Old Dog

Seems like a lot of trouble for what it is but it is your dime so make yourself happy. I am not into how my guns look so I am no judge about these things. Does look cool and I guess that is its appeal.

I mostly pocket carry and have bought just about all the pocket nines out there. Two things have to be taken into account. First is if she really is going to carry in her pocket or not. If not then you should look at the Shield which I found to be the best of the larger pocket nines. If true pocket carry is wanted than the best value is the Kahr CM9. Fits well in a pocket and shoot soft for its size. The other thing to look out for is trigger pull and how hard the slide is to work. I went through all of this with my wife and the Kahr has a very strong spring which give some women problems. Sigs have easier to use slides and the P938 may be the ticket if price is not a problem and learning to use a manual safety is not an issue. I did not like the Ruger LC9 due to is very long trigger. The Kel-Tec PF9 actually fit the best in my pocket and was the lightest. Although it was 100% reliable for me I just did not like that it looked so unrefined compared to my more expensive guns so I sold it. The little Sig P290RS is also a nice gun but a little thick. If she will mainly carry in her pocketbook the Glock 26 is a winner. Easy to use and shoot. It is hard to say without knowing your wife. I have bought many a gun for my wife only to have her not like it for various reasons. Best thing is to let her rent some to shoot because going by looks, size and how they feel in her hand is not a good indicator of whether she will like shooting and carrying the gun. A heavy gun that is put in a pocket or purse for a minute or two feels a lot heavier when carried for a hour.

The trigger of the 351 is very heavy. I bought one for my wife and she could not pull it with two fingers. My wife is very petite at 95 lbs so take that into consideration. However I had problems shooting that gun accurately and I shoot .44 magnums and lower for fun. If you want a small .22 with a decent trigger take a look at the LCR .22lr and .22 magnum. Better triggers than others in that caliber. However a .22 for home defense is not advisable. Most non professionals are going to stand there ground and keep shooting at a moving target, that may or may not be shooting back. Take a look at the new LC380. A full sized .380 from Ruger with very little recoil.

I was always a long gun guy for over 40 years I enjoyed shooting long guns. To give you some idea, when I moved to Florida 3 years ago I had 3 handguns and 28 long guns. Having carried both a handgun and rifle in combat, I definitely took a liking to a rifle as the proper tool for defense and more fun to shoot. However there are no rifle/shotgun ranges within a reasonable driving distance here so no place to shoot as much as I would want to. The only thing they have are indoor 50 yard lanes for sighting in your hunting rifle and those are only available by appointment only on Saturdays. Then I got my concealed carry license and my focus naturally shifted to handguns because that is what I carried daily. The rifles and shotguns sitting in my safe collecting dust were sad looking and I found them better homes. I have no fantasies about end of the world or anything that would require a rifle so I will not keep one unless I could shoot it regularly. Heck, I have homes so close to me that my neighbor needs to walk on my driveway to get to his backyard. The furthest I can see is one block which is less than 100 yards. I live in a community of 100,000+ retired people with our own emergency shelters and support groups. No mountains to head to in Florida and I am not near any swamps. The only place I can head to in an emergency is Daytona Beach. So I now just concentrate on carry guns. I have some sub compacts, compacts and full sized guns that fit any occasion or dress style. I went a little nuts when I moved here since I was not much of a handgun guy and really did not know what was out there other than guns I used in competition. I bought about 30 handguns to find the 8 I know use for HD and carry. It was fun and expensive. I am still paying off guns I no longer own but I got to shoot everything I wanted to shoot and experience is priceless.

My life experience as an Italian is that woman like Italian men almost as much as clothes.

Edited to note that when I use the word "you" I do not mean the poster but "you" in the general sense. It just sounds better than using the word "one" I know that my views on caliber and round count are not popular but they are based on real experience and not the opinion of someone who never fired a shot in anger. Feel free to disagree or ignore me. I probably disagree with both having shot people with handgun and rifle. My feeling is that most will stop what they are doing when shot with anything. Those drug crazed bad guys who will absorb a lot of rounds will not care what those rounds are, will reach you before they bleed out and a 9mm and .45 can take out a spine or brain equally well. The difference in size is a fraction of a inch and really will not matter in so many cases as not to worry about it. Handguns equally suck as man stoppers unless you hit the brain or spinal cord which rarely happens in real life no matter how many times you can do it on a paper target at the range. So if you think you will miss a lot or that your home will be invaded by a large gang then go for quantity of ammo. If you feel you will only be dealing with one or two people, the most likely situation, then a large caliber gives you a tiny bit of extra margin of error. Just find that picture of ballistic gel with all the calibers from .380 to .45 in it and you will see that they all penetrate about the same and forget about that temporary stretch cavity thing as that is unproven but sounds good enough to attract lots of believers. Watch a surgery and see how much you can stretch your insides without causing any damage to see what I mean. It is all about shot placement and the fact that the overwhelming great majority of people, good and bad, do not want to be shot with anything and all studies show that in over 90% of cases for home defense, no shots are fired and if they are, caliber and quantity of ammo did not seem to play a part. My LEO friends keep telling me that they used to come across a lot of shootings and they were with .22 and .25 calibers and they certainly stopped the person from doing whatever it was that he was doing that got him shot. Sure there are exceptions but I like to plan for the likely that is possible and not the unlikely just because it is possible. If I was worried about unlikely possibilities I would wear a helmet to protect me against falling meteorites and do all sorts of other things to protect me from harm and death that is unlikely to happen. For some reason when it comes to guns as the solution, no problem is small enough to address. Anyway I use a 9mm with +P ammo, a .45 and a .357 with .38 +P and know that shot placement will count and that I may have to shoot more than once because it is a handgun. Let's not forget that the studies done on one stop shots only included shootings where there were one shot fired and ignored all the other shootings that had a lot more rounds fired. For all we know, the number of one stop shot shooting could be only 10% of all shootings so the studies so many hang their hat on are flawed and by now discredited by modern research. As I have witnessed enemy soldiers drop when shot anywhere once, keep coming with multiple shots, be stopped with a .38 or .45 and not stopped by a M-16. My only civilian shooting saw a large man stopped by a .22lr to the belly. He never stopped to ask what caliber just made a hole in him causing him a lot of pain nor did he get angry and go after the guy that shot him. He went down to his knees immediately. So my experience has shown me that a 9mm and above will perform just fine with very little difference between them and any bullet has the great potential to stop a person. I also learned to keep shooting until the threat is stopped even if you use a .45. You rarely will be able to get off more than a few shots before the threat is stopped or he is on top of you. Remember that it only takes 3 seconds for someone to reach you from 7 yards away and that is room sized distances in my house. However many are comforted by large bullets and lots of rounds and that is worth something too. I have a lot of people I teach that just want to feel safe and carry guns designed for comfort, with no round in the chamber and without a holster in a spot that would take them 10 seconds to bring into play. The presence of a gun makes them less afraid and that is all they really are looking for. End of sermon.

This gun is a carry gun not really good for home defense. Hard to shoot for the novice and those who were brought up on semi autos. I have been shooting them for 40 years and do not recommend them to new shooters for home or carry. Lots of recoil even with the .38. If you want a .357 get a Ruger GP1000. However please note that most people do not keep them loaded with .357 but rather just like saying that they have a .357. I load my home defense GP100 with .38 +P. A .357 out of a small gun like that is quite a handful and I know because I carry one at times. For home defense when weight and size are not a factor you should get a duty sized gun or at least something bigger than a snub nose., The short sight radius makes accurate shooting difficult for all but those who have lots of practice with it. I teach new shooters with the GP100 and within 30 minutes they are hitting COM at 7 yards shooting .38 spl. I slip in a few .38 +P and not once has anyone noticed.

I asked this in another NICS thread but isn't NICS Federal and shouldn't it take the same amount of time no matter where you live? In Florida they are very quick but the stores around here call on the phone. At the height of the panic buying I had to wait 15 minutes. Normally they get on the phone and give the info and I am out of there.

Now for the real question and more important than how it looks. What ammo are you using for HD? There are two schools of thought on this. As an old timer I believe in using buckshot and not bird shot. Bird shot will still penetrate your walls and just go to the Box-O-Truth website to confirm that. Plus there are a lot more pellets which translates to more chances to hit unintended targets. It also leaves shallow ugly wounds that may not incapacitate a determined attacker. I use the best ammo to stop a person and not ammo that is safest in my home because my goal is to save my life and I can do that by making sure I train enough so that I do not miss at the short distances in my house. Plus I have shot enough rounds in simulated houses to know that although all bullets, even the magsafes, can penetrate several walls and exit your house, on the flip side, once they hit something they rarely have enough energy to do much damage. The last time I tested by shooting a 9mm +P out of a 5" barrel into an arm chair and it penetrated the chair and only the first layer of sheetrock behind it. So a foam filled chair was enough to slow the round enough so that it embedded itself into the sheet rock wall behind it. Anyway, go to the website I mentioned an you will be surprised at how ammo so many think safe for HD are not as safe as they think.

You would think that politicians have learned some lessons from our failed attempt on illegal drug control where we now hand out clean needles to addicts as that saves more lives than anything else our government does. Stop the source and another source will be found so the problem does not go away, just the method.

Tried the Glock 27 and a few other small .40's and basically it is too much power in a small gun to allow fast and accurate follow-up shots. I know guys who say they can shoot it fast and accurate but it is usually a case of them determining what is fast and accurate rather than measuring it against a set standard. When I look at the gun shelves for used guns I see a heck of a lot of Kahr PM40's and Glock 27's. The Glock 26 is hard to find around here unless you order one specifically as I had to do twice. I think too many who never fired a shot in anger place too much emphasis on their calibers. In most cases we are talking fractions of an inch difference in size and pretty much anything from a .380 to .45 can penetrate 10 to 12 inches with the right ammo. As a combat vet who shot a variety of weapons in all calibers I can say that shot placement is king and the great majority of people will cease what they are doing when shot with anything. I have seen it happen so many times that it has made a believer of me. However since most guys never get to shoot at other people or witness such things, they rely too heavily on energy, bullet size and other things in absence of experience in the real world. Just look at some government agencies and you can see they are all over the place. Our military went from .38 to .45 to 9mm. There are law enforcement agencies that went from 9mm to .40 and then back to 9mm. Some went from 9 to .40 to .45 and then back to 9 again. The only civilian shooting I witnessed was a big guy shot with a .22lr out of a snub nose revolver. He went to his knees immediately with a belly shot. I have seen small men absorb several 5.56 rounds and still keep coming. Just get a gun that you can control and put as many shots into the place where you are aiming as quickly as possible. For many that is 9mm.

For a while, here in Florida, they were booming because so many people were buying new guns and wanted to shoot them. Now that there are limited supplies or guns and ammo and those who engaged in the panic buying having shot their new toys, the local range around here is pretty empty. I went on Friday and there was just me and another shooter there for the entire hour. Just a few weeks ago you couldn't even get to the counter to sign up for the range.

I get it now. Florida has a more sensible approach in that anyone purchasing more than 2/3 guns is reported to BATF who then has the option to investigate whether it is a straw purchase or not. This does not impose any buying limits on me nor does it register my guns as only the type of weapon is reported and not the serial number. So we already have a method of monitoring straw purchases and yet NJ saw fit to make their own. Interesting.

I cannot read this statement without thinking about the hypocrisy of our country who fires drones to kill one man and counts the dead innocent children who happen to be standing too close as collateral and acceptable damage. Politicians who say this do nothing about the many other things that kill our children in greater numbers like swimming pools and school buses but when it comes to guns it is a different story. I tend to view people as humans with all those things we try to pretend we have risen above like violence. Sugar coat it all we like, we are just acting the same way as humans did since the beginning of our species. We still wage war and kill people who do not believe as we do and yet loudly proclaim our opposition to violence.

I moved from NJ before there was a one gun per month rule and am trying to understand what it is supposed to accomplish. Does it apply to only handguns or all firearms. Since you can only shoot one firearm at a time, two if you have one in each hand, what is it supposed to prevent? Am I more dangerous if I attack you with 10 firearms instead of 1? Is it going to change a mentally ill person's mind about a mass killing if he has to wait an extra month or two? From what I read it appears that these kind of guys plan their attacks for months anyway. If it just applies to handguns, WTF? Rifles are much more deadly than handguns. I just do not get the logic behind the law and was not up there when it was made law so I missed the process that made it law.

It is so nice to go to a gun store and only worry about price.

What is the average time for a NICS check up there in NJ? Here in FL it is almost instant. Normally I give them my info and they make the call and either get through immediately or wait just a few minutes. NICS is a Federal system, so shouldn't it be the same no matter where you live?

Not a choice I make for the reasons other posters stated. I mostly pocket carry. It is the most comfortable and easiest way for me to carry. My second method is IWB with one of those hybrid holsters like CrossBreed makes. Very comfortable for me. I have 7 drawers of holsters and pretty much tried most of them out there. One that works pretty good and is comfortable is the Remora holster. It looks like a pocket holster but made of a sticky material that when placed between your pants and waist, will stay put. Very comfortable. A company called Sticky Holsters also sells the same kind. Only drawback is that you have to be careful when you unbuckle your pants. They are inexpensive holsters and work. Look up Remora holsters on Google and YouTube and you will not find any negative reviews or comments about them. I tried a band type holster that went across the top of my chest and had a pouch under the armpit for a gun that you either pinned or sewed to fit you sized gun. Felt the pressure of the band against my chest all day and it was soaking wet after an hour.

Interesting as most would prefer a grip safety which is kind of passive rather than a safety that you have to remember to move. However, I have two guns with manual safeties so I am not against them at all. I know that there is talk about not being able to fire the gun if you hold it some weird way that does not disengage the grip safety but with a gun this small, that is not really a concern because to get any kind of shooting grip on a gun this small you will disengage the grip safety due to lack of real estate on the grip. I tried to shoot it yesterday in some manner without activating the grip safety and I could not. I might have if I shot it in some weird kind of way like using my thumb on the trigger but not any way where I held the gun in the palm of my hand. Just not enough room on the backstrap to allow you not to hit the grip safety.

My LGS does the same thing. They will not take an order for a popular gun saying that they always have them on order and that they will call you but never do. Luckily I have 2 gun stores within a half hour's drive and know when they get new deliveries so I can visit them or call them as needed.

You know, I did not think about that. Very good idea. I have never had any problems so I am not familiar with what is out there to help me.

My choice is not listed. I would pick up a rich single woman so that I then can afford to buy all those firearms.

File with the delivery services to not leave a package unless you are there. You can do that online. You can also register with some of them so that you get alerted whenever ANY package is coming to your address. I always make sure that I am either home for a delivery by tracking it or go online and have them not leave it on my door step or leave it with a neighbor who is home. That is the only way to control it. A camera may or may not help. You may see someone you do not know do it and then what? I am sure that the Police will not prioritize your problem.

After dealing with and fighting International Trade and Transportation laws for 40 years I have learned that you cannot rely on what the law says. In many cases there is case law or decisions made that define or alter that law. I have even often come across laws that were ruled invalid that government officials still use on unsuspecting companies. In many cases, the officials were unaware of the laws. There are so many laws out there that no one knows which are still good, which have been altered or struck down by courts or defined as meaning something other than what they appear to say. That is why you must go to a lawyer that specializes in the type of law you are interested in. I have had a few jobs aiding attorneys who, while good at filing the right documents, legal procedures, etc., were not as knowledgeable in international law as I was. I have yet to meet a person with enough righteous indignation who chose to bankrupt himself by becoming a test case over a small matter.

I was happy with the reliability and knew what would happen if I tried to shoot it with my trembling/weak hands but just wanted to see what kind of failures I would have when I did not grip the gun tight enough and sure enough they were the kind being posted about by some people. I am 62 with nerve damage and arthritis so I have to make an effort to grip semi autos tightly. That was not the case in my younger days. Some days when my hands are in pain and weak I have to carry a revolver because I cannot rack the slide. It sucks to get old. However it was a tack driver for the first 50 rounds for me. Even had a guy in the next lane come over to see what I was shooting because he had a lot of little holes all over his target from his SR22 and mine were all grouped around the bulls-eye of my Shoot 'N C target.