Ok, NOW it is an old saw, "Fer GOSH sakes, don't try to sell a snubbie to every woman that walks in the gunstore!"
Conventional wisdom has caught up to the fact that a small double action revolvers is NOBODY's good first gun. But for a long time it was the gun you pushed. For some reason.
Hell Smith and Wesson came out with a line of snubbies called "Ladysmiths".
Pink grips invariable came in J-Frame size...
Now, like I said, things are shifting the other way. And clueless gun counter slinger in even the remotest FFL are getting the hint. After getting hit by the clue-by-four.
But why?
WHY was the snubbie THE model to pawn off on women?
Well, it was small enough to go in a purse. And small enough to fit smaller hand. And simple for those uninitiated to the world of firearms. A revolver is as easy to figure out as a fork.
But... small. That's the key word. Look at Hollywood. In the 1930s the Hollywood mavens had SMALL guns. The cops had normal .38 revolvers, some actors carried M1911s, and women... they carried teeny tiny automatics. .25 and .32 caliber. Fine for a tiny purse. But that isn't really enough gun, right? And purses got bigger. Well, the next size up? .38 snubbie!
Just a theory...
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2 comments:
I teach firearms. (NRA instructor).
Many women do not have the grip strength to work a slide. Not just old or middle aged women, even young ones can't grip the slide tightly enough to pull the slide back, or don't have the arm strength to pull the slide back (even teaching the push and pull)
I believe that this is part of the reason. You can't teach failure drills or even loading/unloading a firearm to someone who can't work it properly.
There may be other reasons, but I think this is part of it.
B's experience certainly agrees with mine. A lot of women can't rack the slide of most automatics. A lot of them don't like the snappy recoil of the tiny .380s that have slides that they can rack. They tend to gravitate to the small 38s because they can load, and reload, the gun by themselves. Add in the elderly and the arthritic and its the same trouble on steroids. The Glock 43 is the first 9mm that we've found that my wife can operate easily. I think that a large part of the reason the small 38s are so popular with women is just that there weren't many small 9mms that most women could operate and that were comfortable to shoot until recently. She could load and fire a SCCY 9mm but it was sprung so tightly and the grip so un-ergonomic she didn't like shooting it. She can't sell it because all of her friends that try it have the same issues with it. The wife does find that she can rack the slide on Ruger's new small 9mm but she already has the G43 so I can't tell you whether she'd like to shoot the Ruger. (We might have found out if the local shop hadn't sold the one they had in a cranberry color).
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