Picking self defense firearms for a wife who doesn't shoot.

[Clusterfrack]

...If you want to test this with your friend, make her think you’ve loaded the gun but leave it empty or use snap caps. When she goes to pull the trigger, yell in her ear and watch how her flinch...

LOL! This is a good way to get punched, kicked, or kneed in the crotchital region.

But, yeah. Good point. I used to have a HK USP .40 that would never malfunction, even with a very limp wrist or poor grip. A friend's sister (who claimed to be an experienced shooter) made it stovepipe and FTF consistently. It took me a while to figure out what she was doing: when she pulled the trigger, she flinched toward herself, pulling the gun in, and defeating the action of the slide.

[JCN]

LOL! This is a good way to get punched, kicked, or kneed in the crotchital region.

But, yeah. Good point. I used to have a HK USP .40 that would never malfunction, even with a very limp wrist or poor grip. A friend's sister (who claimed to be an experienced shooter) made it stovepipe and FTF consistently. It took me a while to figure out what she was doing: when she pulled the trigger, she flinched toward herself, pulling the gun in, and defeating the action of the slide.

Hehehe. You see, that was my way of punching @Wake27 in the penis by proxy.

I’d never do that to my wife, lol. Been married 21 years, I know better hahaha.

[Wake27]

Muzzle awareness was a fail, but trigger finger was not. These are *intentional trigger pulls* because they believe the gun is empty and the majority of them require a trigger pull to remove the slide.

Since I'd have to have total man-hours spent handling semi-autos vs revolvers to have real proportions, I can't say how much more likely semi-autos are to be mishandled due to this need to pull the trigger and confusion in clearing steps. What I can comfortably say is the number of revolvers in these instances is vastly smaller, and all of those fall under "any gun" issues. General playing with it, dropping a non-drop safe gun, catching a falling gun sort of things. The reverseing the clearing steps then pulling the trigger to break the pistol down is obviously not a thing with revolvers.

Ah, missed that it was removing the slide vs emptying the gun. That is definitely a problem with some designs as many people to tend to break apart their gun without being proficient enough in the redundant safety rules. Kind of makes me wonder where disassembly and cleaning should fall into a POI and level of proficiency when working with new shooters.

[Wake27]

And not only that… what will happen if she is startled or surprised when pulling the trigger and doesn’t follow through with the shot? If someone limp wrists on a static quiet range, what will happen when they instinctively recoil in horror as they’re being charged by an attacker?

It’s a recipe for stove pipe if they don’t go counter to their natural instinct and follow through with the shot.

If you want to test this with your friend, make her think you’ve loaded the gun but leave it empty or use snap caps. When she goes to pull the trigger, yell in her ear and watch how her flinch and arm / wrist break would rob the slide of energy transfer. If she was limp wristing in target practice, how much reserve in skill and technique would she have under duress?

Personally I think most non-trained shooters would be better served with lighter recoil springs to give them more margin of reliability. Who cares about frame battering if they don’t shoot a lot anyway.

Ha, it was a huge to step to get her to try shooting (I've been gently nudging since probably around 2012) so probably not going to do that with her. It does make me wonder about the fight or flight and how different people would react though. I'd assume that some people would extend their hands toward an attacker if being rushed from close quarters so maybe an argument could be made that some would be more likely to lock their wrist better and therefore not limp-wrist. I'm guessing that startling her from the side wouldn't provide the same stimulus so that would be hard to test.