Guns

M&P Carry – first week

/ hsoi / 14 Comments

About a week ago I started carrying the S&W M&P9 full time.

I think everything is about as dialed in as it can be, in terms of trigger, barrel, sights, and so on. I’m ringing small steel plates at 25+ yards with carry ammo (Gold Dot 124 grain +P) and with my handloads. I didn’t have a chance to see how things are behaving on paper in terms of exact POI vs. POA and grouping, since last Saturday at KRT was pretty rainy. But really, if I’m hitting that steel “hostage target” plate at 25+ yards, things are certainly good enough. I’m still hoping to get some patterning on paper tho, just to satisfy my geeky itch.

But the bigger thing is how it’s been on my hip for the past week.

I carry inside the waistband (IWB) in a Comp-Tac MTAC holster. It’s what I carried my XD-9 in for years, so I figured it was the easiest thing to get me started. I tried a friend’s Raven, and while I see the great benefits to the Raven, it just doesn’t work for my body. That said, the Raven is really cool for being an OWB holster that, as far as OWB holsters go, keeps it pretty tight to the body. That’s nice, and essential for concealed carry. So in this MTAC? Well, it’s the same MTAC as my XD was carried in (just a different kydex shell), and I am finding the M&P is carrying tighter to my body. That’s great for concealment, with the M&P concealing slightly better for me. But it’s a little more difficult on the draw, in terms of getting my thumb between the gun and my torso so I can get a grip to draw. I can do it, it’s just a bit of a tighter fit and I need to ensure a leftward lean to make space. No big deal, it’s what I do anyways, just have to continue to get used to the new feel.

Also, there was a burr on the M&P. On the polymer frame around the top of the beavertail area (and really, around the whole top of the frame but the beavertail was most noticeable) was a seam… a burr… something from where the mold parts probably came together during manufacturing. Well, while it was a tiny burr, against my side it was horrible. I wear up against my skin, so that constantly rubbing on me was going to rub me raw. I took a Scotch-Brite pad, because it was about the finest “sandpaper” I had on hand, and just spent a little time “polishing” up the top of the beavertail area, to smooth it out and remove the burr. Ah… much better.

All in all, it’s feeling fine. It actually feels a little nicer on my hip, I think due to how much closer it holds to my body. And while the beavertail makes a point that juts up, it doesn’t dig into me at all. Oh sure, it’s not 100% comfortable, but carry rarely is… as someone said, a gun is supposed to be comforting, not comfortable.

One thing I have noticed in shooting it… she seems to get a lot dirtier than my XD did. Same ammo, more crud to deal with. Not entirely sure why, or if I’m just having false perception here. But that’s how it seems.

When gripping the gun for one-handed shooting, my thumb wants to be right atop the magazine release. I’m not sure if this is going to be a problem, with an unwanted magazine release. So far it hasn’t happened, but my M&P experience is still young.

On reloading well… the giant “foot” of the magazine basepad is huge. I’m getting used to it, but it just feels so big, out there, and unnecessary. I’m used to my index finger resting up the front of the magazine when doing a reload; now it’s just a basepad in my palm and my finger tip touching the top of the magazine — the finger forming the hypotenuse with the magazine and the basepad. My understanding is the foot is there to help removing the magazine, but I haven’t seen nor felt it come into play. Maybe I just haven’t hit the right circumstance yet.

I do want to do more shooting with it. Hopefully one of these weekends at KRT I’ll have a little more free time and can run some drills.

But all in all, it’s carrying well, shooting well, and I’m adjusting to it just fine.

Another day, another (muddy) class

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

Just returned home from another day at KR Training. Today was a single class, Defensive Pistol Skills 1.

I want to start by giving a pat on the back to all the students for attending. Last night we had some wicked storms roll across Texas dumping 2-3″ or more of rain. Some minor flooding, many stock tanks are overflowing their banks. It makes it tough to drive, and a soggy situation for a class. But class was held despite all the rain and muddy conditions. Why? Because life isn’t always ideal. You can’t ask that mugger to come back when it’s 75° and sunny, so it’s good to practice in less than ideal conditions. So a big pat on the back for all the students for being troopers today…especially when the mud was flying as bullets impacted the muddy backstop. 🙂

Today’s class really demonstrated the value of dry fire. Because of the rainy conditions, we modified the class a bit to work on some skills dry in the classroom. This enabled students to focus on the fundamental skills and not get too caught up nor overwhelmed by a lot of other factors. Plus since there’s no BANG occurring, there’s no flinching, you can learn proper trigger press, you don’t have to reload and thus can work the trigger many many many more times. There’s no question the students all shot better and progressed faster because of the dry work.

Another reason to work dry? You can do things you can’t otherwise do. For example, the last “close quarters” drill we do? Good luck finding a range that will allow you to do that drill. But you can work on that skill dry at home. No, it’s not 100% the same, but it’s better than never practicing the skill at all. Everything we did in class today you can do dry to work on those skills: draw, present, trigger prep, follow through, trigger reset, clearing concealment garments, reloading, moving, one-handed shooting, running the 3 Seconds or Less drill. All can and should be done dry.

Besides… with the rains like it is, many ranges are going to be closed due to conditions (e.g. Austin Rifle Club will probably be flooded since it’s located in a floodplain). Dry work to the rescue!

Otherwise, the usual set of comments apply:

  • Slow down. Yes speed matters, but only if you can accomplish what you’re trying to accomplish. No one cares about the first person to get a wrong answer. Spraying and praying, smoking and hoping? It’s only leads to unacceptable hits. Right now you are learning, so slow down. Do it correctly. Slow it down, do it right. The more you do it correctly, the better off you’ll be. Then as it becomes second nature, you will go faster, and be correct and faster. Slow down. Be correct.
  • Don’t be married to your equipment. Gun, holster, magazine pouches, whatever. Your gear will affect your skill and abilities. Good gear will help you, bad gear will hinder you. I’m sure some of you in the class with less than optimum gear choices may have seen how, under these circumstances, that gear just isn’t going to fly. I also hope that you’ll be looking for better gear. Here’s the guide to gun selection. If you have other questions about gear, never hesitate to contact us.
  • Small guns are hard to shoot. That’s the trade-off for getting a smaller size. However, most people don’t need guns as small as they think they do. Or at least look at it this way: small guns are advanced guns. You are better served by getting a full-sized gun and learning to shoot it well. Build up your skills, lay the solid foundation. When you’re really good with the big gun, then you can start to toy with the small gun. Or, you may find that you don’t really need a small gun. Most people who can conceal a Glock 26 can conceal a Glock 19 just as easily. Circumstances vary from person to person, of course, but most people can conceal a G19 fine and will shoot it a lot better than a G26.
  • Complex guns are hard to shoot. Guns with decockers. Guns with double-action/single-action trigger pulls. Guns with all manners of switches and levers. One person had a gun with 3 very similar levers all in a row on the left-side of the gun (I think it was a Taurus): one for takedown, one for slide-lock, one for manual thumb safety… a maze of twisty little levers, all alike. I carried a Springfield XD for years, but I too am starting to agree that the grip safety is just unnecessary. Sure the 1911 design is one thing, but did the XD really need to engineer it in? One person with an XD today drew with a poor grip on his gun and the safety could have missed being depressed and then the gun no workie. Putting on my engineer hat, things should be as simple as they need to be, but no simpler. DA/SA trigger pulls? fails that test. Decocker? fails that test. Thumb safety on non-1911 style guns? fails that test. Why complicate things? You have enough to do already.
  • And as I wrote above, dry practice is your friend!

Another good class. Another good group of students…. muddy students, but good students. 🙂

Updated: Tyler Kee was a student in this class and wrote up his experience.

You’re surrounded by felons

/ hsoi

When discussing the notion of law-abiding citizens carrying guns in public, a common refrain from those against the notion goes something like “I don’t want those people around me and my children.” They find it scary and horrible that such people would exist and dare go out in public and mingle. The belief tends to be that those people are dangerous and will kill me for sneezing in their general direction.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

People who have concealed weapon/handgun permits/licenses tend to be more law-abiding than most. Click here to read the facts about what owning a gun and a CHL says about a person. To own a gun, to get a license, you have to go through so much. Then to keep it, you have to go through even more. By nature, you must be a law-abiding person.

So how does the logic hold that a CHL-holder is dangerous and ready to kill you for your parking space? I’ll grant, there are exceptions, but the exception does not prove the rule.

But what’s worse about this is those same people don’t seem to acknowledge what they are certainly surrounded by: felons. Violent felons. Yes, as you walk around the grocery store, as you stroll down the street… do you realize who is mingling among you?

Paul Markel spent 17 years as an Ohio State Certified Peace Officer.  Recently he wrote an article that presented a solid point: (h/t The Shooting Wire)

I spent 17 years as an Ohio State Certified Peace Officer.  During my time spent with a badge I frequently encountered criminals, bad guys who I had previously arrested, in the aisles of the local grocery or big box store.  My wife learned early on in our marriage that if I pointed someone out during a shopping trip we needed to move to another area of the store.  The last thing I wanted to do was encounter some maggot I’d arrested a month earlier while my family was present.

For the naïve in the audience; no, the bad guys don’t go to jail and stay there after the police catch and arrest them.  Vermin arrested for vicious felonies will bail out of jail and spend months on the street before ever going to trial.  Even if they are convicted our broken justice system sees them back on the street much sooner than most citizens would imagine.

What’s my point in all this?   It’s simple, every time you leave your home and go out in public you are brushing elbows with felons.   You just don’t know it.

Chew on that for a moment. Have you ever looked at one of those sex offender registries where you can plug in an address and it shows you all the registered sex offenders in the area? Of course you’ll plug in your home address and likely discover you’re surrounded. Shopping for a new place to live, you plug in every address of every house/apartment you look at, and they’re all surrounded.

Yes folks, you are surrounded by people who have done bad things.

You just haven’t met them yet.

And when the time comes for you to meet them, how are you going to respond? Certainly it depends how they introduce themselves to you. But assuming it’s not with a smile and a handshake, how will you respond? Do you truly believe fighting back isn’t worth it? Are you truly going to passively submit to them? to let them have their way with you… with your wife… your daughter…. Really?

Give Mr. Markel’s article a read. Long ago, I was in that camp. Then I realized how the logic of that camp really doesn’t hold up when faced with the (ugly) realities of life.

Some strategy is better than none

/ hsoi

Here’s an article discussing self-defense strategies for students on college campuses. (h/t The Gun Wire)

The strategies discussed in the article, on the whole, are reasonable for the circumstance and situation. They discuss keeping yourself out of trouble or possible trouble situations in the first place. For example, parking close to a facility, and if when parking you know you’ll be returning after dark to ensure to park in a well-lit area. To carry your purse or backpack in front of you to act as a distraction to help you escape from an attacker (throw it at them). They also talk about planning ahead, such as studying the campus map to know proper walkways, and where the emergency/911 callboxes are located.

I also liked some campus-specific reminders, such as keeping your door locked when you’re inside. I recall from my college days how everyone was very trusting and left doors open or unlocked. This lead to a lot of undesired behavior, from things being stolen, to drunk students walking into wrong rooms, to female students receiving unwanted visitors.

Taking steps to keep yourself out of trouble in the first place, to think ahead, plan ahead, be proactive with your safety, this is all good stuff.

Even when the article talks about when an attack is imminent, they give some handy insights. Of course, it’s a brief news article so they really can’t go into details. But this is the time when things like SouthNarc’s “Managing Unknown Contacts” (MUC) or Insights Training Center’s “Street and Vehicle Tactics” would come in very handy.

And of course, the article ends talking about an actual attack.

* If an attacker grabs and tries to escort you to a car or secluded area, begin screaming for help and use a weapon of opportunity (pens, pencils, books, purses, etc.) to starting hitting the attacker in vital areas (Head , neck, throat, groin).

* Most attackers are looking for victims not willing to fight, so have the mindset that no matter what happens you will fight the attacker off using whatever tool you have (hands, feet, or weapons of opportunity). Make a quick assessment: do they want you, or what you have?

All colleges acknowledge such things can and do happen on their campus; if they didn’t, they wouldn’t have to even talk about these safety and self-defense measures. So they know people get attacked. Yet, most colleges refuse to allow students the means and mechanisms to better defend themselves. Pepper spray is good, but there are better tools available… so long as law-abiding citizens aren’t denied.

Someday….

But in the meantime, do what you can to stay safe and be prepared.

Have you commented?

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Finally received press release emails from the NRA and the TSRA regarding Texas Park and Wildlife’s proposed change to permit hunting game animals with suppressor-equiped firearms.

The NRA’s release.

TSRA basically forwarded the NRA’s release.

All of this is the same stuff I covered last week, including how to comment (via email, or snail mail). A copy of the email I sent is in my prior posting.

If you haven’t already, please take a few minutes and comment now on the proposed rule. TPWC will make the decision at the March 28-29 meeting, so the sooner you comment the better.

Thank you for supporting common sense gun regulations (to borrow a phrase). 🙂

Emoji – pistol.tk is now mine

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

With iOS 5 came Emoji. Emoji is a Japanese term for the picture characters or emoticons used in Japanese messages. Yes, it’s emoticon-like, but there’s a wider range provided. What was significant in iOS 5 (and Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion”) is bringing it formally into the OS due to the inclusion of Emoji in the Unicode 6.0 standard.

I discovered how to enable Emoji on my iPhone, I showed Wife and Daughter, and texting hasn’t been the same since. You can also get it on Lion.

The rest of this article might not make sense if you’re viewing it on a computer that can’t show Emoji.

Of course, the most amusing Emoji character is Unicode Character U+1F4A9, ‘PILE OF POO’. 💩 <– That little guy.

I’m not sure how he looks on other systems, but here on Apple-based OS’s, it’s not just a pile of poo, but it’s a pile of poo with a happy face. The Poo Man.

First, the artwork is amusing. Second, you have to realize there was an explicit decision made to include a character in the Unicode Standard that represented a pile of poo. Why? There was debate to include poo or not. There were justifications put forth as to why a character that represented a turd was important to put in there, and someone likely argued against its inclusion and put forth reasons for not including it in the standard. Then there were discussions as to what to name it. It’s not a lump, a mound, a group… it’s a pile. It’s not a turd, a shit, dung, no, it’s poo. This is now formalized: pile of poo. Imagine a group of people in suits sitting around a table debating all of these details. Isn’t technology wonderful? 🙂

The amusement was fine, but then I read on JWZ’s blog a little more about the pile of poo. Specifically, I saw the guys at Panic talking about the first Emoji domain: http://💩.la

Yes, Poopla. The guys at Panic have created the most important website in the world. 😉

Alas, the Laos TLD (.la) doesn’t support Emoji registrations any more. However, it seems the territory of Tokelau and their .tk TLD still allows emoji registrations.

And I couldn’t help myself.

I registered: 🔫.tk. That’s the Emoji “Pistol” character (Unicode: U+1F52B (U+D83D U+DD2B), UTF-8: F0 9F 94 AB), dot tk.

With so many Emoji already taken, I was surprised it was still available.But now it’s mine, for all my geeky amusement.

The M&P – starting to carry

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

I believe the last entry I made about my M&P was this one, talking about accuracy issues.

Actually no, it was this one. 🙂

But both are important, if you care about backstory.

I ended up ordering sights from Dawson Precision. The rear sight is a Charger fixed rear, black, 0.125″ notch, serrated, item #018-190. Dawson says to match it up with their 0.180″ tall front. But in discussing things with my fellow KR Training instructors, that didn’t seem to wash by experiences and calculations. I ended up getting a fiber optic inserted front sight, 0.170″ tall x 0.100″ wide, item #021-039. So, a hundredth of an inch shorter. May not seem like much, but it matters.

Took me a little while to get them, since the Charger was on backorder. Then it was a matter of getting somewhere to install them. In the end I just took it to McBride’s and had their gunsmiths install it. First time I used them for smith work, and it went OK.

Unfortunately I’ve had no time to take it to the range to see how things perform, until this past Saturday. Was teaching at KR Training, so I knew I could get in a little range time. Alas, because I was teaching, it was truly just a little time. I didn’t have time to sit down and methodically poke at things, set up targets, shoot from distances with different ammos, and see how things performed. But I did get to shoot some, and Karl shot it too.

I mostly shot Speer Gold Dot 9mm 124 grain +P. Shot shy of 100 rounds. Karl had his small steel range fully set up, so I just shot on that range. I had no problems hitting anything I aimed at, from 10 yards to 25+. There’s one “hostage target” that has a 6″ plate that flaps when you hit it, but it’s partially obscured so maybe 4″ or so is actually exposed. Backing up to 25 yards and even a little beyond? No problems hitting it over and over and over again. I switched to some of my practice ammo (my handloads) and there too had no problems hitting things.

At this point, I feel confident enough in the gun and the setup to begin carrying the gun, and so I did. All through classes that Saturday I carried it, and it stayed on my hip on the way home. The XD-9 Service is being put to rest — for now. But I’m still not 100% sold on the M&P.

First, I want to do some more methodical shooting with the gun on paper to see how the groups are behaving. How are things grouping? Where’s point of impact vs. point of aim? etc.

Second, I just need to keep shooting it to see how things go. Just need to collect more data over time in more shooting situations and contexts. Sure I’ve put what now? maybe 1000 rounds or so through the gun? That’s just not enough. It’s not so much confidence in the gun, but ensuring I can accept how the gun performs. If it’s grouping 3-4″ at 25 yards, is that acceptable enough for me, especially when my XD-9 with the factory barrel groups 2.5″ with my handloads? Just have to see how well I can live with the performance. And some may say why would I use the gun then? Well, there’s more to the M&P than just the accuracy. There’s some ergonomic issues that just aren’t as ideal with the XD as the M&P. There’s a lot of factors in play. Only time will tell for me.

But, at least I move along.

Safety FAIL

/ hsoi

*sigh*

“Don’t worry, it’s unloaded”. She didn’t get to hear it, but she was affected by it.

Around 12:30 p.m., the gun accidentally went off, according to the Sheriff’s Office, sending a bullet through the wall and into the head of Hannah Kelley, 20, — Bueller’s girlfriend and daughter of the church’s pastor, Tim Kelley. “It does appear this was a tragic accident,” said Cecilia Barreda, a sheriff’s spokeswoman.

No, guns do not accidentally go off.

If anything, they negligently go off.

ST. PETERSBURG — Dustin Bueller wanted to see Moises Zambrana’s gun, according to authorities.

Bueller turns 21 next week and was thinking about buying one for himself, the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office said.

So after a Sunday morning service let out and parishioners were still milling about inside the Lealman church, he asked Zambrana, 48, to show him his Ruger 9mm.

The men took precautions. They walked away from the crowd in a recreation room at Grace Connection Church and into a closet. Zambrana removed the Ruger’s magazine, the Sheriff’s Office said, and started to explain the gun’s safety features.

But he forgot about the round in the chamber.

There’s nothing wrong with having a gun in church. There’s nothing wrong with showing the gun and talking about the gun. And yes, they opted to take some level of precautions (or did they? why go into a closet? I don’t see how that affords safety… maybe just keeps others from seeing what you’re doing). But they forgot at least two key things:

1. How to properly unload a semi-automatic handgun.

You first remove the magazine. You then pull the slide all the way back and LOCK it back. You then check the magazine well to ensure it is empty. You then check the chamber to ensure it is empty; check it visually, check it tactilely . In this case, you had multiple people in the room; have each of them check as well to verify, verify again, and re-verify yet again.

2. What a safe direction is.

Just because you didn’t see anyone doesn’t mean the direction is safe. Sheet rock, interior doors, none of these things will stop a handgun bullet, as they unfortunately found out. A safe direction considers where the bullet will come to rest — a location you may not be able to see. Click to read more about what is a safe direction.

And yes, we can probably guess a few other rules were violated, such as not keeping your finger off the trigger. I’d also wonder if they were treating the gun as a loaded gun or not — #1 on Col. Cooper’s rule list for a reason.

This is why we have safety rules, to avoid tragedy such as this. Above all things is to ALWAYS keep the gun pointed in a safe direction. Even if every other rule gets violated, if pointed in a safe direction generally the worst you’ll deal with is ringing ears, a hole in the wall, and embarrassment.

I really don’t care how good of a shooter you are. I do care about your ability to handle a gun safely.

Observations from class – BP2/DPS1, with something for the ladies.

/ hsoi

This past Saturday was another round of classes at KR Training. We held Basic Pistol 2 and Defensive Pistol Skills 1.

I observed a lot of things in the classes, and many of my observations remain the same as always:

  • Slow down. It’s better to do something slower but correctly than fast and wrong. Yes ultimately you do want to go faster, but only if it’s correct. Work to be correct first, then speed will come.
    • This is especially important for people breaking a lifetime of bad habits. If you try to go fast, you will revert to old habits. If you revert to old habits, you just reinforce them instead of ingraining the new habits. Slow down, concentrate on applying the new skills, on building the new habits. It may take you thousands of repetitions to ingrain the new habit, but work to ingrain it.
    • To help with all of this, dry fire. Costs you little, gains you much, especially if you’re breaking old habits.
  • When you yell commands, you have to find your inner drill sergeant, then kick it up 150%. The commands must be yelled, long, and loud. And yes, you must practice this. You must have your script written and memorized, because ad libbing isn’t good. “Stop! Don’t Move!” is reasonable.
  • That support hand? (your left hand, if your right hand works the trigger). It’s called a support hand for good reason — it’s what supports the gun! It’s the prime player in recoil management. You need to grip with that hand hard. As Karl has taken to saying, it’s like Homer Simpson choking Bart. 🙂 And it’s not just crushing, it’s also ensuring some sort of downward torque — the pinky is in play, think about keeping that pinky held towards your chest… moving towards your chest… torquing your wrist in that (downward) direction. That helps counter the recoil that’s trying to torque the gun upwards — you’re applying a counter-force.
  • We can all use more work on fundamentals, be it grip, stance, or safety.

One last thing I want to comment on — for the ladies, and the men in their lives.

Ladies? If your man — husband, boyfriend, father, uncle, grandfather, whomever — wants to buy you a gun? That’s great. Just make sure the ONLY thing he does is finance it. Everything else needs to be up to you. Why? Because this gun is for you, not him, and so the gun needs to fit you.

One young lady arrived to class. I went to check her in. I asked her what gun she had. The exchange was something like this:

Lady: a .380

Me: OK. But what’s the make/model? Brand?

Lady: I don’t know.

Me: OK. Did you buy this gun?

Lady: No. My dad did.

Me: Did you go with him? Did you have any part in the purchase?

Lady: No.

O…K…. 🙂  That told me what I needed to know. I appreciate what her father is trying to do — I’m a father, I have a daughter, so I totally get it. The trouble was, it sounded like she had no involvement in getting the gun, so the gun was chosen for I don’t know what reason. The gun was a Bersa Thunder, and for some reason those are gaining a following as a “good gun for ladies”. I don’t know why, and after the experience I had yesterday I don’t think I’d recommend that gun for anyone. First, it has a double-action then single-action pull. Then it has a decocker. The sights are marginal. It has very low capacity, with a marginally acceptable caliber. Trying to get that gun to work was quite difficult. We struggled to get it working, and I tell you… trying to flip the decocker and safety around was truly a struggle, to a point of forcing risky gun handling merely to flip the lever. I’d like to hope THAT part of the gun may have just been that particular gun and not indicative of all Bersa Thunder’s. Nevertheless, there’s enough other things about the gun’s design that prevent me from recommending such a gun.

Getting back to the lady. Why was this a bad choice for her? Well, apart from the reasons why the gun itself was a bad choice, she had troubles with it. All the levers and mechanisms? It creates a complicated device and it was a lot of procedure to have to remember, on top of all the other things she was learning (tho she was smart and picked up on things pretty well). She also had trouble racking the slide. Eventually she got it running, but smaller guns tend to have tighter/stronger springs and are more difficult to manipulate than larger guns. I watched her first shots, from that long heavy double-action trigger press — they weren’t good. But when she just worked that short single-action trigger? By the end of class she was shooting pretty well. If she can get a better gun, she’s going to do quite well. What’s a better gun? The short answer is Smith & Wesson M&P, an XDm, or a Gen4 Glock. I’m specific on the last 2 because she did have smaller hands and would need the replaceable backstraps for the smaller grip.

There was another lady in class that had a tough situation too.

She brought a Sig. I don’t recall the exact model right now, but it was a small Sig, with a huge double-action trigger pull (long, heavy), and chambered in .40 S&W. The lady was petite, small hands, not a lot of hand strength. That gun was just wrong for her. She struggled to pull the trigger, then it recoiled hard and she could not control the gun. When we asked her about it, she said this was the gun in the safe that she would have to use if someone broke into their house. Basically, it was a “husband leftover”. This lady came with some friends and one had a .22 pistol. When the lady switched to the .22, she did MUCH better.

While it’s generally agreed upon that .22 LR isn’t the ideal self-defense caliber, I’d rather you have a .22 that you can shoot quickly and accurately vs. any gun you can’t handle, where you can’t hit the side of a barn or worse… you make unacceptable hits.

So what’s important in choosing a gun? Here’s a great guide that discusses the factors that actually matter in purchasing a gun. I love this paragraph:

Let’s put this in perspective. The whole point of shooting is to hit your intended target quickly. If you miss or you are too slow, the consequences could run from just wasting ammo to giving up a game animal, a prize at a shooting match, or your life. There’s no award for ‘had a big caliber’, ‘carried the lightest gun on the market’, or ‘had plenty of ammo in the gun’. You either hit or you don’t. Choosing the right equipment will get you to a higher level of skill in less time, and whether you only shoot 50 rounds every 4 years because the state requires it for your carry permit, or you shoot multiple days a week with dreams of winning the Nationals, equipment will make a difference for you.

“You either hit or you don’t”

When it gets down to it, it’s all about hitting. Make sure she has a gun that she can hit things with. It’s up to HER to find that gun that fits HER.

So gentlemen? Thank you for caring about the women in your life. Thank you for supporting them. Thank you for encouraging them to take steps to protect themselves. Thank you for involving them in the process. Thank you for taking the time and trouble to help them find what works best for them.