Choosing a Pistol

So you’ve decided to take a big step forward and become a firearms owner – and, more particularly, a pistol owner.  Congratulations!

Now for the fun part – although if you’re not careful, rather than fun, it may become awfully complicated, challenging and controversial.  Choosing the ‘best’ pistol for your needs.

Note we put the word ‘best’ in quotes.  Because, in reality, there’s no such thing as the ‘best’ gun.  If there was, gun shops wouldn’t be full of hundreds of different pistols for you to choose from.

So here’s our first lesson.  Don’t go looking for the best pistol, because the ‘best’ pistol – for you – is a subjective measure that involves all sorts of compromises and also all sorts of personal preferences.

Indeed, pistols as a whole are a compromise weapon.  They’ve already greatly compromised functionality – the ability to get high powered rounds rapidly and accurately on target – in the interest of size and weight.  If you really want to know the best pistol, then the answer is ‘a rifle’ (or possibly, a shotgun)!  Some people put it this way – ‘A pistol is the gun you use to fight your way to your rifle’.

We say this not to talk you out of buying a pistol, merely to make sure that right from the start of this process, you don’t mentally pass on ‘magic powers’ to the pistol you are planning to buy.  It doesn’t have any.  It is an inadequate weapon at the best of times, and your best approach to any confrontation, for all reasons, will always be to avoid it.

Okay, now that we’ve got that said, let’s start off with the first question in this ‘decision tree’ of questions to help you get to the best compromise pistol for your needs.

Please click on the link that best answers this question :

Is the prime purpose of this pistol to be for :

1.  Casual plinking and target shooting
2.  Competition shooting
3.  Home defense (ie not a pistol you want to carry concealed with you)
4.  A mix of home defense and self defense outside the home
5.  A concealed carry pistol for self defense outside the home

Okay, so click away, and we’ll resume this discussion on the next page, whichever that may be.  See you there!