Ladies Pistol Project 3

[44 AMP]

It totally lines up with my own (somewhat limited) experience teaching my wife and her friends to shoot. They ALL hate revolvers.

If they all hate revolvers, then I'd say you didn't teach them properly.
No dig against you, but if they wind up hating revolvers, something wasn't done right. Prefer something other than a revolver, sure. Hate? no, hate means something was missed, or incorrectly presented.


I assume you're not one of the morons who gives a beginning shooter a .44 Mag as their first time with a revolver...are you??

I am old school in many ways, I think people should be taught to shoot, THEN move on to defensive shooting (and the guns best suited for that).

the survey was mildly interesting but their rankings don't mean squat to me. Might be of some value if you are looking to sell pistols to women. I'm not.

I too cringe when someone recommend a snub nose revolver (or a pocket size anything) to a beginner. Those guns are the most difficult of all guns to shoot well, and some are the most difficult to operate at all, for certain people.

Mom was a small woman, 4' 10 (and a half, damnit!!) wore size 3.5 ring (her High School Class ring would pass through my 8.5 class ring without touching), and she never weighed 110lbs in her life.

Dad got her a .25 auto. She couldn't rack the slide. She could manage to rack a 1911A1, if she cocked the hammer, first. She could do tolerably well with his S&W Model 28 (it had the original "magna" grips, the small ones), shooting SA. She never bothered with DA.

On the other hand, with HER pistol, she was deadly accurate, fast if she felt like it, and borderline amazing at her ability to hit small things and moving things, to the point neighbors and friends nicknamed her "Annie Oakley".

Her pistol was a Ruger Super Bearcat.

To contrast this, my wife's cousin came to visit, the 12yr old I had met a decade earlier had become an absolutely stunning 6' blonde to rival any model or actress you've ever seen. She showed up wearing cowboy boots, jeans that seem painted on, a very..snug shirt and a jean jacket. She asked in I had any 9mm ammo I could spare, she wanted to practice a bit while out in the country. She then produced a small 9mm seemingly out of thin air. And she shot it well, too. This was a lady who knew what she was about, and managed perfect CCW. To this day, I don't know where she wore that gun, and I did look! (carefully, )

I mention these two, as a couple of illustrations of the wide range of possible differences. I don't teach women to shoot, I don't teach men to shoot, I teach people to shoot and every one of them is different in some way.

If you are considering a pistol for a woman, don't go by anyone's "ranking" as to what is best, go with what she wants and feels best for her. If that happens to match somebody's study, fine. If it doesn't, also fine, and perhaps even better!

 

[JohnKSa]

No dig against you, but if they wind up hating revolvers, something wasn't done right. Prefer something other than a revolver, sure. Hate? no, hate means something was missed, or incorrectly presented.

Or it means that the gun couldn't be operated properly or caused the user pain.

My wife hates centerfire revolvers after shooting a number of them based on recommendations from well-meaning gun clerks. To this day, she refuses to shoot them at all because the recoil was so painful and because she can't operate the DA triggers properly.

On the other hand, after performing the same kinds of testing with semi-autos, under the same kinds of circumstances, she has chosen a number of centerfire semi-autos that she loves, and even competes with when her health allows.

And no, she's never fired any magnum revolvers (at least not with magnum ammo)--only the typical revolvers that we see commonly recommended for self-defense and carry.

If you are considering a pistol for a woman, don't go by anyone's "ranking" as to what is best, go with what she wants and feels best for her.

That is exactly what the LPPs are all about. Shooters trying guns and seeing what works best and feels best for them.

Obviously, even if you look at the test results, not everyone agreed, but for a gun to score near the top or near the bottom of the rankings, there had to be some general level of agreement amongst a number of the shooters.

Does that mean that the results will be directly applicable to any single specific female shooter looking for a self-defense gun? Possibly, but not likely. But there is some useful information in there. If, as was the case with the P238, a gun consistently ranked very high on the list, that provides a useful place to start for a female shooter looking for a self-defense pistol.

Similarly, guns that consistently ranked near the bottom might not be the best starting point--especially for a person who is more interested in the goal than in the journey.

It is certainly true that a female shooter shouldn't buy a gun on the basis of nothing more than reading the LPP results (or gun store clerk recommendations, or LEO recommendations, or internet forum recommendations, or recommendations from friends who own guns, or recommendations from spouses or other family members)--there are a number of reasons why that could be a bad decision. But that doesn't mean that the results of the tests, or recommendations from various sources should be ignored or viewed as useless. Being able to narrow the focus a little bit at the beginning of a search can really save a lot of time, money and frustration.

 

[Cosmodragoon]

... Incidentally, many female shooters I know seem to really like my Walther P99. I think the light trigger pull has something to do with it.

This has been my experience as well. We occasionally get together with a few families at a friend's farm. Everyone brings a few guns and there is usually a Walther P99 in rotation. The wives and daughters all seem to like it and do well with it.

It isn't just that the trigger is relatively light. It's smooth. Treating it as DA/SA, I've described the double action as drawing a bow straight back. It has a unique and intuitive feel. The gun itself is ergonomic and relatively compact for a full-size. Despite working well in my larger hands, it fits smaller hands well too.

 

[dyl]

What an interesting project. There are some missed opportunities though. I would have liked to see the scores categorized by experience with that type of handgun - something like: less than 10 range trips shooting a revolver, more than 10 range trips shooting a revolver. Or a category of pistol - sub-compact, compact, Full size.

This is why: Who here still carries / uses their first purchased pistol as their primary? As we learn more, we learn what we like and matters to us. And our needs change. What's the perception of a full size pistol versus a sub compact to a beginner shooter? How about to an expert? And if you shot semi-autos most of your life and this is your third time shooting a revolver, how are you going to rate it? Everything would feel funky.

The downside to the wide diversity of the participants without collecting specifics is a limit to applicability. We may be seeing the result of a preference for what the women were familiar with already just as much as what they experienced during the test.

 

[JohnKSa]

The second LPP (see the link in my earlier post) did report by experience level. I don't know why they didn't do that in LPP3.

 

[GE-Minigun]

The thing with small revolvers is it takes practice and lots of it to get even remotely good with them and 99.8% of all students I’ve had with revolvers NEVER practice more than a couple times a year. They come back looking for some help and it’s like starting all over again. Granted the ones with pistols don’t practice any more than the others, just the “relearning” curve isn’t as steep.

 

[stinkeypete]

The Ladies project was really good in my opinion because it got new shooter to the range and more comfortable with our sport.

The project wasn't scientific for lots of reasons. First of all, no hypothesis was proposed to verify or refute. That is, they could have said "We think women prefer .380 over 9mm" then set up a study to see if that was true or false. Asking questions without a goal is fun and informative, but not scientific.

Here are some things to think about when talking about how pistols scored on the project:

Look at the 22 questions used to score the pistols
https//www.americanrifleman.org/articles/2017/9/8/results-american-rifleman-ladies-pistol-project-ii-concealed-carry-pistols/

Some of the 20 questions are
"I can manipulate the slide stop lever and lock the action open"
"The slide stop lever is easy to operate"
"The external safety is easy to manipulate"

How would you answer these for a revolver? That's 15% of the test's score right there, unless the people doing the tabulation gave the revolvers a pure "yes" because it can't be answered for a revolver.

Looking at the questions you'll see that light, easy to operate guns with small grips and low recoil are going to score very well. There was no question like "I feel this gun has a lot of power" but there was a question about shooting accurately.

They did not have a question "I did not have any malfunctions with this gun."

In my opinion, the M&P .380 is a very desirable range gun for people that do not have big big hands. It looks like fun!

The pistols were chosen based on something one might chose for concealed carry, but tested based on ease of use at the range, fitting small hands, accuracy, weight and ease of use.

Women have the "purse carry" option, so the larger size of the "winning" pistols isn't a factor.

If one decides that .22 caliber is an option for concealed carry, I think that something like the Walther P22 could have won, based on the questions asked.

All of that is not to say that I do not want a .380 EZ for myself as a little sporting gun.

 

[JohnKSa]

The Ladies project was really good in my opinion because it got new shooter to the range and more comfortable with our sport.

The shooters had a range of experience. Some were new, but others were experienced shooters.

The project wasn't scientific for lots of reasons.

Right. The article on the first LPP states that explicitly:

"It is important to understand what the Ladies Pistol Project was and what it was not. First and foremost, it was not a scientific study. "​

Its intent was stated in the third article, by one of the two persons running the test: "This project is meant to give you a starting point."

It provides opinion based information from a number of shooters in a particular demographic that may be useful to other shooters who fit that same demographic.