Recommendations for first handgun?

[Zerodefect]

Hi,

Im new to here and to guns in general.
Looking to buy a handgun for occasional shooting range practice and home defense.

What im looking for:
* Manual safety
* 15+ mag capacity
* Modern and good looking
* Ammo availability/affordability
* Budget $1000 ± $200
* Preferably 9mm or .45 ACP but ill consider other good options
* Longer barrel

Thank you.

Manual safety? 1911 (out of your budget), 2011 (triple your budget), Cz75b, Cz75sa, Cz Shadow, Cz Tso. I suggest .40 with the Cz's.

15 round mags? 2011 9mm, Cz75, Cz Tso .40

Modern and good looking? Glock 41. Deal with it.

Ammo affordability, availability? Order 2000 rounds of anything right now. Ammo prices only go up. Buy now while it's cheap. 9mm, .40, .45.

Budget? Glock 34 41 17 22 23 19

Long barrel? Glock 34 41, 1911, 2011, above CZ's.

I recommend that you start with a Glock 34 35 41, or a CZ in 9mm or .40. Based on your location, I'd personally want a Glock 41.

And .45 cured my flinches when I was new. Focus on the target more, for some close shooting. Then try some shooting from the retention position. Flinching will be gone by the time you master those.

 

[crestoncowboy]

Full disclosure I did have to google what a striborg was. Not my thing really

A lot of folks come to me to try different models and find their first handgun. I don't mention price/name nothing. I always bring a beretta 92/96. A full size usp. A sig 226. And a glock 17/22. If they have any idea about what they might like I'll bring something different as well but I always make people try those 4. If I woke up in some strange land and had to pick one of those blindly I'd feel like I was fine with either. The beretta has a safety/ decocker, and my HKs are set up the same way but that is easily changed on the USP. I'd say 75 percent of the people I've trained preferred the 226. A few have liked the beretta and slightly less have chose the glocks. Not one that I can recall ever chose the HK by feel or by shooting, although one was later issued a usp and grew to prefer it. I'd say it is the most robust built of the lot but you will never wear out any of those in my opinion. I personally prefer and carry the Glock. Given your list of requirements I'd bring along a FN FNX 45 tactical. That checks about everything you wanted. 15 rd 45acp. With safety. And threaded barrel. If your a smaller person the HK and beretta may be a bit big, many feel they are. That said, the smallest grown man I ever trained preferred the beretta.... go figure. 1000 dollars in the US would get you anything mentioned above, and as far as duty guns go, would get you about anything you wanted. No idea about your country though.
The 5.7 I use for varmints. It's a great gun, especially for that. Accurate . No recoil, flat trajectory etc. But I would put the caliber a long way down on my list for SD and home defense. I'd stick with 9mm/40/357 sig/45/ or 10mm. For price it would be 9mm/40/or 45.

 

[labnoti]

The 5.7 pistol was built to go with the P90 PDW. The cartridge was conceived as a replacement for the 9mm and was intended to be superior (nearly 30 years ago). It may in fact be superior, but only in particular ways (it's certainly not cheaper) and most of the benefits are only realized in the PDW. In a pistol, there are few practical advantages - lower recoil and flatter trajectory, which are not great advantages over the 9mm. The real advantages of greater capacity and armor penetration aren't realized from the pistol. A CZ P-10 F has 21+1 magazines and isn't totally awkward or impractical. 9mm terminal ballistics from a pistol are probably superior in every way. But the P90 has 50 round magazines with no protrusions and out of the longer barrel the 5.7 will zip through IIIA body armor reliably. The pistol, on the other hand, is mostly a novelty in markets where people can freely buy alternatives that are better for their purpose. Curiously, I've read the FiveSeven (pistol) is highly coveted in some black markets. I can only speculate that is because of an ignorant belief that the cartridge offers the same armor penetration from the pistol as it does from the PDW. The PDW's performance shouldn't be glorified either. It's smaller, more compact, and easier to conceal than an AR (provided you can get the short-barrel version that is a SBR in the US and subject to NFA), but otherwise it is inferior to the 5.56 in every way. The 50 round magazine capacity is also really most meaningful when you're firing full auto. If you can get the full-auto SBR version and someone else (maybe the wealth of the person on whose protective detail you're assigned) pays for all the ammo, then it could be a good deal. The long-barrel semi auto version is just sort of a perverse oddity and the pistol is a novelty and a relic. You're better off with any one of the other pistols that are rightly popular in the present age and for an available PDW, CZ Scorpion Micro, Sig MPX, and for soft armor-penetration, anything in 5.56, or .300BLK for suppression.