Category: Guest Contributors

Tom | Flickr

TomD

 

What you need to do is to go buy a suitable pistol for home defense. Then you can practice your photographic skills by composing shots of your new weapon in various backgrounds.

Learning to shoot it well is a rewarding challenge.

 

reply by photog

I’ve been thinking about it. I wanted something that Camera Girl could fall back on when I’m out of the house. Some people have told me to get a shot gun for her because of its ease of aiming. As far as the photographic opportunity I see what you’re saying. Pistols are beautiful machines. The gun show isn’t a very photo friendly environment. No control over lighting or camera support.

 

reply by TomD

I’m not sure I would recommend a shotgun as a first and only weapon for a female who has absolutely no prior gun experience. I’ve got a shotgun for home defense but I got my first shotgun 65 years ago, at the age of 9. I’ve hunted and shot competition skeet, trap and sporting clays, all extensively.

Shotguns have significant recoil, enough to intimidate, probably scare, a first time shooter. And you really don’t want to start training a new shooter by scaring and intimidating them.

I’d like to see you buy a .22 pistol for learning how to shoot, practice gun safety and taking to the range. There’s no recoil to speak of and the noise is just fine with ear plugs. You’d need to get around 500-1000 rounds each to get comfortable and learn the fundamentals. ESPECIALLY GUN SAFETY! Get someone to teach you. I’d love to take you to my home range but it’s about 900 miles SW of you.

And your home defense weapon would be something like a Glock in 9mm. Maybe a revolver.

Below, my Benelli Nova 12 ga, it’s chambered to accept all 12 ga up to 3-1/2”. With 3” OO buck, it recoils hard enough to intimidate the devil out of me, approaching retina detachment levels.

 

Update

Comment from War Pig

Working the slide on an autoloader can be a problem for women who may lack hand strength. Especially mature women. Milady’s 25 auto is easier but as far as I’m concerned the 25 is a cap gun and highly likely to malfunction. I always recommend a revolver for women who lack significant experience. The .38 is fine. Deadly at close range and a lot less recoil than a .357Sig. Since she’d likely be firing at very close range she can use a shorter barrel. I would recommend using special personal protection ammo. Say, Winchester Defender for the .38 special. The expanding defender type bullets maximize torso damage and she needs less accuracy. With a torso hit with defense ammo she would likely not require a second shot.

There are revolvers in .410 shotgun but they are very loud and flash a lot. Okay to intimidate the bad guy but the inexperienced shooter may drop it after the first shot.

Personally, I prefer a knife first, then a 45 ACP. But most people don’t like up close, look them in the eye and smell the adrenalin that fighting with knives requires.

The absolute worst thing about teaching women to shoot is their female reaction of closing their eyes in anticipation of or in reaction to, a loud noise. Teaching marksmanship to female officer cadets I had to overcome that first. I kept a length of 50 caliber cleaning rod on hand. I had them dry fire. Every time they closed their eyes I’d smack them on the top of the helmet liner they wore and shout “WRONG HOG”. Then when I broke them of that I’d do the same during live fire. Getting them to keep both eyes open was almost as bad.

Now, you can’t do that to Mrs. Photog unless you want to sleep with one eye open for the rest of your life and hire a food taster. So a mildly recoiling revolver is probably the best bet.

 

Comments from photog

Thanks Tom and War Pig for your very helpful advice for my home defense decisions.  Hopefully this will also be valuable for other readers on the site.

 

In reply to War Pig.

I tend to advise revolvers for limited experience people. In extreme high stress situations, people with little to no training to fall back on tend to brain lock. In that situation, chambering a round and flipping a safety needs to be every bit as thoughtlessly automatic as going for the brake pedal on your car. No think, just done.

That takes practice and experience.

Revolver? Just point and pull the trigger, no boom, pull again.

Here’s a revolver I bought sometime back. It’s not exactly up there with my S&W’s and Colts but it performed it function as a VERY light and small carry piece. At that time, as a structural engineer, I commonly found myself alone in old powerless and boarded up buildings in downtown Atlanta to see if they could reasonably be repurposed. I didn’t do that for long unarmed.

I never had to pull it on anyone, thank God. But one time, it may have saved me some serious trouble. A couple of the “residents” came upon me in some dark hallway. They were almost certainly measuring me when I put my hand in my pocket, a decision was instantly made and they left. At that time, I had 5-6 projects going in the area and the Mexican workers who usually kept all of their earnings with them were being robbed too many times to count.

This is a Taurus Titanium Ultra Light, .38 Special +P. It’s no larger than my hand and weights less than a pound.

Downside is when firing +P, it has a pretty sharp bark and recoil. It is ported, so that helps with muzzle flip.

War Pig In reply to TomD.

That’s good. Hammerless can be good but the trigger pull is heavier than cocking and firing. But, it removes another step so that outweighs the extra trigger pull. As you said, point and pull. Keep pointing and pulling until he goes down and stops moving. Yeah, plus-p does bark a bit. My late wife had a pistol. I started her out with the 38 and she progressed to the Python in 357 mag. Back then defender type rounds were mostly just hollow points. So she had 6 hollowpoints. Never had to fire it and only pulled it once to chase away the idiot. Actually not quite true. She did use it on an overbold coyote once. Made mincemeat out of him. Another advantage of a revolver is you can leave it fully loaded all the time with no worries. No magazine spring to fade if left loaded at max over time.

 

Chemist In reply to War Pig.

Look into the Shield EZ. It is a semiauto .380 where the slide is very easy to manipulate.