Are there any great guns out there for $400? Or $500?
any handgun from a namebrand manufacturer, except a few higher end ones, are going to be great guns, and will roughly fit in your price range. I am talking Beretta, Springfield XD, Glock, Ruger, Taurus, CZ, Smith&Wesson, etc etc. Of those, Rugers and Tauruses are generally a bit less expensive.
A Ruger P95 is one hell of a good buy in my opinion. Tough, solid, reliable gun, and will be a bit lower than a lot of other manufacturer's stuff.
Or go used, to save about $100, as guns last forever as long as you give them a little cleaning.
What is the lowest price point for a gun that won't jam or have any problems?
First off, in theory, any and every mechanical device can fail, but really, a gun from a reputable manufacturer isn't going to jam unless you shoot thousands of rounds through it without cleaning, or have it sitting in the bottom of your purse/junk drawer, and all that little crap like twisties, small screws, small rocks, crushed after-dinner mints, etc gets in there.
That being said, there are some supercheap manufacturers (who used to specialize in $50 .22 tiny pocketguns, but who branched out to really cheap 9mms) Jennings, Davis, Lorcin, say away from them, no matter how tempted you are by a $150 9mm.
the cheapest truely reliable handgun is probably a makarov. Design rip-off of a walther pp (007 James Bond gun) made by the soviets, so it is simple and durable. $130ish? I haven't priced one out for a while, maybe more now. you can get 'never been fired, but stored for 40 years in soviet wharehouse' models at gunshows or smaller shops.
You asked about revolvers. Besides being very intuitive, and reliable, and usually you get a bit more quality for the same price, if you get a revolver chambered in .357 magnum, you can actually shoot two different loads with it, 357 magnum and 38 special, which is great for low recoil low expense practice. If you are going to go with one handgun, a .357 magnum with a 4 inch or 6 inch barrel from smith and wesson, ruger, or taurus would be an excellent choice.
Or would it be smarter to buy a rifle? Can they be used for home defense, or is it a bad idea? Are rifles a better value, or are they more expensive?
rule 1 of gunfighting is bring a gun, rule 2 is make sure it is a rifle
handguns should only be used so you can fight your way to a rifle
A rifle is much more inherently mechanically accurate than a handgun, and is much easier for a shooter to shoot accurately with.
Yes a rifle can be used for home defense, but you must worry more about your bullets penetrating your walls more. This can be dealt with through careful ammuntion selection. Also, rifles are longer, which may make them harder to move from room to room in the dark, etc etc. On the cheap, an inexpensive SKS (again, soviet made, cheap and durable, it is what they had before the AK-47 came along, but is semi-auto only, and normally only hold 10 shots in a magazine perminantly attached to the gun, no big curved banana mag like an ak) Another alternative would be a lever gun (cowboy rifle) in 30-30 or 44mag or 357 mag. a tad more expensive, but not much, and much less frightening to some people. Of course, there is the AR-15, (a quick and dirty explination is that it is a civilian copy of the M-16, but onyl shoots one bullet per trigger pull, it is NOT a 'machinegun') but these are going to be a bit more expensive, like $699.
Is that the force the bullet hits a target, or is it something different. Is there any way to know what force a gun has?
Are all .45's more powerful than a .38, or do some smaller guns send a bullet out faster?I don't know much about guns, but I do remember the "Force = Mass * Acceleration" formula from highschool physics. It's easy to tell the mass of a .45 bullet is more than a .38, but how do we know force. Is that something marketed by gun companies?
Simply put, how much power a gun has is really not linked to the gun at all. It's all about how much gunpowder is in the the cartridge. Now, in general, a longer barrel will allow a gun to utilize that gunpowder a bit better, but unless you are taking supershort 2 inch barrel (bad idea for you) or go to the extreme and compare a handgun to a rifle firing the same round (18 inch barrel) barrel length won't change anything much when you are in the 3-6 inch barrel lenght catagory.
in general, handgun power, by loading goes
Least powerful--------------->most powerful
.22, .25, .32, .380, 38special, 9mm, 40, .357/.45acp(tie), 10mm, 41 mag, 44mag
380 is really considered absolute minimum for self defense, but for bear/lion, I'd say at least 9mm, if not 45/357
force = mass x acceleration squared. The perfect example of this is 45 acp vs 357 magnum. 45 is heavier, but slower, 357 is lighter but moves much faster, both have proven trackrecords of stopping people NOW.
Of course, nothing is just raw numbers, but you can go to the website of ammo makers, and they will list bullet weight, bullet speed, and energy if ftlbs
a few other factors. Bullet structure. Hollowpionts are designed to expand and dump all that energy into tearing and smashing stuff in the body of the target. A bullet that enters the body and zips out the other side hardly slowing at all isn't going to do much good, as all that energy is still there, it hasn't done any work for you, but an bullet that expands and dumps all it's energy into causing damage to the body = good. Problem is, expanding bullets normally require high velocity, so that means smaller bullets in diameter generally. (think 357) Now if something goes wrong, like say you have to shoot through a glass window or something, the hollowpoint may fill with gunk and not work to make the bullet expand, but a big fat slow moving bullet who isn't reliying on expanding because it is big and fat already, less bullet failure to worry about. (Although honestly, hollowpoint failure is a 1 in a 10000 thing)
Further, bullet placement is more important than anything. You can have an ubermagical bullet,. but if you shoot a guy in the foot and blow his foot off, he can probably still shoot you or stab you. Sure, he may bleed to death 5 minutes later, but if he has already stabbed you to death, too late! On the other hand, a tiny fast bullet that zips into the body and zips right out, but happens to sever the spinal cord, or blasts right through the hearts' aorta, or trough the eye and brain, that will cause instant incapacitation...of course, it is hard to rely on a spnal cord or aorta being hit.
And finally, the vast majorty of times a law abiding citizen uses a gun in self defense, the badguys simply seeing a determined adversary with a gun, will flee. This doesn't mean bring a toy gun or count on an unloaded gun. However, 19 out of 20 'gun incidents' with armed citizens is 'won' without a shot being fired.
and didnt come here to learn about guns in general (although, I and others think he should). Rather, he had some very specific requirements, to wit:
