My childhood was noit that great, my adolescence was a good deal worse. Mom was a young single mother with a kid, and it was a full time job trying to keep a roof over our heads. We lived in an apartment building that was of mixed nationalities and ethnic immigrants, and my playmates and later co-conspirators of life were the whole spectrum from Russians, Irish, German, Italian, and a Romani family. The one thing uniting us was we were all dirt poor and trying to survive any way we could. Crime was one way to get both food or rent money.
Very often I was in a part of town I should not have been in, dong something I should not have been doing, with people that I should not have been with. Sometimes there was violence. The guns we had were. by purpose small and very concealable, and cheap, so if need be, we could toss it in the river and no pain. That was the understanding with the neighborhood gun guy; if we had to use it, it went in the river and if caught with it, we got from some guy we didn't know outside a bar.
One night at a bar called Gaffney's, four of us were sitting and having a pitcher. The table was end on to the wall where that was a window. We're all arguing over something, like will the redskins take the cowboys this weekend, when these two guys have a fight outside the window. This is right on the corner of 14th street and Colorado ave. Not a good part of town, but hey, we lived there. One of the two guys pushed the other, and then a punch, and then one guy pulls a strait razor. This was common in 1970 in that part of D.C. BUT... the other guy, on seeing the guy go for his pocket, also went for his pocket. The strait razor guy has his out and the second guy comes up with a RG .22 revolver. The RG's were common on the streets as was the little Italian Galesi .25 autos and such. It was a bad night for the razor guy. Theres the unmistakable pop, pop, pop, of the .22, and razor guy stumbles backwards, falls to the sidewalk clutching his chest, and coughing up bright red foam. Thrashes around a bit and goes unconscious.
Circus takes place with cops showing, ambulance, flashing lights all over, rubberneckers. All this is happening right outside the bar window with all of us on that side of the bar looking. EMT's put the shot razor guy on a gurney with the sheet up over his face. DOA. Cops ask everyone in the bar who did it and they all ge the same answer; some black guy in a black leather coat. Hey, its 14th street in D.C. Its kind if like "Its China town, Jake".
But the takeaway is, in a violent teenage gang life in a major eastern city, I saw shootings with .22's as well as with little .25acps. I never saw ANYONE, hit in the center of mass with either of them up and doing the Walter Houston Jig after. In 1989, we lost a friend that got killed in a mugging, shot and dead on the scene by a little teenage crackhead with a Raven .25. And Al was a genuine bad %%%%% and a competitor in full contact karate tournaments. He tried one of his Chuck Norris moves ans it didn't work, but the kid with the Raven shot him one time at arms length, and Al dropped to his knees, muttered "Oh S--t" and fell face down dead in the Metro parking garage. This in front of witnesses who got off the elevator with him to find the ghetto kid waiting for them to rob them. And he's been dead ever since.
Contrary to the garbage in the gun magazines, written by people who mostly never fired a shot in anger in their life, you don't need a 17 round Glock, two spare mags, just to go down the street for a pack of smokes. IN fact, at the very close range most robberies/car jackings/sexual assaults/whatever takes place, a little pocket gun you know well will do well. Mostly a little more than arms length. Thats all. A few shots in a few seconds at 4 to 6 feet, and its all over.