I have carried the J-Frame, mostly a light weight, for self-defense now for almost fifty years. I had a short period where I carried the Kahr Psomethingerother, but I came back to the J.

My latest love is the Ruger LCR, I have one, my wife has one and I have a second one, a three inch with the adjustable sights I take with me when going off for more than a few days (carries as well as a two inch under my T-shirt).

But my right hand is getting wimpy. It hurts like the devil after shooting (hurts pretty much after anything or nothing at all).

My VA Ortho guy says it's arthritis and a bad tendon. He is gonna re-route the tendon thru my thumb and clean out the arthritis. Will be in a cast 6 weeks and he's gonna do it in the early fall (if I don't chicken out).

So it really hurts to shoot my J-Frames. It hurts less to shoot my Glock 43, but it still smarts.

My buddy had a near new Glock 42 with the Trijicon HD sites (I put them on all my autos) and sold it to me with three mags for $400.

I admit to being skeptical of the accuracy and power. I bought a LOT of Hornady Critical Defense and started going to the range.

Accuracy was great, especially shooting fast (for an old guy) at relatively short distances. Gun fit my hand well and it was really easy to keep it on target. It always went "Bang!" and never failed to function like it should.

But the best thing, for me at least, was the real absence of felt recoil. It felt like I was shooting a .22 or close to it. No pain at all, even when shooting a couple hundred rounds (which I could no longer even think of doing with the J-Frames).

I bought a Clip-Draw for it and carefully insert it onto my jeans/shorts waist band just right of my belly button, let the T-shirt fall and it simply disappears.

I have read of a number of guys who use the trigger guard holsters (Mic-style) AND the Clip Draw, but I just can't figure a way to do that and get the gun out and ready to use in a reasonable time though I have tried several times to make the two work together.

Anyway, the Glock 42 is a hand saver (maybe better described as a pain saver) for me.

Bob