Hey, thanks for all the replies, great in many ways. I have loved guns since I was a kid, but I must say, CCW makes me think about them in a very different way. I had seen the Cornered Cat site and learned a lot for myself, and I loved Limatunes' "Limalife" Youtube videos about holsters, as well as her others. I'll get my wife to check them out, too, but I'm starting to think she's seeing me as a little too "gung ho" already with this "gun stuff" (I get a little obsessive about my interests...)
Let me explain one of my concerns. As I have mentioned, she has fired the semi-autos listed at the beginning of the thread. She never has fired a revolver, nor have I, so I can't guess how the recoil will compare, from those guns to a .38 Special or (gads) .357 Magnum.
Look at the S&W model 60. its made of stainless steel and has a little heft to it. Recoil would not be much of a problem also.
This is what I'm looking for, in part. Specific advice about revolvers. However, I have to say if this is direction revolvers will take me, I'm really hoping we can overcome the problem with the slides on semi-autos, because an S&W Model 60 will cost almost double what I'm hoping to pay (I saw a used one for around $500.)
...does fine with the Stoeger Cougar and her Bersa Thunder.
The Bersa is something I hope I can get my wife to go for when the time comes, partially for $$ reasons. For some perspective, I paid $350 for my car, a 1986 VW Jetta GLI. We have 7 kids, plus my nephew lives with us, and then there are the 2 dogs. We pay HUGE school taxes, even though we homeschooled for the previous 3 school years (so had to buy the homeschool curriculum, textbooks, tutors, music lessons, etc.) "An extra couple hundred will buy a better gun" could mean we don't get any gun, so economy is as important as reliability.
Summing up, I'd REALLY like each gun to cost less than my car, much less if I can get away with it. For an idea, I saw a nice little used Bersa Thunder .380 going for $200 shipped with an extra mag. Sounded like a nice deal, then $20-25 to a local FFL would do the transfer. The surplus Sig P6s (for me) go for around $300 shipped, + transfer fee.
As far a $$$ go the upside of living in NY is that there are LOTS of great deals to be had on revolvers!
It's encouraging to hear that revolvers can be found here at bargain prices (and they look like my kind of prices.) I would really like to be able to have her shoot one before we have to make any buying decisions. In NY that's not an easy thing to do. One fortunate thing going for us, is that we have 5 acres, and there's a spot way in the back that's far enough from the neighbors (500ft from any neighboring dwelling) where we can shoot as much as we want, with a plowed field going up a hillside as a backstop. That's where my wife tried out my brother-in-law's guns.
Its almost like the jar-opening position except that the hands are reversed with the left on top and the right underneath.
That's funny, I open the jars in this family ("Here's another one, honey... thanks.")
But seriously, I really appreciate all the advice about technique. I expect we'll be getting my gun first, and then she can work with it, try some stuff out, and see if she can work with a semi-auto, mostly because I think she'd like the gun she gets to be fairly flat. I'm really not sure how she's planning to carry concealed, or if she's given any thought to holsters, etc, yet. I'm not very keen on inside the purse carry, as a purse is the first thing to get "snatched" sometimes - but as it has been pointed out here, she needs to make a lot of these decisions, I only want to help her find the best information to help.
Now I'm realizing some of the other areas where we're going to have to come up with money to make this work for us:
License costs - $230+ for the two of us (not sure of the exact number offhand)
Guns - $500-600 (or less?) for 2
Holsters - I like an IWB I saw for about $80+, I have no idea what she'll want...
Gun belt - $30 for me, for her ??
Now I'm worrying that we'll need new clothing that is CCW-friendly. Especially my wife, she's always getting what the kids need, and leaving herself for last. Me, most of the time I get free stuff from people who are giving clothes away (Freecycle/ReUseIt/Craigslist.)