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Hey Guys, I am helping a female adult (teacher and mother of two) pick out her first firearm. She has taken a basic safety course and will be furthering her training from there. Her primary concern is home defense. Her two other uses will be range use for practice and she wants to have the ability to carry/conceal it even though she doesn't plan to often (that is the kicker).
In the past for females, I recommend a snub nose revolver for carry due to the simplicity of mechanical manipulation and the fact that it tends to be less intimidating to beginners. For home defense, I usually recommend that smaller females use a 20 gauge shotgun. But since this situation requires only one firearm with the primary purpose being home defense but also requires the ability to conceal on occasion, I find myself unsure. I am leaning towards a revolver but slightly larger than a snubby... Like a 3 or 4 inch barrel or something.
What are your thoughts, advice and/or Recomendations? Please don't say buy two guns or choose either home defense or carry. That is obvious for those that can but let's try and work with in her perimeters. Thanks.
I am asked about this frequently at my job, Cabela's Gun Library. Here is my take after many years as an NRA instructor and dealing with the issue of home defense. First let define her objective. It is HOME DEFENSE, not necessarily owning a gun. Here are some things I tell folks when they ask me about HOME DEFENSE.
1. Live in a relatively safe neighborhood. Good neighbors will aid in HOME DEFENSE for the entire neighborhood.
2. Get good strong locks on all your doors and windows. The object of home defense should be to never put your family in a confrontational situation with a bad dude. Don't let him get into your house.
3. Get some good lights outside the perimeter of your house. Light up all your doorways. Put some motion detector lights up in the corners of your house that will come on at 3 am when the raccoon or bad dude walks through your yard.
4. Have 911 on speed dial for all your phones.
5. Get a security system for your house for when you and the family are or are not home. Add a barking dog motion detector to your interior.
6. Learn how to talk COP to a bad confrontational dude, "LISTEN YOU MF, I HAVE A GUN AND if YOU DON'T GET OUT OF HERE AND AWAY FROM ME I'LL BLOW YOUR F----- HEAD OFF."
What you are trying to do with all this is to avoid a deadly confrontation.
Okay, once you have done all this to ensure your HOME'S DEFENSE then you should start addressing SELF DEFENSE which is a different but related subject. In my experience many folks, not just small women, are intimidated by firearms unless they grew up in a family that used them. They have never hunted, been involved in shooting sports, and only get their info about firearms from the boob tube. Other instructors on this tread will confirm their insecurity when first handling and shooting a firearm. So you usually have to start slow and easy with tons of patience when introducing a newbie to guns..
One of the first questions I ask someone who seems aggressive about buying a gun to take out the bad dude is, "Are you ready to live with the fact that you just killed someone? Not just shooting someone, but actually putting him in a pine box and living with this the rest of your life." If not, then look for other means of self defense than with a firearm. There are some good pepper spray guns like the Kimber Pepper Blaster that work very effectively.
http://www.safetygirl.com/kimber-brand-pepper-spray.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIBvbMqa7uM
All this being said, if you feel you have the ability to kill someone with a firearm then you have to decide what your killing weapon will be. This gets really sticky and I don't think there is a good answer except to advise the woman to buy what she likes, meaning she is comfortable handling it, knows how to store and care for it properly, understands what good ammo is for that particular gun, and hopefully will be able to hit a target with it, and if the target is a bad dude, kill him with it. I'm not pussy footing around here. If you are going to have to use a firearm for self protection you want the bad dude to stop his aggression and if that means killing him you will be able to do it. It easy to talk in the abstract about guns and shooting the bad dude but 99.9% of those doing the talking have never been in a life threatening confrontation with a firearm.
So if you can get past all this, and still want a firearm, I'll tell you about some of the ones I have seen used by women.
My wife, not a big women, likes her Beretta Bobcat .22. It is very light, small, fits her hands, and she can put a bunch of hyper velocity .22 rounds into a target accurately and quickly. Don't scoff about using a .22, one almost killed Ronald Regan. I have a couple of 9mm H&K USP models, compact, and full size, that she shoots well also but she likes HER small Beretta the best. A friend of hers, also not a large woman, goes to the range with us and she shoots a S&W 4" police model in .38 special. She bought it used, didn't feel she would ever be comfortable with a .357 mag, and felt that the intimidation factor was very good with this larger revolver. I should mention both are nurses, and if you have ever been around nurses you know that they are very good at speaking COP when they have to.
Some women seem to like the S&W's, etc. with the built in laser or bright flash lights. I'm thinking if I were the bad dude and saw a laser beam flashing about I would quickly vacate the premises or end the confrontation.
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/20...-smith-wesson-bodyguard-38-and-bodyguard-380/
As you can see I do not think there is a definitive answer to this very serious question about guns for a woman (or a man). To me the goal for HOME or SELF DEFENSE is to avoid a deadly confrontation at all times, and if it comes down to a life or death or injury situation that you can not avoid, then be prepared to kill the attacker.
Just my two cents on a very serious subject.
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