....wanted to know opinions of what would be a good carry choice for a woman who has limited experience and would be looking for an absolute last line of defense type fail safe if-ever-needed type of thing.
Would like to know about brands, types, calibers, etc, and reasons why it would be good choice for a woman. I'm sure many of you have experience in this regard with your loved ones of the female persuasion, so any insight you can share will be heeded and appreciated as I try to help one of my loved ones with a recommendation and some training.
Someone already mentioned this but it really needs to be the first decision. Will the woman actually use the weapon if needed? She needs to be sure she will use the weapon otherwise don't waste the time and money to get a firearm and a CCW. MANY people will NOT defend themselves. Many years ago I was in a defense tactics class and the instructor laid out a scenario that took out all of the variables of using deadly force and asked who could pull the trigger. Only about a third of the class raised their hand. :shocked: How those people got that far into the process and training without raising their hand to that question was shocking to me. Scary it was.
First let her pick the handgun. It should be whatever fits her hand. Look for a range where you can rent some weapons and let her shoot them to see what works and does not work. She needs to have confidence in the weapon and her ability to use it. Going to the range will allow one to find which cartridge works best for her in a given weapon. I would start at 9mm and go from there. Generally speaking, larger framed handguns handle recoil better than smaller weapons but larger weapons make concealed carry more difficult. Furthermore, women's hands are often smaller than men and a smaller frame weapon is needed for a good fit. Some weapons will recoil more than others due to design and materials, lighter is easy to carry, but that can lead to more recoil. Recoil does not bother me that much until the handgun gets into the magnum power range but I have good hand and arm strength. It really is an individual thing that balances the needs/wants for concealed carry, weight, size and bulk vs capacity, caliber, and fit.
Once upon a time, I was shooting with my wife and I was giving her hints on how to improve what she was doing. No yelling or screaming on my part at all but there was a bit of resistance from her to do what needed to be done.
That day, or the next day, we went to a gun store that has a woman owner/firearms instructor. The lady spent 2-3 hours with my wife! :thumbsup::laughing::laughing::laughing: She let my wife hold a bunch of handguns to find a fit and they then went off to shoot at a laser target for quite some time with some of the handguns. The woman instructor was making suggestions which my wife dutifully followed. What was funny is that these were the same comments I made but which were met with resistance. :confused3:
On the way home I DID mention this to the wife.
So find an instructor the lady will learn from.
Which cartridge to use is really what round the woman can best carry and shoot. A .22 LR is better than nothing.
I have seen women who have trouble racking a slide. Really hard for me to understand it but I have seen it. I think this can be overcome with technique and doing some simple hand strengthening exercises. Having said that, I would not let difficulty of operating the slide prevent her from getting a pistol as long as there is someone who can do it for her.
Yeah, I know that will raise some eyebrows but how many women carrying a pistol carry a second magazine? Pretty close to zero. With even the smaller frame pistols, especially in 9mm, they have plenty of capacity. In a critical incident, the most likely reason anyone would have to rack the slide is if there is a malfunction. No argument that one SHOULD be able to rack the slide but if the pistol is what fits the woman, she can shoot it, and she will carry it, so be it. Pistols are not as wide as wheel guns and that might make the difference in being able to carry concealed.
The reality is that for most incidents where a woman is going to use a handgun, she is going to have a very short time to use the weapon, and if it malfunctions, she very likely will not have time to fix it. Tap, rack and go is not hard but it does take practice and I don't think most men, much less women, have practiced enough to have the muscle memory to clear a failure to fire without thinking. I have fired thousands of rounds in pistols and I have had some failures to fire and I did not even think about what to do, I just did it, but I have spent the practice time. The rounds that failed to fire were practice rounds and I have never had a duty round fail to fire. Knock on wood.
I have seen a revolver jam and it aint pretty. Dang scary.
Never seen anyone who has trouble pulling the trigger though. That one really is odd. Having said that I would NOT get a DA/SA handgun. The DA trigger pull on the handguns I have fired has been around 12 pounds with the SA about 5-6 pounds. Training to pull a 12 pound trigger with accuracy AND then training for the less SA trigger is a PITA. Given one can buy modern pistols that have the same trigger pull from the first round to the last, I don't see any reason to have a carry handgun that is a DA/SA. The trigger pull should be the same every every time.
Later,
Dan
