Has anyone ever have to use a Leica as a selfdefense weapon?

[todd frederick]

Don't let this secret out or we'll have to start registering our cameras and take courses in the proper use of photographic weapons. Of course, we should never carry a concealed camera without a permit!

 

A Minolta SRT101 firmly attached to a strong monopod is my favorite, but I think a Nikon F might be more lethal.

 

Seriously, that is one of the reasons I tend to be reluctant to do random street photography. It just seems to be too dangerous now days.

 

I remember walking from the Louvre to the Ritz Hotel in Paris at about midnight alone in 1962 with no fear at all. Too bad the world has changed so much in recent times.

 

BTW, what is a Glock and what makes it special? I wasn't able to get much info from the website. A friend of mine collects and restores firearms, so he may know.

[carl smith]

I guess Glocks are just kinda traditional? I don't know, i'm not a gun person either. Kinda like the Leica of guns maybe? :)

[ray .]

Todd, think about the fact you were younger in 1962, too. Could be your perspective on things has changed as much as the world. We tend to get a little more paranoid and feel more vulnerable as we get older. I'm 50 and walked through downtown New Orleans this past summer- past midnight. I can't say I wasn't a little fearful, but good sense and an attitude of fearlessness can go a long way. You can't even go out your front door with total confidence something won't happen to you, but are you going to worry about that possibility? Life is for living, and living is a risk. Each of us has a fear threshold, I suppose. I just wouldn't go overboard. I think people who watch too much local television news tend to get a skewed picture of the world. I've been photographing on the streets for many years, still have all body parts intact. Maybe I should knock on wood, who knows? I'm not gonna stop though, may as well lock myself in the house first.

 

Vahe, are you talking about "ex governor" Bush? If so, yes, I could argue with him, and probably in fact would- over a number of issues, including his view of carrying a gun.

[joseph_barbano]

This is a case where there is no doubt that R series are better than M's. Here the R8 is unequalled. It's best used when swung at the end of the neck strap, of course. There have been a couple of situations in Europe and S. America where brandishing the camera in this fashion has dissuaded would-be attackers. As far as damaging the camera, who cares; it's just a toy anyway albeit an expensive one.

[todd frederick]

Ray, I think you're right on target (since we're talking about self defense). I just retired from teaching and I spend far too much time watching Fox News. It's all terror, murder, and corruption. I need to get out and get involved in more positive and uplifting activities. I have opportunities to work as a volunteer with the Monterey Bay Aquarium, church activities, charitable work, and even a part time job in a positive venue, not to mention photography. Retirement is a big change in life and it's easy to get very depressed. Thanks for the wake-up call.

[todd frederick]

PS...I am also seeking a photo group in the south Bay Area (San Jose) who gets out from time to time to take pictures (not a club). I also think there's safety in numbers. I used to teach photography in adult ed and may try that again. On the self-defense issue, one of my workshops included a man who wore a small .22 side arm (barely visible) whenever he went out photographing to protect himself and his equipment! That was in the early 1980s. You couldn't do that in California now days.

[david b]

If I hit someone with my Wista VX I'd be on a murder charge...can't imagine it wouldn't kill them...

[ky2]

And risk my precious babies? I just play the drunk, pissed off nutcase (eyes rolling), slurring in archaic soviet Russian, and everyone stays out of my way (Everyone except thos sympathetic bums who offer me some Sluchnaya to feel better)...

[vahe_sahakian]

"Vahe, are you talking about "ex governor" Bush? If so, yes, I could argue with him, and probably in fact would- over a number of issues, including his view of carrying a gun."

 

Yes, you got it, it can all be summed up in "frontier mentality".

As for guns, I have six Leicas and no guns.

 

Thanks,

Vahe

[ray .]

Todd, I envy you being local to that beautiful aquarium... but getting off subject here. Maybe in fact one of the interesting issues this brings up is how vulnerable people in fact are according to their age.

Older people <i>are</i>more defenseless perhaps than the 25 year old well built guy who looks like someone you don't want to mess with. I think size is a factor too- I'm fairly big so I think this has helped me do more or less as I please, although I've had my moments of feeling vulnerable.... In which case, my self-esteem isn't damaged by acting on the instinct to flee the situation. Avoidance is better than confrontation, in my book, although in rare cases I find I have to stand my ground on a matter of principle- most likely not in a life threatening situation though.

[nesrani]

"BTW, should you ever draw blood, make sure you clean the area or camera/tripod IMMEDIATELY with water followed by alcohol."

 

"pathological societal vermin"

 

"Actually I have a concealed carry permit and would use a GLOCK. Much more effective and at a $1.00 a round much cheaper."

 

Good god. Am I the only one who thinks this thread is a f**king disgrace?

[nesrani]

BTW - I wouldn't usually use "**" to mean "uc", but photo.net software stopped me from being explicit about my feelings about this disgraceful garbage.

 

I got into photography because it seemed like a reasonable way to explore the world and highlight certain issues. It seems a large number of Leica owners are rich fools with expensive toys, fearing and hating their fellow man. Maybe it isn't so surprising that streetpeople would resent that.

 

If what you're doing requires you to carry a gun to feel safe, then do something else. It certainly has nothing to do with photography.

[robert_marvin]

Hear, hear!!

[ray .]

I don't know that the thread is a disgrace, Rob, but it certainly brings to light different people's attitudes, wrong headed or not. It seems to me a pretty disgraceful situation indeed, if someone feels they have to carry a gun as a standard part of their photographic excursion, like checking to make sure your keys are in the right pocket and you haven't lost the lens cap....Do I have enough film? Is the gun loaded?.... Seems an awful way to anticipate the coming events of the day.

[mark-j]

I taught my daughter a way to carry a camera as a weapon, and to use it if necessary. While in Madrid, she wanted to go out for a walk one evening, and asked for a camera, but NO flash. Which one should I take? I gave her the one with PASSPORT warranty and a 50 DR Summicron. The Summicron wasn't under warranty, but the body was. I have often wondered how an older 90 chrome Summicron would work when thrown like a football (?). I think a 135 Elmarit would tend to wobble and be hard to aim. The older chrome lenses are definetly better as weapons. A Glock would be a little light to throw at an assailant. Be sure the safety is on.

 

Merry Christmas, and be sure to shoot the guy in the red suit with your Leica not your Glock.

[vic_.]

The Wall Street Journal (the most important newspaper in the U.S.) had this article on its editorial page last week. I copy it here for the benefit of British readers.

 

[start.]

 

�Twasn�t Ever Thus,

by Theodore Dalrymple

 

LONDON � Britain is now the world leader in very little, with the single possible exception of crime.

 

Recent figures published by the U.N. show that Britain is now among the most crime-ridden countries in the world: Its citizens are much more likely to be robbed on the street, or have their houses burgled, than their counterparts in, say, Russia or South Africa, let alone the U.S. Everyday experience in Britain is quite sufficient to establish that we now live in a deeply criminalized society.

 

For a middle-class person like me who grew up in the Britain of the 1950s, this is all very startling. It was then so safe a country that one was inclined to suppose that criminality was as foreign as food that tasted of anything. One rather pitied foreigners their dishonesty and thuggishness because it was something that, being foreigners, they couldn�t really help. Even the few native criminals that we had here were, at heart, gentlemen: when caught by our efficient and upstanding constabulary (and no words ever settled the hash of criminals more decisively than those to the effect that Scotland Yard had been called in), our criminals always said, ever so sportingly, �It�s a fair cop, guv.�

 

Less than half a century later, many people no more venture out after dark than Transylvanian peasants would go wandering while Dracula was at large, and once the sun has gone down, there is not an old person to be seen in public in Britain. Taxi drivers carry ground chilies to squirt in the eyes of their passengers in case they turn nasty, and martial-arts instructors offer their services to hospital staff to protect them from the aggression of patients and their relatives. In short, the British have gone from being civil to savage in less than a single lifetime.

 

Perhaps even more startling is the complete paralysis of British society in the face of this terrible breakdown. In the war against civility, the savages have it all their own way. No one would dare correct even seven-year-old children in the street or on a bus, for fear that they carried knives. My prisoner patients often tell me that when they beat someone to a pulp, they were carrying out a �normal assault.� The other day, a prisoner said to me, �I�m an innocent man: I just jumped the counter, took some money and ran away.� And true enough, in much of Britain such behavior is comparatively innocent. Anything short of the rape of little girls is considered trivial. Once I asked a prisoner why he was in prison, and he replied, �I�m here on a poxy little murder charge.� This, I need hardly point out, is a world away from �It�s a fair cop, guv.�

 

The response of the British liberal intelligentsia and the political class to the crime wave that has engulfed our society makes jellyfish look solid. Witness the British middle class in full retreat. Every conceivable argument has been used to avoid acknowledging the painful reality of what we have so heedlessly wrought over so short a period. Some try to suggest that crime hasn�t really increased, but that it is just more fully reported now than ever before. Others venture that there is more theft because people have more possessions (the first time wealth rather than poverty has been blamed for crime). And so on, ad infinitum.

 

As the politicians dither and bicker, I am reminded of the Romanian peasant proverb: The whole village is on fire, but grandmother wants to finish combing her hair.

 

At the root of the British inability to confront the problem is snobbery. There is a reluctance on the part of the upper echelons of society to believe that the lower echelons are fully human, and therefore responsible for their own acts and decisions. No discussion with a British liberal about growing incivility, criminality and violence of British life is complete without reference to Hogarth�s Gin Lane, the implication being that �twas ever thus. This, of course, is nonsense. But it does establish that the British liberal intelligentsia believes the lower classes are genetically and irredeemably, utter scum.

 

(Theodore Dalrymple is the pen name of the physician Anthony Daniels, a contributing editor of City Journal.) [End.]

[sid_sharma]

Thereis nothing disgraceful or wrong about ones willingness to carry a handgun. All you guys who find such talk disgraceful or distasteful ought to get off your moralistic high horses and be more tolerant of the views of those who happen to have opinions different from yours. Carrying a gun, or owning a gun is a perfectly legal activity, regardless of what someone might think, and people who feel the needto carry a handgun should be able to do so without having to suffer negative comments from people are not in favor of gun-ownership.

Anyways, my original question was meant to ask how a Leica M6 would stand up to rough treatment if one had to use it to defend oneself.

[paul hart]

Vikram:

 

This description of the state of Britain is accurate and there may be more than a grain of truth in the explanation for it.

 

However, G K Chesterton was certainly right when in 1908, seeing what was coming, he wrote: "What we suffer from today is modesty in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction, where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed."

 

The scene in Britain is the result of the official embracing of pluralism and relativism, where nobody is permitted to believe anything with conviction anymore - and especially the Christian principles which, however imperfectly understood and even more imperfectly applied, provided some moral structure to society.

 

It results in the wooly mental fog that caused a judge before whom I was appearing recently (as an advocate, I add!) to pronounce that a drug addict who was too far gone to care for his child was not responsible for his condition. We are officially declared to be the playthings of our genes or our environment.

 

Quite how I end up writing such a piece when we were asked about hitting people with our Leicas, I'm not sure! Anyway, as the strange amalgam of the pagan, the commercial and the Christian that we call Christmas comes to an end, I wish you well.

[bobtodrick]

Sid...I agree with your last point up to a point. That being...just as driving is for most of us a right, once you get a little liquor under your belt, a car becomes a lethal weapon. It has been proven that many homicdes involving handguns also involve liquor. I can't, for the life of me thing of any thing more deadly than a gun toting citizen with half a dozen beer under his belt who thinks he's been slighted. A perfect scenario for someone dying, with the defense being 'Gee...I really felt threatoned'...by a half starved homeless person intent on getting something to eat. Poor boy!!!...who just happened to be totting a handgun whe he was 'threatened' by the starving homeless person (taking this scenario to the limits I know). "Guns don't kill people...people kill people",,,BULLSHIT.

[Allen Herbert]

Self-Defense,my wife has uses my M6 on a regular basis to defend her spending. Guns are made to kill humans or other life-forms.Some enjoy using them for this purpose,others to defend.Humanity is beyond understanding....but unless it does understand; well,goodbye humanity.

[rob - atlanta, ga usa]

Fact is fact and the fact is, at least here in the USA, less than two tenths of one percent of all murders are committed with _legally_ owned firearms. _Every_ jurisdiction in the USA that has allowed properly permitted citizens to carry firearms has resulted in a _drop_ in violent crime. (Source: The Uniform Crime Statistic of the USA) Ask Britain and Australia about what happens when the criminals know that no has a gun in their home nor on their person.

[albert knapp md]

Charles: clorox is certainly and excellent anti-viral disinfectant but

water and alcohol (even wine or vodka,,) are more readily

available and equally efficacious for superficial wounds, Yes,

guys, you wash with water and then alcohol. DRINKING the

booze is not part of the protocol!!!! (:>)))) Bob T.: The cat latter

sold the lens cover on eBayl. Got top dollar or was that collar!!

[ray .]

So gun toters, you carry them to the local grocery store, to your kids school events, to the bank, to church? I'd like to know. This really is a shock to me, but I guess it shouldn't be, given the paranoid and aggressive approach many people seem to take toward life here in America. Much of the time what's involved is a macho ego driven I'll-do-whatever-I-damn-well-please attitude of many people. I've encountered it too many times on a first hand basis to believe otherwise. But aside from that, I really feel sorry for you that you apparently are living in so much fear.

[art waldschmidt]

Here's a *real-world* scenario that may prove interesting in considering before one assumes to know one's self:

 

In the wee hours of the morning you hear a sound that you believe to be coming from your child's room. It turns out to be coming, instead, from two thugs who've broken in and are climbing the stairs.

Glancing down at the drawer in the night stand, do you wish it contains: (1) a cell phone (for dialing 911), (2) a solidly built SLR that can be brandished as a weapon, or, (3) a Colt 380 with hollow-points.......hmmmmmm??????

(Hopefully, you will never need to experience this variety of experience and the attendant philosophical epiphany)

[charles barcellona www.bl]

I usually carry a Springfield Compact .45 to most places, other than to work (prohibited), or to places otherwise prohibited by law. Then again, I carry a camera (not always a Leica, but usually) to just about all places too.

 

I'm probably a bit off the beaten path of society though, as my former employment involves many things firearms/shooting-industry related. As I told you privately Ray, many years of being armed, once instance of possibly having to use it, and that was a dog. I really do TRY to stay away from trouble (it follows me though).