Today I had a friend come over for her first time shooting a gun. Her husband recently passed away and left her several guns, including two Glocks and a S&W 4013 in .40 S&W. She wants to keep one gun for home defense yet she has never fired a gun in her life, that is until today.
I started off by sending her the Safety Rules (thanks Kilogulf59 for posting those and Winds of Change for making it a sticky in the Training and Safety section) and having her familiarize herself with those a few days ago. Today we had her guns out as well as several .22lr handguns and rifles, a GP100 .357 mag with downloaded .38 Specials and a .380 Beretta. She liked shooting the .22 lr Single Six and the 10/22 the most, also shot the 22/45 semi-auto. The downloaded .38's and the .380 were too much for her and we did not have her try the .40 as the recoil is way too much for her at this point.
There are some issues she has that I would like some advice on. Most difficult is that she wears contact lenses. In her right eye she has a reading prescription and in the left eye she has a distance prescrip., she says that she is right eye dominant but when she sights the rifle she shows left eye dominance. With the Single Six she was doing pretty well nevertheless and hitting the targets as long as she didn't spend too much time trying to acquire (she shoots with both eyes open and can't seem to close one eye.)
She did OK with the scoped 10/22 but only after I placed a patch over her left eye.
My thoughts are to ask if she has some prescription glasses to wear rather than the contacts. If that doesn't do it all then the eye patch would also be used. I figure over time she will be able to transition to shooting with both eyes uncovered and open once she learns how to concentrate on the sight picture.
Her long-term goal is to have a gun for home defense. I think the .40S&W is too much gun for her, even with time and training I am not sure these guns will be ideal for this purpose. She did like the revolvers for their simplicity. I figure over time and with practice the .38 special in a revolver would be a good choice.
Maybe a 28 gauge shotgun would work, but I don't have one for her to try out. We do have a .410 shotty but that is not, in my opinion, a good choice for HD.
Anybody have any advice?
I started off by sending her the Safety Rules (thanks Kilogulf59 for posting those and Winds of Change for making it a sticky in the Training and Safety section) and having her familiarize herself with those a few days ago. Today we had her guns out as well as several .22lr handguns and rifles, a GP100 .357 mag with downloaded .38 Specials and a .380 Beretta. She liked shooting the .22 lr Single Six and the 10/22 the most, also shot the 22/45 semi-auto. The downloaded .38's and the .380 were too much for her and we did not have her try the .40 as the recoil is way too much for her at this point.
There are some issues she has that I would like some advice on. Most difficult is that she wears contact lenses. In her right eye she has a reading prescription and in the left eye she has a distance prescrip., she says that she is right eye dominant but when she sights the rifle she shows left eye dominance. With the Single Six she was doing pretty well nevertheless and hitting the targets as long as she didn't spend too much time trying to acquire (she shoots with both eyes open and can't seem to close one eye.)
She did OK with the scoped 10/22 but only after I placed a patch over her left eye.
My thoughts are to ask if she has some prescription glasses to wear rather than the contacts. If that doesn't do it all then the eye patch would also be used. I figure over time she will be able to transition to shooting with both eyes uncovered and open once she learns how to concentrate on the sight picture.
Her long-term goal is to have a gun for home defense. I think the .40S&W is too much gun for her, even with time and training I am not sure these guns will be ideal for this purpose. She did like the revolvers for their simplicity. I figure over time and with practice the .38 special in a revolver would be a good choice.
Maybe a 28 gauge shotgun would work, but I don't have one for her to try out. We do have a .410 shotty but that is not, in my opinion, a good choice for HD.
Anybody have any advice?