I think I’ll keep it and let her have the P3AT I’ve been using as a house gun. I’m not sure she’s going to like practicing with it. The mag is a bit stiff and the recoil is snappy. She not much of a shooter. As in fuggedaboutit.
That will go a long way toward ensuring she never becomes or wants to become much of a shooter.
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This isn’t directed at you as I don’t for a minute buy your story about getting it for her, but the biggest mistake guys make with women and guns are:
1) buying a gun *for* their significant other. If she’s worth having she has a mind of her own and can buy her own gun. You want to pay for it, knock yourself out, but she needs to be the one picking it out.
2) Deciding what she needs or setting parameters based on your preferences and hang ups.
An effective pistol or revolver needs to fit the shooter’s hand so that:
- they can grip it comfortably;
- so that the sights are both visible and aligned or almost aligned when they raise the handgun up into their line of sight as they look at a target; and
- the trigger reach is short enough that they can get enough finger on the trigger to properly control the trigger.
If the front sight isn’t visible at all, or is way too high relative to the rear sight, it’s probably never going to work well for them. You might be able fix it on models with different grip frame inserts or spring housings, and in some cases with different grips, but you’re starting out way behind the power curve. If the sights are not pretty close to being aligned when they grip it naturally they will never shoot it as well as they would a handgun that fits them better.
Similarly, and particularly with DA/SA, or DAO handguns. They need to be able to get their trigger finger on the trigger all the way up to the crease of the joint of their trigger finger in order to have sufficient leverage to fire it to its accuracy potential in DA mode.
3) A large caliber isn’t important. You may be a caliber snob and feel anything less than 9mm isn’t a good choice for a defensive round. But the fact it out of the 2 million or so defensive handgun uses per year at least 95% of them don’t even involve the weapon being fired.
Way too many guys like to prep for the worst case, envisioning a gang of 300 pound assailants high on meth. The reality is that if you find yourself in that scenario the odds are high that you exercised really bad judgment and SA to get in that mess.
The reality is that 95% of the time an assailant seeks a softer target as soon as he or she becomes aware the victim is armed and is fixing to shoot them if they don’t stop their assault, intended assault or approach to assault.
In about 50% of those rare cases where the gun is fired and the assailant is shot, the assailant is going to surrender or flee because they don’t want to get shot again, regardless of the caliber used.
And if you look at the big data, the mouse gun .22LR and .32 ACP perform surprisingly well. A large part of that is the ability of the armed citizen to shoot them very accurately and very rapidly due to minimal recoil.
4) Small size isn’t important. I hear local gun shop staff tell people all the time that if a gun isn’t light weight a woman won’t carry it. That’s not the case with all women anymore than it is with all guys.
Sadly, we are seeing a big push for lighter smaller pistols, particularly lighter, smaller 9mm pistols, that isn’t driven by any need other than for gun companies to create new perceived needs to continue selling more handguns. (Personally, I never needed a reason to buy another one., so I don’t really get that approach.)
But there is no free lunch and the downside is that those lightweight micro sized pistols can be unpleasant to shoot, to the point that shooters:
- don’t shoot them enough to become proficient;
- don’t practice enough with them to remain proficient; and
- often develop a flinch in the process of trying to learn to shoot them and never become anywhere near proficient.
It’s far more productive to start someone out with a .22LR or .32 ACP. Then if the see the need and want more terminal performance, move them up to a full size or possibly compact sized 9mm or .38/.357 Mag revolver. And then maybe, if they want lighter weight move them down in size after they’ve become fairly accomp,I shed shooters. And if they never move beyond .22LR or .32 ACP, that’s just fine.
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When color is an option in a hand gun that fits them well, I do advise women to get the pretty pink, teal, etc option as it will help ensure their boyfriend or hubby doesn’t start carrying it.
