SlowDave wrote:I've got a friend who expressed interest in having a gun for self defense, principally in the home. She's not interested in CHL at this point, and little to no interest in even carrying in the car, so this is, at this point, mainly for the home. However, she requested a pistol. She grew up around guns, but not shooting them herself. She doesn't have a real fear of them, but is unfamiliar and a bit leery of operating them herself.
She now has a Ruger P89 or 95 (can't remember which), but has problems with it. The gun occasionally misfeeds with her shooting it. It has never misfed when I shoot it, as far as I can remember. For her, the misfeed is on the order of once per 50 rounds. When it misfeeds, it is always/nearly always where it has ejected the old round, it has grabbed the new round, but the new round catches on the loading ramp and doesn't quite make it into the chamber. This can be resolved by simply banging the slide forward at which time everything works and it's ready to fire.
A range marshal and some other folks have told me that this is due to a weak hold on the gun, and too much of the recoil going into moving the entire gun, rather than the lower frame being more stationary and the recoil going into the slide to successfully operate the action. This lady is very petite and fairly weak in the hands and wrists. In fact, when I showed her how to shoot it double action, she said it wouldn't fire. Turns out she just had great difficulty pulling through the double action pull. I think that was partly due to having fired a box or two in single action mode, but when she did pull through the double action (after I showed her it was possible), she very much disliked it. She does not have trouble cycling the slide.
My question is, what options are there to overcome this problem? She is not highly motivated towards shooting to the point of doing hand/wrist exercises to prep for shooting. I'd like to encourage rather than discourage her shooting activities, but I worry about her ability to defend herself with this weapon. Is there any chance that polishing the loading ramp in the rear of the barrel will help this? It looks quite polished already, so I'm not too hopeful there.
Someone said I should get her a revolver as it can't jam, but if she greatly dislikes the double action pull of the auto, I'm pretty sure she'll equally hate the DA pull of a revolver, and cocking it for every shot seems like a fail to me. I got her the 9mm because it has lower recoil than my preferred .40. She had shot a .32 before and loved it, but I'm also very nervous about self defense with a .32 as your only recourse. I guess a .380 could be considered.
I have considered the shotgun option, but I think she'd be intimidated by that, as well as it removes the possibility that she would carry at least on trips by herself, which I've encouraged her to do and she said she would.
I'd like not to spend any money, but will if necessary. Just interested in any wisdom this group might have on this topic.
Thanks!
Have you
given any thought to gettin' a new friend?