SANDCASTLES AND CUBICLES is buying a defensive handgun and wants your advice. I’d recommend a Sig P239 myself, but do want to suggest that this celebration of the .38 revolver from The New York Times (yes, really) is worth reading.

Of course, being the Times it’s about police carrying guns, and even notes — in a classic unconscious blue-stateism — something that Sandcastles and Cubicles’ post belies:

More than anything else, it is carrying a gun – the daily familiarity of it, the expectation that it must be used on a second’s notice – that most sets apart the police from the policed.

In New York, more than many other places.