Home Defense Firearm For A Woman
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chicharrones
needs more ammo
BERSA FireStorm .380 ACP (~ $300)
Precise, reliable, light weight, simple, comfortable to shoot.
But there is a safety to fool with. It's on the left side of the slide. Which means whoever owns that gun needs to practice making sure the safety is off when needing to fire the gun.BERSA FireStorm .380 ACP (~ $300)
Not only is it a simple and reliable design, but is also double/single action, so no safety to fool with.
Like a magazine-fed (and quickly reloaded) revolver (with a better trigger).
Obviously, training is advisable, but of the thousands of defensive uses of firearms per year in the US, only a fraction of people are trained. I think an untrained person with a gun is in a better position than an unarmed person with an alarm system.
Mosin77
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Sample size of 1 but… my wife is petite and definitively not a “gun person.” She also has limited hand/grip strength. When she accepted the practical necessity of carrying a firearm for self-defense, we visited a gun show so she could try everything and see what worked. This was a few years ago. The short list that worked for her (slide she could rack + grip that felt workable) were the Glock 42 (.380) S&W 380 EZ, Kimber Solo, and Sig P238.
She preferred the Sig P238 and felt comfortable that she could operate it on her own, load, and unload. Not my first choice but well, a gun that someone likes and feels confident and fully capable operating (and is thus willing to embrace and practice with) far outweighs tactical considerations of SAO vs DAO vs striker etc. in my opinion. Let the one who will be shooting it try a number of guns and choose the one that works for her.
She preferred the Sig P238 and felt comfortable that she could operate it on her own, load, and unload. Not my first choice but well, a gun that someone likes and feels confident and fully capable operating (and is thus willing to embrace and practice with) far outweighs tactical considerations of SAO vs DAO vs striker etc. in my opinion. Let the one who will be shooting it try a number of guns and choose the one that works for her.
slide bite, a tad snappy, not particularly easy to rack.BERSA FireStorm .380 ACP (~ $300)
Not only is it a simple and reliable design, but is also double/single action, so no safety to fool with.
Like a magazine-fed (and quickly reloaded) revolver (with a better trigger).
old lady new shooter
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I missed that.
old lady new shooter
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Just want to add, my King Cobra is my carry gun, but my house gun is an AR. I had to replace the 7½" barrel with a 16" because of the stupid pistol brace rule, which makes it much less nice for someone my size (now down to 4'11"), but I'll live with that until the rule is determined unconstitutional. I bought it after seeing the 2020 riots. My house is very well hardened, a run-of-the-mill burglar is gonna leave and find an easier house after discovering that, but a mob would be a different story altogether. So the perceived lack of capacity some here have asserted won't actually apply if I G-d forbid get into a home defense situation. Thanks to the hardening I have enough time to get to my defensive position from which I can see all likely points of attempted entry and have some concealment, and time to put on my electronic muffs. AR is in a wall safe (with a simplex pushbutton lock) in that room with extra mags etc.
The obvious other alternative for a person who prefers a revolver is to have several of them loaded and available.
tws3b2
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Some people need big guns and a lot of ammo to get the job done. Some are just good enough to get it done with less.
Exactly, these threads always turn into a list of guns, some of them ridiculous. Get training and a standard 9 mm that fits one's hand for training up unless there is a physical problem. Ditch the ARs, exotic shotguns, big ol' revolvers, etc. It's really simple. When I see some double mag shotgun, snubbies, etc. as primary suggestions - I know the thread has burned out from useful advice.
Hokkmike
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Get some friends together and take them for a 1/2 day at the range. Despite my advice my wife bought what looked and felt good for her.
Corpral_Agarn
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I sincerely hope you are not putting all your eggs in that basket.
Will Munny
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For someone with no prior firearms experience who is unlikely to spend much time with it a revolver is really the only responsible answer. 38 Special +P or maybe 357 Magnum.
Gun-Reck
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Slide mounted de-cocking lever.
Carry it chamber-loaded on 1/4-cock, double/single-action.
Really sweet pistol.
Has Glock-esque sights as well.
Was designed for the Spanish as an M&P pistol, so there is nothing flaky about it.
Corpral_Agarn
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Absolutely not
Will Munny
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chicharrones
needs more ammo
Unless something has changed between my Bersa and that Bersa, it has a safety/decocker like a Beretta 92FS. Which means that little lever doesn't move back into the fire position automatically. The user has to make sure that lever is up when ready to fire.
old lady new shooter
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YMMV, but G-d forbid multiple morons crash into my house at the same time, I want sufficient capacity. Honestly I would never have bought an AR if not for this risk. My old house in Cali could not be fully hardened (unless I would have installed bars over the windows which I did not want to do), and actually the most likely break-in scenario would have been a mentally ill homeless person probably on drugs, for which my 686 Plus would probably have been perfectly adequate.
old lady new shooter
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1000%.
considering that this thread is entitled “home defense firearm for a woman” i hazard a guess that new woman shooters who can successfully handle 6 rounds of 357 mag at their first time shooting, then want to spend their one and done firearm money on a 357 mag revolver plus several hundred rounds of 357 mag ammo to get up to speed, is a very, exceedingly, small number. even the number of men would be a relatively small number.
despite my favor of a 22lr semiauto pistol as a starter, my own experience with arming women is different, though both had initially tried 22lr.
several years ago my single sister finally told me that she wanted to be armed. she works late in a high-end, stand-alone jewelry shop. i happily took her under my wing. i brought her and some of my handguns to a shooting range: ruger sr22, ruger lcr 22wmr, bersa thunder 380, taurus 85 38sp snubbie, star bm 9mm. i kinda expected that she would lean to rimfire. 22wmr had too much offensive flashbang. the bersa is uncomfortable to shoot much and perhaps is a poor choice to introduce someone to 380acp. she didn’t like the slide-racking, mag loading and press-checks of the semiauto pistols (“hard to sell a $2500 watch if my nails and hands are beat up”). she glommed onto the taurus 85 to which i had added fuller pachmayr rubber grips. she liked the simple, intuitive ease of a revolver’s manual of arms. much to my surprise she was comfortably accurate by 50 rounds, it was her natural fit, and it’s hers. my birthday and christmas gifts to her since then have been the fees for a ccw class and successive permits.
my sister asked later my advice for a single female friend of my hers wanting a defensive firearm. she wasn’t totally new to firearms. she had shot 22lr rifles as a kid and wanted something more powerful, fair enough despite my pro-22lr advice. she has a pristine colt detective 38sp snubbie from her late father, which she tried once and decided to keep pristine, and didn’t want another revolver, ok. i then suggested her to consider a s&w m&p ez pistol. without shooting either, but with watching utube videos by female reviewers and handling both 9mm and 380acp, she chose the latter because it is a softer round. she has put 200 rounds through it and is very happy.
Did we put something like a G19 in their hands and establish it won't work or are we just assuming because they're petite women new to guns?
Awhile back my Mother in law said she had a pistol she wanted me to get rid of or hold for her because she'd never touched in the decades she'd owned it and didn't want it lying around anymore. A male relative convinced her to buy it for protection years ago. First mention of it ever. Intrigued, I offered to take it off her hands and she brought me this tiny little awkward 25 acp pocket pistol that in the old days may have ben someone's "one mag dump BUG." . This was the 70s so the way I picture it the relative pulled her into a gun store and simply told the clerk "Got a new lady shooter here, should be fine with the tiniest thing you got in the store."
If you want to point a long gun in a new shooter's hands you're right it's the quickest path to teaching them to drive tacks but I hope you're also teaching them to maneuver with it.
I don't dismiss a good compact revolver as fast as some on here but that's a very situational choice. I'm not steering just anybody that way.
If someone shows a capability to shoot one well despite its drawbacks and they need to take home something sooner rather than later that's simple and dummy proof I'd hand them a j frame or medium sized revolver. Not the best option. But If they need something sooner and are taking time to master the semi auto I'd rather get a revolver on their night stand than leave them with nothing for longer because they struggle to rack a slide or overcome limp wristing issues. If a woman makes a deliberate non emergency decision to arm themselves maybe we can fart around on the range for a few weeks or a couple months renting different guns because we can't find the perfect semi auto that fits their hands and has the right controls and an easy slide. Then take more time on top of that to make her proficient once she actually finds a comfortable shooter with good controls.
If she needs it sooner a wheel gun is better than nothing. Cut out the time spent fiddling with different semi autos and start revolver training if she seems to take to that OK.
But would eventually prefer to put them in a semi auto and would consider having them work on those skills so they might swap out or add another weapon later.
Awhile back my Mother in law said she had a pistol she wanted me to get rid of or hold for her because she'd never touched in the decades she'd owned it and didn't want it lying around anymore. A male relative convinced her to buy it for protection years ago. First mention of it ever. Intrigued, I offered to take it off her hands and she brought me this tiny little awkward 25 acp pocket pistol that in the old days may have ben someone's "one mag dump BUG." . This was the 70s so the way I picture it the relative pulled her into a gun store and simply told the clerk "Got a new lady shooter here, should be fine with the tiniest thing you got in the store."
If you want to point a long gun in a new shooter's hands you're right it's the quickest path to teaching them to drive tacks but I hope you're also teaching them to maneuver with it.
I don't dismiss a good compact revolver as fast as some on here but that's a very situational choice. I'm not steering just anybody that way.
If someone shows a capability to shoot one well despite its drawbacks and they need to take home something sooner rather than later that's simple and dummy proof I'd hand them a j frame or medium sized revolver. Not the best option. But If they need something sooner and are taking time to master the semi auto I'd rather get a revolver on their night stand than leave them with nothing for longer because they struggle to rack a slide or overcome limp wristing issues. If a woman makes a deliberate non emergency decision to arm themselves maybe we can fart around on the range for a few weeks or a couple months renting different guns because we can't find the perfect semi auto that fits their hands and has the right controls and an easy slide. Then take more time on top of that to make her proficient once she actually finds a comfortable shooter with good controls.
If she needs it sooner a wheel gun is better than nothing. Cut out the time spent fiddling with different semi autos and start revolver training if she seems to take to that OK.
But would eventually prefer to put them in a semi auto and would consider having them work on those skills so they might swap out or add another weapon later.
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Slide mounted de-cocking lever.
Carry it chamber-loaded on 1/4-cock, double/single-action.
Really sweet pistol.
Has Glock-esque sights as well.
Was designed for the Spanish as an M&P pistol, so there is nothing flaky about it.
This past summer, an older friend of mine gave one of those Bersa 380's to his 60 something year old wife. I was out with them Jeep-ing in the National Forest, when they stopped to let her shoot it. I saw her take a 2 handed grip with her off hand thumb wrapped around behind the slide. I started waving my arms in the air yelled "STOP, STOP, STOP!!!!"
There were at least 2 other men standing right next to her with some firearms experience that were going to let her shoot that pistol that way. I told her you are going to cut your thumb / web of your hand if you fire it that way. She then said "well that's why I cut my hand on it last time!"
I then unloaded the gun and showed her a proper 2 hand grip and had her dry fire it a couple times before firing it with live ammo. There was an old car door propped up against a tree and she was able to hit it with most of the rounds in the magazine.
I don't recall seeing her work the slide on it. When I had her shoot it with live ammo, I worked the slide for her. Pretty sure her husband did the same previously.
What's the moral of this story?
You have show people how these guns work so they don't hurt themselves and... instruct them on safety.
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I guess the cliff notes would he, The instinct is to assume based on our knowledge and expertise that we know what new shooters will do well with. But I have seen people show surprising out of the box proficiency with stuff I never would have expected so I try to keep an open mind and don't automatically dismiss something they may be interested in just because the textbook in my head says it won't work.
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