Sort of Almost New Shooter Report

The Lovely Bride works in an office staffed mostly with elderly ladies who just work so they will have something to do.   One of them lives alone,  "out in the country" and has decided that she needs a gun for protection.   The lady has arthritis so bad she can't completely close her hands so finding a gun that's a good fit isn't as easy as you might think.

TLB brought a few to work one day a couple of months ago and the two of them sat in her car so she could show the lady the differences between automatics and revolvers.  Specifically TLB wanted to show her how each worked so she could see if she even had the strength to work an auomatic.  She couldn't so she decided that she needed a revolver.

Earlier this week I went to get my ears lowered and saw this at the gun shop next door.

Its a Charter in .32 Magnum and its pink.   I don't know why women like pink guns but a lot of them really do.   If Smith and Wesson would come out with a Dooney and Bourke line of guns in pastel colors they'd run everybody else out of business.  

Anyway, a .32 Magnum would be easy to shoot and the big grip would be easy for the lady to hold so I sent the picture to TLB and she took the lady to see it the next day.

I  had told the shopkeeper that I was going to send them by so he already knew the background.   He opened the cylinder and showed her it was empty, closed it and handed it to her.  

She went completely nuts dry-firing it.

Clickity-Clickity-Click-Click Click as she's waving it all over the place.

"Oh, this is nice. I can shoot this one"

TLB told her to stop dry-firing it and to stop waving around. 

"Why?"

"Because you might damage the gun and you are scaring the other customers."

"I didn't know that.  Besides, there's no other customers in here."

"I told you it was bad when you dry fired my Smith & Wesson in the car."

"Well, yes but I thought it would only hurt your gun because it has that Scandinavian stuff in it."

"Its Scandium and that's not why.   Besides, you have to treat every gun as if its loaded all the time.  If it had been loaded, you would have killed somebody."

"But he showed me it wasn't loaded and there's nobody else in here."

A big redneck dude darted out from behind a rack of rifles and scurried out the door.

"What if he was mistaken?"

The shopkeeper took the Charter back and handed her an Airweight  S & W.

Clickity-Clickity-Clickity...   "Oooooh I like this one too."

"STOP DOING THAT"

"Why?   Will it hurt this one too?

Click.

"Maybe.   And if it does you're going to have buy it and you'll be buying a broken gun and you'll still have to buy one that works."

"Oh. OK."

So she asks about the difference in the calibers.   The shopkeeper shows her a .38 LRN, a .32 Magnum  JHP and a .32 S&W Long LRN and explained that there's a variety of different bullets for the 38 and that the .32 can shoot three different kinds of ammo in addition to the ammo having different kinds of bullets.


"The 38 is so much bigger.   Can I put a bullet in it?"

"Um - No" said the shopkeeper.

"Why not?  I just want to see how easy it is to load."

"We're not allowed"

He owns the store so he should know.

Then she asked about a "9mm Glock" because that's what her son wants her to get.  The Shopkeeper handed her a Model 19.  She couldn't get a grip on it and she couldn't pull the slide back.  Just like she couldn't work an automatic in the car a few weeks before.

So now she's sure she definitely wants a revolver but she still wants to talk to her son first just in case.  In case of something.  She doesn't know what.

Its frustrating that the son keeps trying to steer her toward a gun that he likes even though she can't operate it but maybe he will get her to take a safety class.  

I sure won't go shooting with her if she doesn't.