Jonnin

you just can't pick a gun for someone.   They need to try out a few styles, and go up the learning curve.   Even the most popular stuff does not mesh with everyone's style.   I mean, given what you said, some criteria pop out.. obviously concealable... high cap, easy to use controls,  low recoil/skill level...   I would look for something heavy, midsized and 15+ capacity... a ruger P89 or something that has mild recoil, something steel, maybe old.  Avoid a high recoil lightweight, anything that *requires* an engaged safety (most DA/SA you can leave the safety off without concern, so maybe something like that).  Avoid a ND gun like a glock or other mishap prone gun for a novice (its not the glocks fault, but a lot of novice people have had the shirttail problem or itchy finger problems ...).   There are hundreds of models that fit these ideas, but you get the idea... just something that is novice friendly and not prone to accidents, recoil / accuracy aggravations,  stupidly hard to pull triggers,  safety to manipulate.  Find something that is low recoil, high cap, and more or less point and shoot ready yet not hair triggered.    There are professionals and then there are professionals.   4 or 5 goons with pistols that can hit a man-target or some guy that will kill him at 500 yards with a silenced rifle or a silenced .22 hitman style or what...?  Of course, he may not know,  and in any case he is probably screwed ... if this is real, he should contact law enforcement or hire his own pro bodyguards or something.    I mean, if I had to shoot someone for money, I would not be using a pistol, and a firearm at all would be a last resort...  I would try something else if possible ... poison, booby trapped car/home,  even a good crossbow with no one much around, ... noisy handgun killing at short range where his own pistol would be effective is amateurish ... 

that is not just a piece of history, its one tied to your family.   If by restore you mean knock off some rust and preserve it, that is good.  If you mean "Mitchell" it by sanding/steaming/ruining the stock and refinishing the metal and restamping the numbers etc to make it look real, then I vote NO.   There are literally thousands, maybe 10s of thousands, of boogered up mausers out there.  Buy one and refurbish it all you want, but keep the one that belonged to family as is.   Your grandkid will thank you someday.   That picture does not indicate a stock that is so bad it needs to be replaced.    If a particular spot is super bad to the point of splinters getting in your hand, sand it smooth and oil it up.  

^^^^ you need to get someone *else* (2,3 of them..) to look at it and give you estimates to fix it.  Pictures and stuff.   Drag all that with you ... you only get one shot to prove yourself.

  Indeed, the *early* M$ stuff was very poor (one of the very old ones wrote billions of files on your disk lol... a file for every folder with a checksum of every executable..)  but since win XP or thereabouts its been rock solid and as good as, or better, than many of the freebies and some of the bought ones.  

I use kapersky.   But the above is only about 85% correct.  Certain activities can be stopped by the better suites... if a program starts modifying windows files, deleting files,  or performing other "unusual" activities they will suspend the program and ask the user.   So they *can* stop threats that have never been seen before... ive had them stop programs that I wrote myself (opened an awful lot of network connections for parallel transfers) and other legit software (kapersky stopped diablo 3 cold on an update.. ) .   Nothing catches everything, and everything catches most.   Also proactive computing is a big deal... knowing what not to do, what sites not to visit,  what files not to open, etc....  (not saying its your fault, but there are risky behaviors just like real world diseases, like if you go to Africa, you might get ebola... if you go to mexico, you might get the runs, etc).    Symantec (Norton) will catch most, but it will bring a hot PC to its knees with slowness from all the bloat.   My strategy is to use whatever you can get for free and hope it gets most of them with minimal performance impact.   I also just found a flaw in our Symantec security at work... nothing major but goes to show that even corporate full bore stuff isn't bullet proof, and neither a hacker nor a security guy, so if *I* can find a flaw....

  win 10 is getting a thumbs down from most of the gamers I talk to ... lot of stuff isn't acting quite right yet.   But its windows... you don't even consider it on a deployed system until service pack 1, 2 if you can stand to wait for it.    The vanilla first release usually has problems and is usually a security nightmare.

Shoot them.  I can't tell the diff between mag and not mag primers in most loads .... and  9mm is particularly forgiving if the gun is +P rated and you are using normal pressure data.   Yea I don't label it but the only stuff on my bench is current production, the rest stored in another place.  Its worked so far.  

I don't make anything risky so I don't need some special gun to test with.  If I were going to redline, I would use something both durable and replaceable just in case, but honestly... there isn't much sense in that.   The "do not exceed" loads in your books are still safe and have a "screw up" factor applied to account for measurement error  ... most peoples gear is +- 1/2 a grain or more for example on the average ...  You could probably go another grain or two over the do not exceed without any penalty in well made firearms.   But again, why bother... its harder on the guns, uses more powder, and probably isn't the ideal accuracy load anyway...  and the few FPS you get isn't worth all the negatives.  If you want a bigger boom, get a bigger gun.

Midway & Brownells are like the 2 top results whenever I look for anything.  Not always the absolute best price, but huge inventory and solid reputations both.

not sure what else might work but the cost, in time, labor, and materials, of making aluminum guns seems like a difficult way to approach the problem.  There has to be a cheaper way to make a close, rough replica.  I don't know what to recommend though.   all you need for the rough outline are 2 things;  a decent flat picture of the gun (which is available on the web free for most anything)  and its dimensions.  You can print the image scaled such that the printout is the correct size.   The width might be good to have too... all 3 dimensions are usually easy to get for popular models, sometimes harder for oddball.   Crop the picture to be a perfect fit square around the gun and then use a good paint program that can print that image to specified dimensions (make this square 6.3 inches by 4.2 inches)  and bam, a scaled printout is done.   The image should be taken from nearly a straight above it (not angled) shot for best results.

this comes to mind   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8q5BryXp6RY&feature=player_embedded     there are some limits and lines ... the radiation kit was a bit much, but the rest of it seems fine.   What people are missing is that back when, parents played with and supervised the kids.  

  No, some artists are clean and do well.   However, it can be noted that a number of artists could not perform or create good new music without dope --- for example guns & roses fell apart as soon as they cleaned up.   It also is not just rock.   Quite a few country and other artists did plenty of dope ... dare I say J. Cash?  Dare I say willie?   I don't keep up with the pseudocountry rock stars but hank sr was drunk 24/7.    Not to be mean but no, its no surprise that the country started going the way it has after that era at all.   Not one bit.

  its a boost their voters, punish the "enemy" attack all rolled up in communism (wage equality).  Whats not to love?   Boost their voters --- give them a wage increase that does nothing but makes em happy.  All those poor people that vote D ... they get a wage increase, but that causes every business that hires people to increase the price of all goods and services, so the result for the poor is a wash (as desired, they remain poor and dependent on government) but they feel better about it (and have short term monetary gains -- loans due, for example, are now reduced by inflation).   Punish the middle class, who vote R (inflation hurts retirement accounts and savings, the few middle income that are actually able to do this these days)  and their wages do not go up, but cost of living does,  its a severe attack on the middle class (as desired, goal is to knock them into poverty and hook them on handouts...).   And wage equality/communism speak for themselves .. that is the primary GOAL of liberalism.

  oh, I agree it will reach equilibrium, but I don't think the min wage earning types can afford to wait it out.    In the long run, yes, it would probably be good.  But at the very least, going forward, the easy way out is to never raise min wage again.  Eventually, the problem will correct itself... min wage will become too little to pay people via inflation, if you guys are right, and so letting it stagnate is a safe way to "do away with" it.  If you are wrong, it can't go backwards, and my scenario can't happen. 

  well, to the second, you can accomplish the same R&D without using a dangerous system.   Again, make a paintball drone -- your vision and creation is realized and no one gets hurt.   Or a bb gun.  Or whatever.   I would start with those if I were doing it... live ammo is dangerous, as we all know, and building stuff like this usually involves a few mistakes.  Mistakes and live ammo don't mix.   You think they put a live warhead in a rocket to test it the first time??    Government DOES regulate innovation.  If you create a weapon or dangerous system, they often step in and tell you all about it, from limiting you from going forward, to buying your research and helping you, to preventing you from selling it abroad, and more.     Right or wrong, this has been in place for a long, long time. 

  Like most simple solutions this works,  up to a point.   When you realize that a small handful of companies control a large amount of the jobs in the country... if they make a cartel and offer $1/hour or nothing, you suddenly have millions of people stuck in a "take it or leave it"  situation --- and no other job to go to.   Wages could drop in a heartbeat,  but the cost of living WON'T ... leaving people in very big bind.   Of course, people could all refuse to work for that... but the big boys can go months with shut doors to force the issue.   Most people can't go months without some sort of pay...    its not an impossible scenario.   Depends on whether the big ones want to work together to maximize profits vs continue to compete.   Whatever happens, though,  employees lose.    I am against raising min wage, but we can't go backwards without hurting a lot of people, so removing it or lowering it would cause a lot of suffering, IMHO.

  you are abiding the law.  It says, clearly, shall not be infringed.

Like anything else,  you can find it, if you are willing to pay for it...   or if you can get 2 hours away from a city in any direction, the real boonies, and find a seller.  If you have enough $$ to throw at it, youll find a seller.   Put up a WTB ad in the area that interests you.

  Sounds like our country is in good hands!   Now, this here sounds like an ideal time to mount that pistol to a drone :)

  yea, this sort of thing needs a skilled person building and controlling it.  Yes, its computer controlled, but the dirty secret is that the bulk of unmanned vehicles still have a human watching them to pull the plug and take over if it malfunctions.      And test, test, test, verification is key.   First you shoot paintballs, and you prove that the system works.  Then you upgrade to blanks or dry fire.  And then you test it again.   Live ammo should be 2, 3, 5 years down the road from concept to air-time, and even the, air time means at a special place where shooting in any direction is safe, user behind cover.    Its a HUGE deal.  And, that gun better have its OWN SEPERATE KILL system to disable it (possibly, by simply engaging the manual safety on the firearm with an actuator).   Let me give you an example of why you have to be careful, since I used to build these things for a living.  We had a vehicle that was fine, had been tested, demonstrated, and was years into its life cycle and mature.   It started going nuts at random now and then, full throttle and full hard rudder.  Couldn't pin it down... it took a couple of months to finally pick up that the handheld radios we were using were inducting a signal on the joystick we were using, causing it to actually command the full throttle and steering.    No one was hurt because we had a  kill switch and were using it away from people -- responsibly.  But an armed system would likely have started shooting under that same "mistake".   Its not something a goober in his basement needs to be doing, because its irresponsible.   Im with caster here ....  pretty much 110%.

welcome, ty for your service.  

my target 1911 shoots a reduced load on reduced springs, carefully made by me.  

yes.  Its actually biblical that humans have this ... it comes from our distant ancestors munching on some fruit.   Of course, the greek mythology is also biblical and at least true in part, if you want to read it that way...  go read the reason for that big flood thingy again.   Theres lots of stuff in there.   Common sense works for me.  My wife can outshoot me with every gun she has ever picked up.   I wouldn't cheat anyway, but there is a common sense element at least for ME...

  yea for some reason they renamed momentum.  I have yet to understand why they needed to coin a phrase for a known computation and value.  I refuse to acknowledge it.  The division by 1000 is a random act to add confusion.  The whole thing is just plain weird.

  Typically, in a glock, if it cycles the action reliably it will make momentum.   Glocks have +P rated springs and are a little stiffer than some.  I would say 1/2 way between the starter and max load for *standard not +P* would do it.  If you are uncomfortable with that, go 3/4.   Because your gun is +p rated, even the max standard pressure load, which is still 100% safe, is also fine but the more you go the more recoil you will suffer so the trick is to get the momentum correct, in a reliable load that never jams, without punishing yourself.     If you are a serious competitor, you need to find a better powder that gives a more consistent load, and then test your velocity, work up a load, and stick to that.  In more casual competition, most won't challenge your momentum value unless you have some weird performance or fail to knock down some sort of heavy target, if then.   Its rare to be challenged if you are not playing for money or in higher level competitions.     FWIW I managed it with a 90 grain bullet in a moderate load.  Their required value is fairly low.