I understand that this isn't popular, but my husband got me a gun <3

[MagnumDweeb]

The problem for the longest time, men buying their women guns, is that so many men just went out there and made a purchase per their own tastes and biases and then wondered why the wife didn't like the gun. That's how I snatched up an SR9, Taurus PT99, and Walther PPK for real cheap.

Before I bought my fiancee her first gun. She had been to the range over a dozen times. Fired most of the pistols in my down and dirty collection (1911s by Springfield, STI, and Smith and Wesson; all my Ruger pistols [P Series, SR series, Revolvers]; snub nose revolvers galore; and my various Glocks).

In the end she wanted an XDs in .45 ACP which I bought prepared to keep as my own if she didn't like it. Over two hundred rounds later she finally likes it and can shoot 25 rounds through it without killing her hand. Mind you she also shoots my Ruger GP100 6" with little to no trouble at twenty yards and stays within the 10"x10" rifle targets I use for handguns.

She hates snub nose revolvers though, and I love them (so my SP101 DAO .357 is safe . I'd prefer she carry a Ruger LCRX .38 special but she won't listen to me. At the end of the day though I want her to carry what she is comfortable with and wants to practice with. That's the smartest play in my opinion, give a woman what she wants.

[Asphodel]

I'd like to offer a personal opinion, if I may......

I quite realise that that this opinion is not 'politically correct', these days, but it really is based in quite a few years of first-hand, practical experience.

Firstly........If we speak of a 'home defence' weapon, we're speaking of having to take an action completely foreign to our usual ways of interacting with other people, and doing so under horrific emotional trauma, and an horrific level of stress, a level which one may experience only once in a life-time........amongst other things, its called 'adrenaline world', and its the worst possible place to be.......actually, the second worst, technically, being a helpless victim is......rather obviously.... the very worst.

A great many men will discuss the merits of one or another semi-auto pistol, and be technically correct in those discussions, but, in doing that, they are doing a form of 'tunnel vision'.

The only real advantage of any semi-auto pistol is a larger mag capacity, relative to a revolver, and the speed with which it can be reloaded with a fresh mag.

In a real home defence situation, the range is almost certain to be 20 feet or less, and the length of time the situation exists is all too likely to be a matter of seconds.

A semi-auto has the disadvantage of not being truly mechanically safe with a round in the chamber, so one has the choice of 'condition one' or 'cocked and locked', with safety engaged, 'Israeli carry' with the chamber clear, requiring the weapon to be cycled before it will fire, or one of the 'modern' striker-fired double action semi-autos, which have a long hard trigger pull, if kept with a round in the chamber.

The practical alternative is the best quality double-action revolver, particularly the Colt or S&W, in 38spl. The 'snub-nose' version, such as the S&W 'Chief's special' is adequately accurate at 20 ft. or less range, and, loaded with 'light loads' such as the old standard 148gr. wad-cutter with 2.7 gr. of Bullseye, will be adequately powerful to defeat a human assailant, without injuring the user's wrist.

(added on edit.....I have a personal preference for the model 58 Smith, in 41 mag, with 'hot' loads, which, hopefully, would defeat a large wild pig at close range, but it took me quite few years, and a lot of practice with lighter loads, to 'work up' to being able to handle the 41.....and, yes, it does hurt my wrist a bit if I do more than six rounds at a time....the 41 mag can be loaded to slightly hotter than factory 44 mag spec, but one does have to be ever so careful with that.)

The Colt and Smith DA revolvers are the only style of handgun which can be kept fully loaded, ready to fire with a pull of the trigger, yet mechanically safe if dropped or mis-handled, owing to the inbuilt 'hammer block' system, in which the hammer block is only retracted when the trigger is fully pulled.

Yes, having only five or six shots is not like the modern semi-autos, but, back in the real world, the timing of an assault situaton is such that the matter must be settled in such a short time that five or six rounds will be all there is time for.....so those must be decisive.

Part of that 'decisive' is not having to remember, under stress, whether there is a round in the chamber, or having to remember to take off a manual safety.....or having to go through the long, hard trigger pull of a DA semi-auto, as compared to the DA trigger pull of a DA revolver.

I can assure you that there is no other feeling in the world like having to make the decision to fire on a human being. (admittedly, when I had to deal with that myself, the assailant broke and ran 'within the second' and I did not fire, but it was 'just that close'.) I wouldn't wish that emotional trauma on anyone......its a really, seriously bad feeling, which gets re-lived in nightmares......no joke.....

The 'moral of the story'?.........training at the range with semi-auto pistols is all well and good, but the old-style, best quality DA revolver is the 'survival tool' when one's survival depends on one's ability to adequately use a weapon under extremes of stress and emotional trauma.

cheers

Carla

[GSF44Mag]

My wife finds it hard to work the slide on the Semi-Autos She prefers the Ruger SP101 DA revolver. But we are old.. lol

[BonnieB]

Congrats to Snork, on her successes. Nothing wrong with having a little color in your hardware, although I myself prefer a lovely shade of teal.


And not to hi-jack the thread, but just for the sake of argument, in home defense, the point of a handgun is to fight your way to your shot gun. Proper procedure, in my book is:

1. grab your (loaded) handgun,
   
2. grab your kids,
   
3. fight your way to your (loaded) shotgun,
   
4. and retreat to the bathtub and sit there and wait for them to be stupid enough to come after you !

Only a fool goes walking around a dark house with a handgun, searching for an intruder. Buy insurance, forget the 'stuff' and protect yourself and your children from behind a cast iron barrier in a room with only one point of entry.

And BTW, I sure wish someone would bring ME home a Desert Eagle!