New Pistol for a New Shooter Part 3

One thing I noticed while standing at a retail counter showing and selling firearms was that people are often drawn to the very small pistols. This has come up in many conversations as well, people talk about derringers and ‘gamblers guns’, ‘belly guns’, ‘pocket pistols’ and so on. I understand the attraction to the small pistols myself but I try to steer new shooters away from firearms like these. In short my reason is that the smaller the pistol the harder it is to shoot. I think most new shooters and perhaps experienced shooters will find small pistols very frustrating and far from ideal for self defense. This diminutive class of weapon does have the advantage of being easier to conceal, lighter weight to carry and are often less expensive but again there isn’t much point in having a gun if you can’t hit your target and hitting a target with a really small pistol can be very difficult. I suppose if you thought you were never going to shoot at something more than five feet away it might work, but I would not want to stake my life on that sort of limitation. I also don’t think it would be much fun recreationally to try hitting targets that close nor would it be an effective way to become a good shooter.

You will notice in the picture above that the sights are so small you can't even see them in this profile shot.

You may notice that small pistols often have very small sights on them. I always say I can shoot any pistol as long as is reliable and it has decent sights, so I put a lot of weight on the sights when it comes to evaluating a pistol. The grip or handle of the small pistols is also rather small and this adds to the challenge of being proficient. Another feature of small handguns that is less obvious at the onset is that they often have very heavy trigger pulls. Since very small firearms are often carried in a pocket rather than a holster they often come with a trigger that is hard to accidentally pull, the easiest way to safeguard against pulling a trigger is to simply make it very hard to pull back. By the way I don’t recommend that anyone carry a pistol in their pocket, I don’t recommend they carry it in anything but a well fitted holster, it is just not safe no matter how experienced you are.

Often times the less expensive to manufacture firearms are not quite as durable.


Not so much now but in past years there were a lot of inexpensive ultra compact pistols on the market. I suppose if that was all you could afford it is better than nothing but I would not recommend them. For one they were not all that reliable and I would not expect them to last very long, if you can’t practice with them then there is a good chance they won't do you much good if you really needed. You are also not going to have much fun at the range target practicing if the weapon is constantly jamming or just plain hard to shoot.

One interesting tidbit that may also encourage you to buy a regular size pistol is this, most people who draw or brandish a pistol in self defense do have to actually fire the weapon to scare off or discourage their assailant. So if you have a really small pistol that someone may not even see or recognize, you may have lost your chance to successfully defend yourself without a fire fight and let us not forget that you are just less likely to hit your target with a small pistol.

Well I hope to have plenty of photos and new links in my post soon.