That your wife doesn't like it doesn't mean that women as a group need it. There are plenty of guys out there that are just as recoil sensitive as we presume all women to be. I mean, there are guys that can shoot a .500 S&W and find it enjoyable. I am not one of them, and I don't consider myself to be recoil sensitive at all.
I never said it did, I said in my experience, which isn't limited to my wife and my sister in law. My mother doesn't like recoil, nor do either of my mother in laws--and see below.
I've seen women shoot 230 grain 45 ACP out of a 1911 platform handgun, and do it quite poorly. Think buckshot patterns rather than groups----at 3 yards. I've seen other women shoot 40s and 45s well enough, but they quickly switched back to 9mm or another smaller caliber with lighter recoil--in near identical guns such as Glunks. I find that quite informative.
I think as a general rule of thumb, the gun itself has more bearing on the situation than the cartridge does. I can shoot .357's all day from my little Taurus 605. I shot one of those airweight Ti/Scandium S&W .357's, and I assure you that I will never repeat the experience again. This is just as true of women as it is anyone else.
I agree with that first sentence and last sentence, to a point. Short of going to gargantuan for caliber size guns such as the Desert Eagle or Super Redhawk, a .44 magnum isn't going to be pleasant to shoot, and even then the noise becomes a problem. With identical loads my 6 pound .308 is far less pleasant to shoot than my ten pound .308. Same goes for my 4" M28 in comparison to one of my 4" K frame magnums.
On a broader scale, I think this attitude is one reason why more women don't shoot. Looked at from the outside, we are a bunch of chest-thumpers that want to coddle women to the point of making them look as if they have some sort of mental deficiency. Don't believe me? Look at all the threads in which some dude is talking about how he is going to pick out a gun, tell her what to buy, try to find something pink or any of the other well-meaning, but ultimately insulting things that we do towards women when it comes to guns. How would you like it if you went into a gunstore, excited about getting your first gun, and your wife or girlfriend essentially told you what you were going to buy without any real concern towards what you may or may not want because of some perceived superiority when it comes to shooting? Chicks are perfectly capable of figuring out what they want through trial and error and comparison just as well as we are, dudes.
I think you're half right. I see many people attempting to shove guns at their wife/girlfriend without regard to how it fits her, and totally without her input. I also see less than intelligent individuals who put a .44 magnum in their wife/girlfriends hands for her very first go round on the handgun range. Neither of those two situations is a good thing. I have
always, no matter the gender, made it a point to say that the firearm needs to fit the person who will be shooting it.
I've NEVER said that ANYONE shouldn't experiment to find what they like and can handle. I'm exactly the opposite in fact, however, it's
always a better idea to start out small and then work up. I wouldn't start a new handgun shooter on my 1400 fps .45 Colt loads, just like I wouldn't start a new rifle shooter on a .375 H&H. For someone that has experience, but possibly not lots of experience, I'm going to put a variety of firearms in front of them along with ammunition for each one.
I, for one, don't buy into that brand of BS. There is no physical reason that a woman can't be every bit as good at shooting as a man. If a woman wants to shoot with me, she should expect to be treated exactly as I would treat anyone else. That doesn't mean that I am going to throw someone into the deep end of the pool and just say "Swim or die", but it does mean that I am not going to fawn and coddle and act like it is a major accomplishment that a female actually managed to pull a trigger without getting a case of the vapors and fainting dead away.
Whatever "BS" you think I've attempted to sell, I would suggest taking a look at exactly what I've pointed out. I would further suggest taking a step back from the computer to contemplate that your assumptions may not be correct. I believe you'll also find me repeatedly posting in various places that my wife picks her own guns out.
Most women make better students and learn faster than their male counterparts--due to the lack of "I know it all attitude". The first time my wife shot my 6" S&W 19, she did so double action at 25 yards and shot better than I did.
In general, women are probably better shots than men, probably due to what I pointed out in the first sentence of this paragraph.
