Women and handguns

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As a firearms instructor to men and women who earn their living going in harms way, I treated both male and female students the same way, with patience and respect. I demanded the same in return. I've seen men with small hands and women with big egos. Each student brought unique talents and problems. My job was to take the person I was given and teach them to fight for their lives effectively with small arms. I knew the bad guys weren't going to treat women any differently than men so I didn't either.

That said, some of the best students I've trained have been women.

As to gun selection, I advise women and men to shoot as many different guns as they can and choose the one they are the most comfortable and accurate with. My wife didn't shoot at all when we met. Once she got started she shot all of my guns and settled on a Glock 30 .45 with a .32 Tomcat BUG. Over the last couple of years those guns morphed into a full size Colt 1911 .45 and a Colt New Agent .45 as her BUG. She shoots them very well.

Respectfully,

DarkSoldier
 
One of the problems I have had in teaching/instructing is trying to break the bad habit of hunkering your head down to the pistol instead bringing the pistol up. With men this can generally be a problem and on the other han no so with women and if they have this problem they correct pretty quick. It's a line of sight issue and more often than not men revert back to hunkering their head down behind the pistol. I believe it starts from lining up to shoot a rifle and they take it over to a pistol and are subconsious about it. From my experience it causes most to shoot low.
I think one of the reasons why women can become better marksmen is because of the fact of no bad habits.
 
One interesting deifference between the genders, and even between big guys and not so big guys is one of attitude. In nearly every endeavor, there are efficient ways of getting the job done. For a shooting related example, consider racking the slide. The efficient way to do this is to firmly grasp the slide with non-shooting hand, then anchor that arm somewhere. With the shooting hand the grip area, gripping firmly, push forward hard and fast. Using that method, just about anyone can rack just about anything.

However, being a guy, 6'0 tall, 250lbs, and fairly strong, I never learned to do it that way. I never had to. I just did it by main strength. Smaller persons than myself, who may not have the option of using brute force, have to rely on finesse.

Another example is my brother. He's a fraction taller than I am, but built completely differently. On nearly every physical endeavour, he starts looking for an efficient way right away. Example: there's a lawn tractor to be loaded into the bed of a pickup truck. My solution: pick the silly thing up and put it there. His solution: a remarkably complex arrangement of ramps, pulleys, and cordage. Which is better? Well, mine took about 3 seconds, his took about 2 hours. Mine would start getting old mighty fast if I had to load a bunch of lawn tractors into a bunch of pickups. His probably wouldn't. Mine was fairly easy for me. It wouldn't have worked at all for him.

Another brute force vs. finesse example comes from the martial arts. Say someone is annoying you, and you decide that the best way to cause them to cease doing so would be via a rapid application of the pavement to their head. There are any number of ways to achieve this. One way, and the way which is most intuitive for a guy my size and strength, is to pick the offending person up, flip over, and drop on head. Repeat as needed. It's effective, but wins no style points. Also there is an upper limit to the size of person this method is effective against. For a smaller person, that upper limit might be so miniscule as to render the method un-useful, or even impossible. However, that self-same small person can chuck even a guy my size, or even bigger around the dojo with ease, given the proper combination of speed, leverage, and direction. Believe me, I've taken enough falls to prove that strength doesn't always win.

A similar thing happens in shooting. Just because a small person can't do something one way, doesn't mean they can't do it at all. The way they find may well be better in the long run.
 
JoeSlomo said:
Females often have an advantage over males in that they come into the shooting sports with NO experience, and NO attitude, which in turn allows them to learn and apply the basic fundamentals a qualified instructor teaches more proficiently than would some males.
Click to expand...

I think that tends to be true.

However, I started shooting at the age of 38. No experience beforehand. And being a professional geek, I tend to have no attitude/ego problems in admitting I don't know something. Actually, for any learned skill, I tend never to assume myself an expert. A career in physics can make you humble that way.
 
Women should only shoot rounds smaller than a .38 and all of their pistol grips should be pink. That is my opinion. :)

Seriously, I almost bought my wife a pink handled snubby for her b-day. Every time we go to the gun shop she complains that they have "pink" models and talks about how she would never use one. I figured I buy her the pink handled one, she hates it, then I get to use it! I don't care if it's pink, its concealed most of the time. And if I did have to use it imagine the look on a BG's face pulling out a pink gun... epic.
 
I like pink. But all the pink guns are that screaming, Pepto-Bismol pink.

I'd like something in a quiet, silver-rose instead. Or, if its going to be a loud pink at least make it a bright fuscia instead of that dreaded candy-pink. I grew out of the Barbie dolls and Disney princesses over 30 year ago. :lol:
 
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