Jonnin

I have 2. Well, one is the wifes, but we share. Hers is a colt gold trophy, right at your 1k limit and maybe over with tax and tags at some stores, it is a nice gun. The lightweight frame makes recoil worse but is easier for her to lift and control one handed. It is accurate and excellent out of the box, with a good trigger and a great feeling grip. I could not say enough good stuff about it, though I prefer the heavier frame. Mine is a para ssp. Cheaper than the colt, but the mags that came with it caused a lot of jams until I replaced them with good ones. Accurate and reliable, with a match barrel and tight construction it has been a real joy to shoot. The trigger is not as good as the colt but the frame/slide fit is better, the bushing is tighter, the recoil is less, and in every other way its as good or better (mostly as good). The trigger is not bad, but a tiny bit of give and a light grit out of the box that has faded over time made it have a long break in period (just for the trigger, the rest needed no break in). Either one is a great gun, these two become a choice between the light frame or not, and the price difference as the colt is borderline on your limit.

I love my para. The mags that came with it were the source of its early woes, easy enough to fix that. Well made and tightly put together. They gave great service when their unbreakable extractor broke, mailing me one overnight and walking me thru install process over the phone. With new mags and extractor, I have had many hundreds of trouble free rounds and excellent accuracy out of mine. I have the SSP model, but I think that is just the GI with a match barrel and a hole drilled in the trigger.

There are not a lot of other types of single action pistols, and most DA, DAO, striker, etc have long trigger pulls which are very difficult for those of us with bad hands. I struggle with almost any other type of trigger, and there are just not many other choices if his hands are like mine. There are small 9mm, 380, and other 1911s so it wouldnt have to be the big framed guns or a 45, but all of them I know of are cocked and locked. But if you think about too hard, a glock is glocked and locked, no safety and that striker, internal or not, is pulled back and ready to go...

The hornady fmj 55s with a boat tail and crimp ring do very well for me. Im sure any of a jillion other brands will too, but those are fairly cheap on top of being well made.

I would disagree about loading ahead of time. If she gets a jam or dud or whatever, she will be helpless. And a jam is often harder to rack out than just a chambering. It would really be best is she finds one that she can operate. If reloading is an option, a light spring and light loads could solve the problem. An external hammer auto is a good place to start, a 1911 or DA where you pull the hammer back first really takes up a lot of the slide resistence. Combine that, get a 9mm 1911 and reduce the spring and loadout to a 380, it would have next to zero recoil and a big, easy to grasp and easy to move slide.... and solve the trigger pull at the same time, as would something like a CZ that is DA but cocked & locked.

Even a 10-22 with 25 round mags is to be feared -- just get some quality ammo as the biggest problem with a .22 is the misfires from cheap ammo. If you are willing to use a rifle, that opens up a whole world of things. That means you were not looking for a tiny carry gun as I first thought from your posts. Look for someone who does cowboy action competetive shooting. The revolvers those guys have had worked over are amazing, should not be terribly hard to find a half decent smith who can do that kind of work. They use single actions but the work should be similar enough.

If you want to feed it more than the occasional powerhouse round, put in a stronger spring. Otherwise, save the +p to carry, shoot regular stuff.

A bit of a naysayer but if someone is not wanting their permit, they will also not train or practice, nor carry their gun often, and may not (for various reasons) be as responsible with it (from lack of practice, not keeping up with laws, panic-shooting, etc). However, if you must convince her actively, remind her that as it is now she can never carry legally -- if she has the permit, she can choose not to carry if she wants. Show her the test, let her try it with just you and her, and she will see that it is very easy. In the end, I would let her decide to do this for herself, rather than try to push the issue, and take her with you to shoot if you can get her interested. Maybe fun shooting with no pressure will get her into the sport and confident in her ability to pass the test, all while having fun. Making shooting fun and teaching her the skills will convince her more than any words ever will.

I do not care where you go or how great the store you visit is, if you do not KNOW some things first about what you like and dislike, all the clerk can do is give you generic answers, which is why so many noobs walk home with a one of a couple of popular choices --- the clerk, having no idea what you want, shows you the stuff that sells well and is fairly generic, popular, and will go bang. Odds are you will end up with a glock or something like it. Nothing wrong with that, but it may not be the gun you would have liked best, either. You really need to hit up a place that rents firearms, to try out a single action auto, a double action, a striker fired, a revolver. You need to try several calibers, 9mm, maybe a 380, maybe a 45, and something big, maybe a 44 mag. Compare the ammo prices as you look, just like buying a printer, the $200 gun that shoots $25 a box ammo may not be much of a deal. Try out a few sizes, from a big revolver and 1911 to a pocket pistol. Then get the clerk or us or whoever to help you with a brand and model once you have a feel for what sort of gun you might actually like to shoot, carry, and so on. Take your time with it, and you will enjoy your first guns so much more than if you just go to one place and let the clerk pick it out for you.

I will second the sig 238. Try before you buy, but with the hammer back (and it always should be, think 1911) its very easy to rack and with a locked breech it soaks the recoil pretty well. It still has some recoil, but less than a pocket 25 or fixed barrel blowback 380. However if she cannot rack the slide on a 22, even the sig may be too difficult. In that case its going to be a revolver with a smooth, light DA pull. These exist, or most models can be smoothed out by a gunsmith, dropping down to 4-5 pound pulls --- can she manage that? Them are the options though -- find something she can rack and operate, and forget what caliber it is, anything > nothing. The PMR is not going to be easier to use than a buckmark, as the slide must travel farther when racked and the spring is going to be heavier. Is it her grip, or her power that fail? What I am asking is are her arms weak, or her hands... it sounds like hands, so she cannot grasp the slide to pull it back, but probably could pull it if she could hold it. In which case maybe get a gunsmith to install some sort of "handle" on the slide of something?? I cannot find one, but once I saw a one armed man shooting and he had a hollow tube installed on the front of his gun, he could rack it by pushing the front of the gun into the floor or a wall etc. That was many, many years ago and I couldnt find it on the web.

why not get an adjustable one? Most of my scopes are 3-7 or similar, good for everything from 25 to 200 or more yards. They also come in a low variation that is 1-4 or 2-6 ranges and higher variations that are 15-25 or something like that. The numbers are not exact but you get the general idea.

Mine was made in canada, I think. I would guess cheap labor is an issue for RIA. I have shot dozens of them, mostly back when I was looking for my own and borrowing from friends, and I honestly cannot tell one from another for the mass produced mid range guns, and that includes RIA and armscore(?) or whatever their other brand is called. The tuned ones are better, yes, but you can tune a RIA same as anything else. Probably will not get slide/frame to within a nanometer's fit but a bushing and a trigger job with a match barrel will turn any make/model into a very fine gun, even the cheapest.

I would get her a 357 and shoot weak 38s in it. I do not know how widely available they are but I have often found very, very weak 38 target ammo; one of our local stores sells some "factory reloads" or whatever you call them (a vendor who can sell reloaded ammo) in 38 that are so weak they shoot 5 or 6 inches low at just a few yards, I found them annoying due to that but they certainly are a good starter load for a weak shooter. I say 357 because of the common ammo. The other calibers are great choices BUT they are harder to find. My second choice there would be the 32 or, if the 32 magnum can shoot regular 32s (I do not know this one!) then get the mag and shoot the regular. She can always work up to a stouter load but if you get a gun that cannot shoot the bigger stuff, she never can... so picking something that can fire both a hefty and a weak cartridge in the same gun is best IMHO. Smaller, lighter guns make the kick worse, as we discussed, so starting with a smaller caliber like the 32 or making sure you can find the extermely downloaded 38s would be good starting places. If you cannot find the weak ammo and cannot make it, just skip the 38 and start with a 32.

Well, if you wanted a simple answer... G -- mass of gun, x, velocity of gun (and the value in question, really), M, bullet mass, V, bullet velocity... we know momentum is conserved (basic proven physics law). So we know GX = MV, G is constant (more or less, you did fire one round of various weights but forget this small amount) so X is also constant if MV is not changed. The only way to change the recoil is to change MV. Change the mass of the bullet and keep the velocity the same, its going to kick more. Simple answer. But its not that simple because the mass and velocity always change together in real loads, making it a 2 variable system and more difficult to answer. In real loads, it could go either way... I do not know ... it could be that in general that heavier bullets are not dropped in velocity so much, giving a higher MV. Or the reverse could be true. If you want to know, the data exists for anyone who wants to sit there and go over for a couple of days. Not me, though. Its probably safe to say that for a given type and brand of ammo (hunting, defense, plinker, etc) in a particular caliber, different weights have little effect on recoil for most pistols and that the small differences cannot even be felt by most shooters.

Yes, time matters. If you look at F=MA, A is change in velocity/ change in time (miles / hour for example). If you go to 10 miles per hour in 2 seconds, force multiplier is 5 (times the mass). If you do it in 10 seconds, force is 1. The difference between cartridges in time to accelerate the round is not very much variation, though. You can nearly ignore this factor unless comparing very different rounds such as true black powder rifle vs a .40 pistol round or something drastic. So yes, a 44 mag that took an insanely long time to go from zero to max velocity would have very low recoil. The longer the time, the lower the recoil --- the same energy and all are expended but your arm is absorbing them over time, rather than all at once. Energy makes a complex question. Remember that energy is MVV so the velocity is much, much, much more imortant than the mass. A heavier bullet with the same energy cuts the velocity a bit, but even a small change in velocity that is squared is significant changes in energy levels. All things being equal I would think the recoil would be the same, if the momentum and energy and all of the 2 rounds were equal. But to be honest I am not sure without a moment to sit down and do the math, which I do not have right this second. I will go do that tonight or tomorrow. My gut feeling is that if the energy is the same, the recoil is the same. The gun's EEO does not care what the mass of the bullet was. It cares what the forces used to shove it were. If those forces are the same, then the recoil is the same. However, I am not sure that is the whole of your answer, because changing the mass of the bullet does one thing to momentum and another to energy, and I need that sheet of paper to answer as this type of physics is a little rusty for me.

You could kill paper at that range for a fraction of that price, I am certain of it. Savage makes a very good gun (I have not held this model, but others), but if that one does not come with a scope on it already (and it may, I didnt look) it seems awfully high for a 223 plinker. Is this for "serious" paper killing (competition, even if just against yourself), or just for fun?? A quick search says you can get a 223 rem 700, which is very nice, for around $500, and a couple of the other savage models are also less. Again, I couldnt tell you why one is more than another, but you should be able to get a BA 223 for $500 or very close to it.

You can also just cover it. Wrap it, put it way in the back of the tree, and pile other gifts around it so it comes out last.

I have no problem with the orig topic. I don't get the nutty stuff that goes on as soon as something is even remotely related to sex. Say the parent really is a bad person, makes kid porn or something. Does someone fear they are going to set up a studio right there in the middle of the school picnic and go at it? Or lure the kids off behind the trees, while the parents and teacers of the victim kids are doing... what exactly? If the parents and teachers are doing their jobs, the kids are together, watched, and safe at such an event with anyone who is not intent on using brute force to commit a crime. If some nut is willing to shoot all the adults to capture all the kids, thats a problem, but then again some of the parents should be armed, if not most of them, as part of being a responsible parent is to protect the family. Did you guys see that an ex porn star reading to kids caused a stir? Why, she was just reading a kiddie book to kids, no sex, she was not (un) dressed for sex/porn, just a person trying to do something nice. Its not like being in the same room with her is going to cause all the boys to go look at porn or all the girls to become prostitutes. I mean, I would rather my kids were read "the little engine that could" or whatever by a naked porn star than be subjected to singing songs of praise to Obama.....

Its a shame, we used to go there but it just got too wild. They need to man it for a couple of years, use some of that background check money to pay for a RO to settle it down.

There are different types of intellect. Few of the candidates and fewer still of the presidents we have had were morons. Almost none of them seem to have/had science/math/engineering type smarts. Plenty of them seem to have lawyer smarts, good memory, good with words, good with psychology, that sort of thing. None of them seems to understand even basic math, for example a word problem: if you have $5, and you go to the store and put $10 worth of stuff in your cart, how much money do you have after you check out? Show me a president that understands that word problem, and we might have a chance.

He lacks the type of personality that draws votes --- not much one can do about that, but he is just a little bit blunt at times, seems to be short, busy, or irritated or something whenever he answers a question. I like him too, and in his place would probably be even more blunt, but then, I wouldnt get elected either... He has a LOT of political experience but that drags in a LOT of baggage. We have seen how well it works out to have someone who has zero experience, maybe its time for someone who has been around.

glad you are enjoying it!

I really like my rami, which is the same thing in a smaller package. If you want to carry it, the rami is a great choice. For a target pistol, these larger frames are outstanding.

Some things just have to be put out the night before. Wrap it & stow it flat in some obscure place for a few weeks. If the gun comes apart, you can take it out of the box, put it into a different box with the barrel off, that really helps. You can also do the old card trick.... give them a card or small box in their stocking, inside it has a note "go look under your bed" or something silly.

I was trying to provide the why. The why is just the physics I gave --- any way you want to measure recoil or bullet power, it all boils down to mass and velocity or a cousin of those (acceleration is related to velocity). Any increase in mass or velocity or acceleration means more recoil, because an increase in those makes the bullet more powerful, and the equal opposite reaction makes the recoil more powerful --- all things being equal. Since guns vary, however, the same cartridge with the same mass and velocity can make different guns push against the human in different ways, which changes how recoil feels (even if the numeric values are the same). Hopefully this is enough, but without at least high school level physics, it is difficult to follow. If you had that much, hopefully I jarred some memories.