Originally Posted by
McCoy
This is a bit of a long question, so I apologize in advance. As a long-time lurker, I figured you were the guys and gals to ask.
My girlfriend got into firearms a little less than a year ago after a guy started stalking her at her job and advanced to progressively creepier and more threatening acts and the cops took the (understandable) position of, "Call us if he actually commits a crime." I'd gotten my CCW license and started taking classes a few years prior, though I still consider myself a novice. We shopped around a bit, test fired a lot of rental guns, and she eventually settled on a Gen 4 Glock 19 (which is what I carry now as well, in case, you know, we get into a Mr. & Mrs. Smith-style multiple assailant gunfight in the streets of suburbia and need magazine interchangeability or whatever).
I figured she wouldn't keep up with it, but she's surprised me, and recently got her own CCW and has been taking a lot of classes (which is great), including several outstanding female-oriented ones that she really seems to like. The problem is, she has tiny hands, and it's becoming more of an issue the more she starts working seriously on things like drawing from concealment. If she gets the proper grip on the gun - seated directly in the web of the hand so it's lined up with the forearm bones, etc. - her index finger just isn't long enough to even make it to the trigger. If she shifts her strong hand to the right a little, she can get to it, but the gun's just slightly offset from that perfect alignment, and that's really started to annoy her.
Her solution is to move to a 1911. She's been banging away with one I have but don't carry, and found that a short 1911 trigger with thin grips lets her both get the "perfect" alignment and get enough finger on the trigger for proper trigger control. She's slowly shopping around for a 1911, and I'm trying to talk her out of it. My argument's pretty simple; I think sacrificing some perfection on the grip in favor of sticking with a far less expensive gun she already owns beats transitioning to a less concealable, heavier, far more expensive pistol with less capacity. She shoots the 1911 better, but only marginally so (at least as far as her time and accuracy on the drills she shoots goes). I can field strip a 1911, but that's really about it, and I know that I'd find one a pain in the ass to carry and conceal every day, so I'm thinking it'll be even harder for her to carry (as she's a hell of a lot smaller than I am), and the extra maintenance/knowledge burden might turn her off completely after a while.
So what's the verdict? Is proper gun-wrist-forearm alignment absolutely necessary, or should I keep banging the drum on sticking with the less-than-perfect grip on the Glock? She'll do what she'll do anyway, but I'd like to talk her out of throwing a kilobuck at a Colt Railgun or whatever if I can.