TGO David

I gather he was emphasizing the apartment complex setting because of the close proximity of one person's living space to the next person's living space. You really don't want to be shooting something that would over-penetrate in a setting like that. .357 Magnum or .357 SIG would be really bad choices. A 9mm may not be such a bad idea if you're shooting light loads with high expansion characteristics. You want the projectile to stop inside the bad guy anyway, but you definitely want it to shed a ton of velocity when it hits something like drywall or other construction materials. I'm still saying she would probably be very well served with a .38 caliber revolver of some sort. Because she mentioned wanting to carry it in her pocket while walking the dog, a J-Frame with enclosed hammer makes a lot of sense to me. A 9mm would be another option but a lot of female shooters have difficulty manipulating the slide on automatics because of having weaker wrists / forearms than their male counterparts. Also many female shooters find it difficult to load ammunition into magazines. My wife had problems with both of these things with her Smith & Wesson M&P 9C. In retrospect, she probably should have gotten a small revolver instead.

Welcome!

But I'll take one of these too...

" You forgot to post pictures of your new weapon, jackhole!!! "

THAT just happened.

Pshhh... you were a cop, so I'm not even going to talk about how well some of the boys in blue shoot. Oh, ok. I lied. Have you seen how badly some of those guys shoot?!?

Well, that's what *I* carry... Remember kids, a 9mm is just a .45 set on "Stun" I kid, I kid.

You don't eat pulled pork BBQ?

You could buy that one you know.

Play nice. With proper instruction and a little self-confidence, Sarah could easily carry and learn to enjoy shooting a 1911. As DaveTN pointed out, the only negligence here was on the part of the gunshop dweebus. When I taught my 13 year old son to shoot the 1911, I taught him in baby steps: 1st step - Dry fire 2nd step - Live fire, one round in the chamber, safety on. 3rd step - Live fire, one in the chamber, one in the mag, safety on. 4th step - Live fire, one in the chamber, two in the mag, safety on. 5th step - Live fire, chamber empty, one in the mag, safety on. 6th step - Live fire, chamber empty, two in the mag, safety on. ... progressively more ammo in the mag, empty chamber, safety on. This helped him acclimate to the function of the 1911 design and gave him confidence before exposing him to additional motor-functions like racking the slide to chamber a round. He did very well and never put an AD down range. It's all about baby steps. You don't take a new shooter and turn them loose and expect good things to happen.

The question is... did Sasquatch survive this encounter or did your friend Gil manage to take him out?

I would strongly encourage you to rent or borrow and shoot a .38 Special revolver of some sort at this point. I would also strongly encourage you to not give much consideration to the idea of carrying a .22, .25, .32 or even .380 for self defense. Those calibers just are not sufficient for the job. A .38 Special cartridge is essentially the same as a 9mm Parabellum. The 9mm is just made to be fed through an automatic handgun. You will find that while those two cartridges have a little "pop" to them, the recoil is much lighter than you will encounter with the other calibers that have been suggested to you thus far. You do not need a .40 SW or a .357 Magnum no matter what anyone else says. Not at this point at least.

Santa Fett is bringing a sack full of pain and suffering.

It should be. I really haven't got much planned on Saturday except to help TGO'er "Easily Obsessed" put that Kimber magwell on his 1911. That won't take but a few minutes. Were you thinking morning or afternoon? Oh and to the East TN crowd who keeps jeering at us... don't make us come over there!

Notwithstanding is the one word that makes me very nervous in that verbiage. I'm not so sure I'd want to be the first person to test the waters just to see what it means either.

And buy the SIG 229 .357 that my brother had me drop off there last weekend.

Try to avoid having an Accidental Discharge while you chamber the round.

Give me a shout if/when you decide to go to On Target this weekend. I need to funnel some rounds through Mr. Wilson.

I just tried, and honestly... I can't think of a worse possible scenario than that.

I like lamp.

It is my understanding that there used to be a "safe harbor" provision in Tennessee gun law that basically kept you from being subject to criminal charges if you employed justified deadly force with your handgun in a location where that handgun should not have been carried to begin with. Example: You're eating at Logan's Roadhouse and someone comes in and starts shooting the place up. You shouldn't have your own handgun with you since they serve alcohol for on-site consumption, but you smuggled it in anyway. You use your handgun to take down the killer, saving not only your own life but the lives of many others. The law used to be such that you would not be charged with the misdemeanor offense of carrying where it was prohibited. BUT... It was the opinion of John Harris, esq. that the recent amendment to the Tennessee Code Annotated that more or less granted us the "must not retreat" Castle Doctrine sort of provision that we no longer have that assurance. The new TCA statutes assert that you can only employ deadly force so long as you are not in the commission of a crime! Since carrying where prohibited is a crime, would you still be granted safe harbor for defending yourself? Or would the Court bury you beneath the jailhouse because you were illegally carrying at that moment? See, this is why TCA needs a serious overhaul in regard to gun laws.

I thought you were already over here. Why weren't you?

You are essentially asking people to incriminate themselves, which isn't a good idea. I carry anywhere that I am legally allowed to do so.

Unfortunately, no... not many use JMB's 1911 trigger design. I wish more did. Pressing straight back into the sear release rather than having a trigger that pivots at a point above the finger is one of the things that makes the 1911 kick so much ass. There aren't many people who will argue that the 1911 has one of the best triggers ever.

Hopefully she has a sense of humor about this, but given that she's had some freak perv dude looking in her window at night, let's get this back onto more appropriate conversation.