The Best Gun
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Would you walk up to a stranger on the street, ask them what the best flavor of ice cream is, and then eat only that flavor for years to come? No? I wish I had a dollar for every time someone has asked what the best gun is, what caliber is best, what they should carry ........ you get the idea. Even though practically nobody would accept the advice of a stranger on ice cream flavors, there seems to be a never ending stream of people willing to accept the advice of strangers on something that could someday decide whether they or one of their loved ones lives or dies. The uninitiated might look at this as just a matter of one choice being a simple personal preference and the other a decision based on finite attributes, but they'd be wrong. Choosing the right gun can be very much as personal as a flavor of ice cream.
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Never ask others what gun you should buy, because what's good for them may not be good for you at all. The opinions of others are good for quality, features and reliability, but they can't tell you anything about how well a gun fits or fires because no gun is exactly the same for different people. What works well for one person won't necessarily work well for the next. There's much more to gun compatibility than just the caliber and the feel of the grip. The exact same gun can feel completely different to two different people. Decide what basic attributes you're looking for, such as size, which will often be determined by your size because larger guns are generally more easily concealed on larger people. The type of clothing you wear is also a consideration there. Women typically wear tighter fitting clothes than men, so hiding a gun is much harder for them, especially when you consider that most women are smaller than most men. The size of the gun will also affect the number of rounds it will carry, and that will in turn affect your consideration for how many reloads you may want to carry. That extra ammo is now something else to conceal, but in a place where it's still readily accessible. Your personal habits also affect ammunition factors. People who travel to more 'dangerous' areas are more advised to carry a gun with higher ammo capacity, more reloads or both. Once you have an idea of the general type of gun you're looking for, start asking what the best attributes are for guns in that class. People will inevitably start recommending guns to you, and that's okay, but pay more attention to the features they mention, and the different attributes that people will mention with different guns. You'll not only start to get an idea of what's popular in that class, but you'll also start to understand what's important to your personal situation and what's not, and that's what's really important here. You'll eventually start to realize that your personal situation isn't just like everyone else's, so your choices won't necessarily have the same priorities. That's just the start of understanding why choosing a gun is a personal thing. The next is shooting them.
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You should always try to find the guns you're considering and shoot them for yourself if at all possible. The actions you took above should have given you two or three really good candidates. Sometimes you may just be looking for a few particular attributes and you're willing to try out whatever guns you can find that has them. That's fine too if it works well for you. For example, you may decide you only want to try out striker fired pistols because you like the feel of their shorter and lighter trigger pulls. Guns with double stack magazines carry more rounds and may fit better in your hand, but guns with single stack magazines conceal easier. The possibile variations go on and on. But always try to shoot the guns you're considering before buying. If you can't find the exact model, there may be some very close substitutes from the same manufacturer than can act as stand-ins. The folks on the online forums can usually advise you fairly well as to how comparable one model is to another. If it's a tie after shooting more than one gun, then ask others about things you may not have considered yet, such as their experience with malfunctions/repairs, long term quality, ease of cleaning, etc. I know it's not an easy process, but you want the gun that's right for you, not a gun that was right for someone else.
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But maybe I skipped a step. Before you start choosing a gun, maybe you wanted to know what the best caliber is for self defense. Well, I hear a 105mm howitzer makes a really big hole....... Seriously though, there is no shortage of folks in the 'bigger is better' club. That's basically because they're right, but they get lot's of argument because many people mistakenly assume that the simplistic statement of 'bigger is better' is the entirety of their argument, when it really isn't. Your goal in using deadly force to defend yourself is to stop the threat. Simply put, big holes stop threats better. But big holes don't matter if they're in the wrong place, if they never get fired, or if any other factor conspires to mitigate their effects. We know from real life use on the streets that caliber does very much make a difference in successful self defense scenarios. But the bigger is better crowd has always advised that acquiring a gun that you can handle and shoot well is more important than the caliber. A gun with all the stopping power in the world is useless to you if you can't handle it effectively. Even within the same caliber, members here are advised to try guns before they buy them to insure they can handle and shoot them well first. They don't advocate you get the largest caliber, period, without concern for anything else, as some might have you believe. They advocate you get the largest caliber you can handle well, carry well, shoot well and conceal well, because a gun you can't do those things with is pretty ineffective no matter what caliber it is. If you boil the equation down to the single factor of caliber, guess what? Larger calibers win. But the choice of a proper defensive firearm is influenced by many factors. All of those factors have to be weighed, and some even weighed against each other, before the most logical choice can be found. And some of those factors will necessarily be subjective, such as what feels better in your hand. I had a member here ask me once how a 380 fit in to the equation because he carried it sometimes when his clothing didn't allow concealing anything larger. This is what I told him:
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If that's the most gun that fits with your carry situation sometimes, and you can handle it effectively, then it fits. The main point about caliber is choose the largest caliber where you can find a gun that you can handle, carry and shoot effectively. If you can't find that in a larger caliber, try the next caliber down. But sometimes power isn't the deciding factor at all. Sometimes the carry situation will dictate a certain gun that is smaller than you'd normally want. But the point is that that gun is still better than no gun at all, so that gun fits. If you can find another gun with more power that works for you in that situation down the road, great. But if not, then that existing gun is still the way to go, even if it isn't as powerful as you'd like. That's because effective shooting trumps power every time, and effective shooting includes the ability to carry well. But if you have the ability to effectively carry something larger than a 380, then you should. That's true for any caliber.
Something else that's very often associated with caliber is recoil, but that isn't as simple as it sounds either. Maybe you've fired a rifle before that was very comfortable. Try firing it while holding it in one hand. What you may have perceived as little or no recoil before may be dramatically higher when holding it in just your hand. That's what's called 'felt' recoil. The actual force may not be different, but how you feel it is altered. You can experience the same thing with handguns due to many factors. Some handguns of small caliber can have higher felt recoil than handguns of much higher caliber. That's because other factors, mostly the design of the gun, also affect felt recoil. You're probably aware that heavier guns tend to 'kick' less and guns with longer barrels tend to have less recoil too, but other factors can factor into the equation in ways that many people don't realize. Even changing your grip can noticeably affect felt recoil sometimes. What felt recoil does will differ as well. Recoil can push straight back or it can flip the muzzle up. Realistically it's a combination of both to some degree, with the degree varying quite a bit. For instance, the Chiappa Rhino shoots a 357 Magnum round out of a two inch with almost no felt recoil affecting followup shots, but a Glock 19 9mm has more muzzle flip even though it's less powerful and has a longer barrel. At first glance, most people wouldn't assume that because they don't realize that recoil is more than just a matter of caliber. In the case of the Chiappa Rhino, the major reason for low felt recoil is because the axis of the barrel is almost directly in line with the axis of the shooter's arm, so the arm absorbs almost all of the recoil straight back instead of of much of it being absorbed upward by the shooter's wrist, which is what causes most guns to recoil upwards when you fire them. That's why my Sig P229 with a long barrel recoils more than my Glock G27 with a short barrel, because the axis of the Sig barrel is noticeably higher up above the axis of my arm.
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The 40 has a reputation for abrupt or 'snappy' recoil, as opposed to strong recoil. My 45s kick stronger than my 40s but they don't kick so snappy, so the 45s are easier to control, at least for me. I've had quite a few other people tell me the same thing after trying guns in both calibers. But that's a general observation. That's not so much a matter of discomfort, but for me it has a significant impact on getting the gun back down on target for followup shots. That's not good in the tactics arena, so I don't carry any of my 40s anymore. Again, get the gun that works best for you in the strongest caliber, but put the primary emphasis on the gun itself and how it works for you, and then make the caliber the highest you can while still satisfying that first primary goal. THAT'S the true argument of the 'bigger is better' club.
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Anyway, I'll emphasize again that you should try not to base your purchase decision solely on the advice of others. Always, always, always try to fire a gun before you buy it. If you can't shoot the actual gun, try shooting a comparable one from the same manufacturer. Sometimes those options aren't available to a purchaser. They don't have the option to try before they buy. In those cases they have to trust the advice of others and hope it works out well for them, and fortunately it most often does. But if you have the opportunity to shoot possible gun candidates before buying them, you should never pass that up.
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EDIT: (3/12/14) I corrected some spelling and improved the wording somewhat.
