulled out of their car and whooped on. DO NOT STOP. I certainly wouldn’t advise you to hit somebody with your vehicle or drive on the sidewalk under normal circumstance; however some circumstances are not normal and you will have to use your best judgement.
One might look at the kind of areas (Watts, Detroit, LA, etc) that had significant riots in the past and see some commonalities. You can look at these events as well as others and draw your own conclusions.

Anyway that pretty much sums up my thoughts on that.