SELECTING THE SELF-DEFENSE HANDGUN

Wanna start a fight? Easily done. Just walk into a room filled with avid handgunners and ask in a loud voice, “Hey, what’s the best all-around self-defense handgun?” Then stay low, and hug the wall until you can beat a hasty retreat. The ensuing battle will be awe-inspiring. Everyone will have an opinion, emphatically stated, often with little agreement amongst the contenders and with precious little in the way of sound advice for the novice shooter seeking guidance and direction in choosing a handgun to own and use for self-defense. Actions, calibers, brands, size and materials. A bewildering array of arguments pro and con and more information than any one person could possible find useful.

The truth is you can’t answer this question, because it is a trick question. There simply is no best, all-around self defense handgun, because there are too many variables involved to allow for such a stand out, one size fits all, best of show response. The purpose of this series of articles is to digest the wisdom of experienced experts on the issue and try to provide some useful information.

Size Does Matter

Most thoughtful experts agree, however, that the most important factor in
selecting a defensive handgun is finding one that you can shoot well. This means a gun that fits your hand in combination with recoil you can handle. No matter what the caliber, or ammo capacity a handgun might have, if you can’t fire it accurately enough to hit an attacker with the number of shots necessary to stop an immediate threat, it will be of little use in protecting you from harm.

Another facet of the “shoot well” requirement is that the self-defense handgun must be reliable. A gun that jams in a fight, or experiences some other type of malfunction, is far less useful than a claw hammer and might very likely get you killed. A corollary of this concept is that it must be a firearm that you can operate without hesitation in an extremely fast-moving situation while you are subject to intense emotional and physiological stress accompanied by an inevitable loss of fine motor skills.

A final issue in this analysis is that the handgun needs to fire ammunition that is powerful enough to stop an attacker and it needs to hold enough of that ammunition to stop all the attackers. You may not be “lucky” enough to be facing just one.
Okay, with those ideas in mind, how do you go about selecting a handgun which is a good one for you?

To determine whether a gun is a proper fit for you, you must first examine it to determine its trigger reach, or the distance between the back of the grip and the trigger. To do this, grip the gun with your index finger extended and resting on the trigger guard, the trigger should be next to the index finger’s middle knuckle. If the trigger reach is too long, a shooter will attempt to compensate for this by using an incorrect grip on the gun. To grip the gun correctly, you must have the barrel aligned with the long bones of your forearm. Since it is very important to pull the trigger straight back when firing the handgun, if your grip is not aligned properly, it can result in “pushing” or “pulling” in which act of depressing the trigger causes the gun to move out of alignment with its intended point of aim, and, as a result, moving the point of impact.

If you are shooting a single action handgun (which requires that the hammer be manually moved to the cocked position before pulling the trigger to fire the gun) the pad of your trigger finger must rest on the trigger. With a double action handgun (where the act of pulling the trigger accomplishes cocking of the action and release of the hammer, discharging the round) the trigger should be contacted by the distal joint of the finger (the one closest to the tip of the finger). If the reach is too short, the contact point will move away from the tip of the finger, and a right handed shooter will pull the gun to the right. A left handed shooter will pull to the left. You can check this by “dry firing” the gun. Make absolutely sure you have the gun unloaded (check it twice, human beings make mistakes) and pointed in a safe direction. Then aim at a distinct target and pull the trigger through to release. Watch to see if the sights stay in alignment or if they move as you pull the trigger. On the range you can also check this by examining where you are hitting the target. If your point of impact is consistently to one side or the other of your point of aim, then your trigger reach may be too short or too long.

It is equally important that you are able to manipulate the gun’s other controls while gripping the gun. On a revolver, the cylinder release should be within easy reach with your thumb. On a semi-automatic pistol, you must be able to activate the magazine release and slide lock lever easily. If the gun has a decock mechanism or a manual safety, you must also be able to use these features without altering your grip on the gun. It is not an acceptable alternative to try to use these controls using your support hand. In a confrontation, you may be unable to use both hands to operate the handgun for a variety of reasons. Effective one-handed operation is a critical skill that may not be possible if the gun is too big for your hand.

If, alternatively, your hands are too big for the gun, you will have difficulty finding enough gun to hold on to, either because the grip is too short or the circumference of the grip is too small. While it is quite easy to determine if the grip is too short, it is often harder to determine if the circumference of the grip is going to pose a problem for you. If the grip is a proper size, there should be a gap between the tips of your fingers and the base of the thumb on your grip hand.

The base of the thumb on your support hand should fit into this gap when using a two hand grip to lock the support hand into your grip. This assists in managing recoil during firing and permits proper follow through so that you are able to fire multiple shots rapidly and accurately. In a situation where you cannot use a two hand grip, proper fit is even more important since the grip hand must also act alone to provide support for the firearm during operation.

You actually need to try a number of different grip sizes and styles to find a good grip, just as you would try on clothing to ensure that your purchase does fit you. A number of handgun manufacturers have come out with guns with adjustable backstraps which can alter the circumference of the grip to some degree by replacing a plastic insert that attach to the back of the grip. However, these also tend to alter the trigger reach to some degree. If you are looking at a gun in a gunshop and the grip seems too large or small for you, ask which backstrap is on it at the moment, and if they could let you hold it with a larger or smaller one attached.

In the next installment, I am going to discuss issues relating to firearm reliability and the various types of actions that are available on the market. From there we will move to the selection of the caliber of the handgun you are considering and the effects of size, weight and the caliber of the handgun you are considering on recoil and accuracy.