ChalupaCabras
Expert
I've been reflecting often of late on my experiences buying, selling, shooting, and carrying handgun over the last several years. I turned 30 a few months back, and realized I've maintained a carry permit and collection of handguns since I came of age at 18, so this is year 12 winding down. I've always been a slow learner but I think I can say with a bit of confidence now that I'm finally starting to realize what works and what doesn't work in the real world, the realities of living and training with firearms, forming my own personal preferences and reasoning behind them.
I don't consider myself an expert or professional in the realm of handguns; not in any real sense of the word. I'm not a tacticool operator swat ninja, nor am I a tier 1 death dealer of any flavor. My formal training consists of NRA basic and advanced handgun courses that I took in my late teens or early 20's, DOC pistol training on the Glock as a State prison guard in my mid 20s, and more recently pistol training on the M9 for the National Guard. I suppose that is in reality significantly more training than the average Joe who owns a handgun, but in my opinion that is only just enough to be competent, and I will be seeking more training as time and funds allow.
Part of that time & funding loop was how long it took me to get into reloading. I resisted it for several years, despite never having enough money to practice shooting with the frequency I wanted. Eventually my father purchased a Lee 3 stage progressive press kit, pre-set for 45acp. several years later, it is still one of the most useful and overall worth-while piece of firearms related equipment I own. Even purchasing all components at local shop prices, my cost per box of 45acp is half of what it costs to buy commercial ammo. These entry level reloading kits are not expensive in any way. The concept of reloading is a good example of what I would usually do at the time, and what I did for many years - purchase a new gun instead of buying the things I needed to support the weapon I already owned. I was that guy with a dozen handguns in 4 different calibers, and 300 total rounds of ammunition. Maybe I had one or two extra magazines for one or two of those, but certainly not for every weapon.
Looking back, the cause of a lot of this was gun magazines and internet gun forums. I read them religiously. All of them. For nearly 10 years I was on virtually every internet gun forum known to man, including many of the smaller less well known (under a different user name), and I checked them all every day - multiple times per day in the case of the larger more well known names. I can clearly say that this was the source of HUGE amounts of misinformation that I later had to un-learn. I won't say what my old handle was, because I'm honestly ashamed of a lot of the nonsense things I used to say - Example: I once told someone never to buy brand X pistol (that I had never owned or fired) because they had plastic guide rods, and I felt that was not a reliable design... Despite the fact that I had no trigger time with the weapon and very little trigger time at all in general, I still felt like I needed to chime in and parrot stupid silly crap that I had heard other internet forumites spout; they had high post counts, so they MUST know what they are talking about right? Wrong young shooter, wrong - what I should have been doing was working an hour or two overtime so I could have afforded to shoot a couple boxes of ammo that weekend and improve as a shooter... Or simply doing some dg-gone pushup or gone for a jog to be in a bit better shape and maybe actually survive a gun fight. If you could track my forum activity now, you would see I only log on to post a for sale add, or take 5 - 10 minutes to respond to 1 or 2 threads, and that I only do that sporadically with periods of weeks of months between short bursts of activity... This is not because I'm not active in the world of firearms - it's actually the opposite; I'm out practicing, or spending my time DOING a firearms related hobby instead of talking about it to strangers on the internet. My advice to the new or younger shooter is to do the same.
The last thing I want to touch on in equipment. I spent a good while before posting this trying to think of all the handguns I've bought / sold / traded over the last dozen years and I honestly can't remember them all. This is a list of the pistols and revolvers that I can REMEMBER personally owning (not to include weapons of several shooter family members, my friends who also tend to be shooters, or any rental pistols I have shot over the years):
Pistols
---
CZ 50
CZ 52
CZ 75 'Semi-Compact' (My first pistol)
Walther P-22 (Black)
Walther P-22 (Green w/ Veridian green laser)
Walther P1 (Early P38 marked)
Walther P99 AS
Glock 17 (Gen3)
Glock 30 (Gen3)
Springfield G.I. 45 (Stainless)
Ruger P345
Ruger MKIII
Ruger 22/45 (Early model, bull barrel)
Ruger LCP
Hi-Point C9
Hi-Point 45 (Early heel catch model)
Beretta 9000 .40
Beretta 8040 .40
Sig Sauer P232
Sig Sauer P6
FN FiveSeven
FN FNS-9 (Long slide)
S&W 4506
S&W M&P Shield 9
STI GP6 (Performance tuned Grand Power K100)
KelTec P32
Baikal Makarov (Russian .380 commercial)
Revolvers
---
Taurus 941
S&W 36 (2" steel frame, blued)
S&W 19 (6" BBL)
S&W 629 (6" 1/2 lug BBL)
S&W 25 'Classic' (6" 1/2 lug)
Cold 'Commando' (2"BBL 'D' frame 38 special)
27 pistols and 6 revolvers is what my rusty and often fallible memory can recollect owning. I am confident that is not a complete list, as I made a hobby for a time of trading off practically new pistols, at a loss, for store credit based on junk I read on the internet, or what new gun was coming out next week. By my very conservative estimate the items on that partial lists come to about $13,000 in handguns at current real market prices (good condition used examples for the items no longer made). This does not include the rifles or shotguns that got caught up in the same scheme.
The point of that example is to show how I bounced around from one cartridge to the next, from one platform to the next, and from one type of trigger/safety mechanism to the next. It all added up to a lot time and money that I won't say was wasted (shooting anything is just too much fun) but I will say did not end up going anywhere in the long run. I think I'm just one of those hard headed people who has to try something multiple times to decide I do or don't like It. If I had gotten my act in gear and settled on what worked earlier on, I could have spend a lot more time and ammunition practicing with a uniform type of weapon and actually progressing as a shooter, instead of just being OK with anything and everything.
So If I could do it over, what would I have done different, and what can the new shooter do to get on track sooner?
You will hear a lot of people tell new shooters to go to a range with rentals and shoot different types and see what they like before they buy. This is good advice, but nobody ever tells you what to be looking for: Don't just look for size and weight. Those are important, but I would add to shoot the big 3 types of trigger / safety mechanisms and decide that first - you have single action with a manual safety, double action with a decocker safety, and DAO no safety. There is always some weird gun that defies categorization, but those are what 95% of pistols fall into. Choose which of those you like first, because you can get practically any major brand handgun line in multiple sizes and calibers these days.
The next bit of advice usually given to newbies is deciding on weapon size and caliber. The order you do that in really doesn't matter. A lot of people will tell you to go with a middle of the road size gun (Glock 19 size) and there is a lot of practical truth in that I resisted for a lot of years out of desire to be different and do my own thing. My advice is to do practical FIRST, and then build up a collection of range toys and/or curios if you think that would appeal to you. Caliber really doesn't matter, as long as its not something whacky. Pick one of the main 3 (9mm, 40, 45) for your first gun (as well as your second and third for that matter). Don't do what I did, and get stuck with a collection of nearly all odd ball firarms that you either can't afford ammo for or can find spare mags for. Buy SEVERAL purely practical weapons first IF you choose to go the route of owning multiple guns. I spent a lot of time swinging back and forth from extremes in the spectrum, and chasing whiz-bang new cartridges. Don't do that if you want to actually shoot.
10 years ago, if I had known what I know now, I would have let the other stuff pass by and purchased Glocks - a 19, a 23, and a 35. I would have shot the crap out of the 19 as a training analogue for the 23 which I would have carried and never looked back. The 35 would have mounted a basic light only (no silly laser) and pulled Sisyphean duty as a night stand gun forever more. The other $12,000+ dollars could have been spent on a crate of mags, pallets of ammunition, spare parts, and reloading supplies to keep them all running until my grand children are grey.
Today there are a lot more really good options for pistols, but I would essentially go the same route: I would pick a brand and model that offered a compact version of a reliable service pistol, buy both of them, and stock mags and ammo. I would almost certainly go with the middle of the road cartridge (40) and mount a light on the full sized pistol to use as a house gun. I would probably pick a model that had no manual safety, because I've found through much trial and error that I need things to be as simple as possible.
Quick take away from this rant for the new shooters are: Buy practical mainstream firearms early on, get training early on, start hand loading ASAP, and spend extra money on more bullets, not more guns.
Sorry for the rant, had to get it out, and I hope it helps someone.
I don't consider myself an expert or professional in the realm of handguns; not in any real sense of the word. I'm not a tacticool operator swat ninja, nor am I a tier 1 death dealer of any flavor. My formal training consists of NRA basic and advanced handgun courses that I took in my late teens or early 20's, DOC pistol training on the Glock as a State prison guard in my mid 20s, and more recently pistol training on the M9 for the National Guard. I suppose that is in reality significantly more training than the average Joe who owns a handgun, but in my opinion that is only just enough to be competent, and I will be seeking more training as time and funds allow.
Part of that time & funding loop was how long it took me to get into reloading. I resisted it for several years, despite never having enough money to practice shooting with the frequency I wanted. Eventually my father purchased a Lee 3 stage progressive press kit, pre-set for 45acp. several years later, it is still one of the most useful and overall worth-while piece of firearms related equipment I own. Even purchasing all components at local shop prices, my cost per box of 45acp is half of what it costs to buy commercial ammo. These entry level reloading kits are not expensive in any way. The concept of reloading is a good example of what I would usually do at the time, and what I did for many years - purchase a new gun instead of buying the things I needed to support the weapon I already owned. I was that guy with a dozen handguns in 4 different calibers, and 300 total rounds of ammunition. Maybe I had one or two extra magazines for one or two of those, but certainly not for every weapon.
Looking back, the cause of a lot of this was gun magazines and internet gun forums. I read them religiously. All of them. For nearly 10 years I was on virtually every internet gun forum known to man, including many of the smaller less well known (under a different user name), and I checked them all every day - multiple times per day in the case of the larger more well known names. I can clearly say that this was the source of HUGE amounts of misinformation that I later had to un-learn. I won't say what my old handle was, because I'm honestly ashamed of a lot of the nonsense things I used to say - Example: I once told someone never to buy brand X pistol (that I had never owned or fired) because they had plastic guide rods, and I felt that was not a reliable design... Despite the fact that I had no trigger time with the weapon and very little trigger time at all in general, I still felt like I needed to chime in and parrot stupid silly crap that I had heard other internet forumites spout; they had high post counts, so they MUST know what they are talking about right? Wrong young shooter, wrong - what I should have been doing was working an hour or two overtime so I could have afforded to shoot a couple boxes of ammo that weekend and improve as a shooter... Or simply doing some dg-gone pushup or gone for a jog to be in a bit better shape and maybe actually survive a gun fight. If you could track my forum activity now, you would see I only log on to post a for sale add, or take 5 - 10 minutes to respond to 1 or 2 threads, and that I only do that sporadically with periods of weeks of months between short bursts of activity... This is not because I'm not active in the world of firearms - it's actually the opposite; I'm out practicing, or spending my time DOING a firearms related hobby instead of talking about it to strangers on the internet. My advice to the new or younger shooter is to do the same.
The last thing I want to touch on in equipment. I spent a good while before posting this trying to think of all the handguns I've bought / sold / traded over the last dozen years and I honestly can't remember them all. This is a list of the pistols and revolvers that I can REMEMBER personally owning (not to include weapons of several shooter family members, my friends who also tend to be shooters, or any rental pistols I have shot over the years):
Pistols
---
CZ 50
CZ 52
CZ 75 'Semi-Compact' (My first pistol)
Walther P-22 (Black)
Walther P-22 (Green w/ Veridian green laser)
Walther P1 (Early P38 marked)
Walther P99 AS
Glock 17 (Gen3)
Glock 30 (Gen3)
Springfield G.I. 45 (Stainless)
Ruger P345
Ruger MKIII
Ruger 22/45 (Early model, bull barrel)
Ruger LCP
Hi-Point C9
Hi-Point 45 (Early heel catch model)
Beretta 9000 .40
Beretta 8040 .40
Sig Sauer P232
Sig Sauer P6
FN FiveSeven
FN FNS-9 (Long slide)
S&W 4506
S&W M&P Shield 9
STI GP6 (Performance tuned Grand Power K100)
KelTec P32
Baikal Makarov (Russian .380 commercial)
Revolvers
---
Taurus 941
S&W 36 (2" steel frame, blued)
S&W 19 (6" BBL)
S&W 629 (6" 1/2 lug BBL)
S&W 25 'Classic' (6" 1/2 lug)
Cold 'Commando' (2"BBL 'D' frame 38 special)
27 pistols and 6 revolvers is what my rusty and often fallible memory can recollect owning. I am confident that is not a complete list, as I made a hobby for a time of trading off practically new pistols, at a loss, for store credit based on junk I read on the internet, or what new gun was coming out next week. By my very conservative estimate the items on that partial lists come to about $13,000 in handguns at current real market prices (good condition used examples for the items no longer made). This does not include the rifles or shotguns that got caught up in the same scheme.
The point of that example is to show how I bounced around from one cartridge to the next, from one platform to the next, and from one type of trigger/safety mechanism to the next. It all added up to a lot time and money that I won't say was wasted (shooting anything is just too much fun) but I will say did not end up going anywhere in the long run. I think I'm just one of those hard headed people who has to try something multiple times to decide I do or don't like It. If I had gotten my act in gear and settled on what worked earlier on, I could have spend a lot more time and ammunition practicing with a uniform type of weapon and actually progressing as a shooter, instead of just being OK with anything and everything.
So If I could do it over, what would I have done different, and what can the new shooter do to get on track sooner?
You will hear a lot of people tell new shooters to go to a range with rentals and shoot different types and see what they like before they buy. This is good advice, but nobody ever tells you what to be looking for: Don't just look for size and weight. Those are important, but I would add to shoot the big 3 types of trigger / safety mechanisms and decide that first - you have single action with a manual safety, double action with a decocker safety, and DAO no safety. There is always some weird gun that defies categorization, but those are what 95% of pistols fall into. Choose which of those you like first, because you can get practically any major brand handgun line in multiple sizes and calibers these days.
The next bit of advice usually given to newbies is deciding on weapon size and caliber. The order you do that in really doesn't matter. A lot of people will tell you to go with a middle of the road size gun (Glock 19 size) and there is a lot of practical truth in that I resisted for a lot of years out of desire to be different and do my own thing. My advice is to do practical FIRST, and then build up a collection of range toys and/or curios if you think that would appeal to you. Caliber really doesn't matter, as long as its not something whacky. Pick one of the main 3 (9mm, 40, 45) for your first gun (as well as your second and third for that matter). Don't do what I did, and get stuck with a collection of nearly all odd ball firarms that you either can't afford ammo for or can find spare mags for. Buy SEVERAL purely practical weapons first IF you choose to go the route of owning multiple guns. I spent a lot of time swinging back and forth from extremes in the spectrum, and chasing whiz-bang new cartridges. Don't do that if you want to actually shoot.
10 years ago, if I had known what I know now, I would have let the other stuff pass by and purchased Glocks - a 19, a 23, and a 35. I would have shot the crap out of the 19 as a training analogue for the 23 which I would have carried and never looked back. The 35 would have mounted a basic light only (no silly laser) and pulled Sisyphean duty as a night stand gun forever more. The other $12,000+ dollars could have been spent on a crate of mags, pallets of ammunition, spare parts, and reloading supplies to keep them all running until my grand children are grey.
Today there are a lot more really good options for pistols, but I would essentially go the same route: I would pick a brand and model that offered a compact version of a reliable service pistol, buy both of them, and stock mags and ammo. I would almost certainly go with the middle of the road cartridge (40) and mount a light on the full sized pistol to use as a house gun. I would probably pick a model that had no manual safety, because I've found through much trial and error that I need things to be as simple as possible.
Quick take away from this rant for the new shooters are: Buy practical mainstream firearms early on, get training early on, start hand loading ASAP, and spend extra money on more bullets, not more guns.
Sorry for the rant, had to get it out, and I hope it helps someone.
