What is your budget and how many rounds per year do you plan on shooting? I hand load all of my 9mm and while it is cheaper than buying new rounds, it still costs 17 to 20 cents per round for the consumables...and that is using the cheapest projectiles and primers I can get. 90% of my handgun shooting is with my 22's as they are significantly cheaper and I do not have to reload 300-400 rounds every time I get home from the range.
Good beginner handgun?
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What is your budget and how many rounds per year do you plan on shooting? I hand load all of my 9mm and while it is cheaper than buying new rounds, it still costs 17 to 20 cents per round for the consumables...and that is using the cheapest projectiles and primers I can get. 90% of my handgun shooting is with my 22's as they are significantly cheaper and I do not have to reload 300-400 rounds every time I get home from the range.
Coming from a precision rifle to a Glock will be…. ‘Interesting’. Lol!
If you’re set on 9mm, buy something popular. Easy resale if you change your mind down the road. I always suggest to start with a .22 because it’s easy to develop a flinch with a 9mm as your first gun. I see it all the time. As mentioned by others, look at ammo cost as part of the equation. I shoot about 12,000 rounds of 9mm each year. Not sure what you’ll shoot, but if you shoot even a decent fraction of what I shoot, you’ll see that 9mm ammo $ will very quickly pass the price of the gun. Don’t cut corners and buy brand X to save $150 on a gun. It isn’t worth it. Look for good parts availability, holsters, etc.
You could do worse then a glock 19, and when you learn to shoot it well most other modern pistols will be a breeze to shoot well.
The new model Walther PDP that's coming to market soon looks very nice to me.
A 9mm and a .22lr is a good combo, unfortunately it's looking like all ammo types and reloading components are not only going up in price but are getting harder to find in some cases.
Start buying ammo now if you can!
The new model Walther PDP that's coming to market soon looks very nice to me.
A 9mm and a .22lr is a good combo, unfortunately it's looking like all ammo types and reloading components are not only going up in price but are getting harder to find in some cases.
Start buying ammo now if you can!
Yah two totally different beasts eh? I may consider the 22 but I’m leaning towards 9mm. I’m sure rifles and handguns are completly different but as far as rifles go I do not have a flinch, good trigger disapline is something I practice very often. As far as how much I’ll shoot im going to shoot as much as possible. And load as much ammo as I can
Same. When I take both my 9mm and my 22lr to the range, the 22lr inevitably gets more rounds through it because of the cost.
If you can make it to a club shoot or indoor range with rentals, that would be best. Handguns all feel very differently between models (much more so than long guns), and what works for one person's skeleton and preferences might not work for yours. Anything else is just speculation.
I honestly thought I didn't like pistol shooting for years until I discovered that I just didn't like shooting the one pistol that I owned.
If you can't or don't want to do the above, I would seriously consider just buying the next three or four "good deals" that appear on the EE and try them all out side by side. It's less costly than most people think. If you're not too picky and if you snap up the best deals quickly, you might even make a bit of money reselling the ones you decide against. Even if it does cost you a bit, you could look at it as a rental fee and become much more informed about the feel and features that you want.
There are dozens of great pistols available in Canada right now, we're spoiled for choice. Hell, you could even do the above by being smart about shopping online gun shop sales - Some EE prices can be unrealistic.
Without any question , your 1st. HG. should be a .22 LR.
The Ruger semi-auto , an old Highstandard Target Version ( adj. sights) semi-auto. , a S & W model 17
revolver which is the K frame with target sights , trigger & grips.
A quality .22 LR gun lets you learn what you need to within a low budget & without dealing
with niose & recoil.
The Ruger semi-auto , an old Highstandard Target Version ( adj. sights) semi-auto. , a S & W model 17
revolver which is the K frame with target sights , trigger & grips.
A quality .22 LR gun lets you learn what you need to within a low budget & without dealing
with niose & recoil.
It's nice trying a bunch of pistols as Alpining suggests, but unless you have extra small or extra big hands it's probably not that much of a deal breaker for the new guns and even then with the different backstraps there is some tuning available out of the box. Some pistols have a reputation for fitting certain hand sizes better and some like the PDP,VP9 have the reputation of feeling great with incredible triggers as well. I've never tried any Girsan's but the ergornomics looks good, I believe you can use CZ magazines as well so it should be easier and a bit cheaper to get magazines, for $600 at Marstar it looks like a lot of gun and even comes with a red dot, not that you likely need it. The ability for the modern guns to take red dot's or not is a bonus for resale and when or if the time comes helps with near nearsightedness.
Find and take a course in handgun use. One of the 'combat' or 'defensive' type courses. I do agree with others that certain guns that 'fit you' will give you optimal performance, but if you have a good grasp of fundamentals, you will do well even with a gun that doesn't fit you. Yes your groups might be a bit bigger, or you might be a bit slower but you will be fine. Best part is fundamentals are transferable to any platform and you can then take your time figuring out which is best for you by renting or trying other platforms before buying. Every so often I shoot a pistol that is not 'perfect' for me just to make myself reinforce fundamentals and not rely on muscle memory.
Personally I wouldn't waste my time on DA triggers, they are really for people who carry etc. When I wanted to "refine" my skills and get rid of some "bad" habits, I used the Mantis system. Excellent immediate feedback and I was able to correct my nasty "jerking the trigger" issue.
This advice should be cast in bronze.
Even if you reload, the initial price difference between gun A and gun B will become a rounding error very soon, compared to the running costs.
CZ Shadow is a decent option. There are tons of second hand Shadow 1 on EE, and sometimes you can find a deal on Shadow 2. Both are easy to dial in for most hands, tons of parts, holsters, etc., and good resale value should you decide to switch to something else. Add Kadet .22LR conversion kit if desired.
Glocks are reliable (usually), but their stock triggers are designed to be carried safely in the first place. For a novice pistolero, a trigger like that could make it harder to identify and pinpoint basic errors.
Re: dedicated .22LR - Ruger Mark 4 is a good option, I think. But it costs about the same or more than a CZ Kadet kit, and the latter allows you to use the same lower as the main 9 mm rig. Mark 3 and previous generations are ok, but taking them apart for cleaning gets old very quickly.
I own or have owned all of the above, and have shot a few others. M&P 9mm striker - gross trigger, Norinco NP22 (Sig P226) - not bad for the price, but needs Sig guts. Browning Buckmark .22 - decent, don’t know how involved the cleaning is. 1911 variants - black hole constructed of Lego, step in and you will never see light again
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Thanks to all of you for all of the good advice I have a lot to think about now. Definitely going to look through the buy and sell and see what kind of deals there are. Im pretty set now on just going with 9mm. I know that 22 is cheaper but if I run into issues going through so much ammo I’m going broke. I’ll get a 22. If I go new I’ve kind of narrowed it down to the glock 19, s&w m&p 2.0, sig p320 and the Walther pdp. Thanks
