First Gun

...that I still have.

You know, the first gun I bought and kept was the revolver. But why didn't I luck out and get a proper .45? It WAS the first pistol I learned to shoot with, thanks to the USNavy. I could have just gotten one and have been done with it. You can do worse than to have one gun, total, and have that be a .45. It's even better than a .357 revolver, but the revolver isn't shabby, by any stretch.

2 reasons I did what I did:

I wanted a "3 o'clock in the morning gun". A gun I can grab, half asleep after being woken by and intruder breaking a window, and I don't have to THINK about how the gun functions for it to work. Grab, pull trigger, bullets go out. A double action revolver is nothing if not this kind of weapon. Instinctive. It was loaded when you went to bed, there is nothing else to consider. No safety. No slide to rack. It just goes. Sure, with training, a .45 can be just as second nature, but the limited training the Navy provides is not enough to reinforce this. For instance, we didn't learn how to field strip it. Or even how to load a magazine.

AND, the other reason I didn't get the .45, when I went pistol shopping in 90's, the guy in the gun store said, "a .45 like the military used to shoot 10 - 15 years ago before switching to a Beretta? You can't get one of those old fashioned things anymore. Oh you CAN, but it's cost you thousands and it won't work very well."

Uh huh. Were that the internet was available to me then. Well I went to ANOTHER gun store and bought the revolver, but the first guy did influence my decision making process.

It's just as well. Now I know more about what I want.

Ambidextrous safety. A hammer that won't pinch the web between thumb and first finger. Tritium sights. Perhaps NO full length guide rod, but either way is probably fine. 'Parkerized' finish (not stainless this time). And not too expensive, not too cheap. Springfield Armory makes such a gun. If money was no object I might lean Kimber, STI, or Wilson. Even Les Baer. But Springfield is good, too.