After seeing an excerpt from a gun column by Massad Ayoob at Backwoods Home Magazine courtesy of Bill St. Clair, I clicked through to read the whole thing. I've met Ayoob before, and read a fair amount of his extant work (including at least one book), and had consistently been impressed. However, this time he stumbled so badly out of the gate that I didn't make it through all of his answer to the first question. Here's the offending bit, which is all the more disappointing because it started out promisingly:

Male or female? It's less about gender than about hand size and shooting experience. A home defense gun is a "pool weapon," like the shotgun in a police patrol car that's on the road for three shifts a day: multiple individuals may be resorting to the same weapon. This means that the gun's size and power have to be tailored to the smallest, least physically capable shooter who is authorized to use it. A large man can easily shoot his wife's short-stocked 20-gauge shotgun or her slim-gripped SIG P239 9mm, but she will be awkward, clumsy, and poorly prepared to defend herself with his long-stocked 12 gauge, or his fat-handled .50 caliber Desert Eagle, which also requires a long finger to properly reach the trigger.

The truth of the matter is she might be unable to handle either of those weapons. "She" -- this mythical female -- won't know unless she tries them. I wonder how many women might read that bit o' excrement from Ayoob and not even try any larger gun, because she "will be" awkward and poorly prepared to defend herself.

The first firearm I ever shot was a "long-stocked 12 gauge". Pump, too -- none of that fancy-pants semiauto stuff. Not having Ayoob's, er, wisdom to guide me at the time, I was a natural with it, and I absolutely loved it. Later, when I got comfortable -- and a bit careless -- with the gun, I learned that I could abuse my shoulder quite soundly with it; but even that did not render me awkward or clumsy.

Moving on to handguns, as Ayoob himself subtly suggests, there's more to the choice of a suitable one than a "slim" or "fat" grip. It's how the weapon fits and feels in your hands, whether your finger can comfortably reach the trigger and smoothly pull it, and whether your arms can handle the recoil sufficiently to recover the target quickly. Much of that has very little to do with caliber size -- contrary to Ayoob's inference otherwise. I once shot a training course with a Glock 27 -- the mini version in .40 -- and found the damn thing just too barky for me. The larger 22 and 23 feel better in my hand, and perform splendidly for me. [Please take note of that, if you're reading this and considering buying a handgun: Same caliber, same manufacturer, but very different feel and performance. The lesson here is two-fold: never take anybody else's word as gospel on what will or won't work for you; and before you settle on a gun, try everything you can get your hands on in the largest caliber you can safely handle!] One of the most wonderful handguns I've ever shot is easily the Grizzly Win Mag, although I'm not generally a fan of the 1911 frame. It's a honkin' big handgun, but I don't recall shooting better with any other pistol. I've shot a Desert Eagle, too, but the experience didn't really stand out in my mind.

Just to be clear here: I'm not some big, strong Amazon wench, nor do I have huge hands -- I do have rather longish fingers, though. Nor am I petite. My hands are quite a bit smaller than my Sweetie's, but my fingers are just about as long as his, if memory serves. But that again goes to my point: men and women alike have tremendous variation in hand/wrist setup -- palms can be meaty or dainty, as can fingers. Either can be squat, average, or long. Some people have a great deal of wrist/forearm strength, where others don't. There's no firearm equivalent of Match.com, where one gives one's relevant physical data and the computer spits back a list of good guns for the individual.

I imagine that some folks who've been shooting with me will be protesting that I'm not providing sufficient information on my shooting experiences. Okay, I'll confess: It's been alleged that I'm a recoil junkie. Yeah, I have shot some impressively big-bore stuff that I've not mentioned above; and yeah, I've enjoyed it. Recoil junkie? Maybe ... ["Wouldn't you like to find out?" she asks with a sly grin] But I've also shot smaller guns that worked well for me, too. I've done a little shooting with smaller calibers, but mostly haven't seriously bothered with any ammunition that I don't think is sufficiently powerful to protect me.

And the point isn't what I like; it's what works for the person choosing and using the gun. It was hugely disappointing to see Ayoob end up defaulting to the "only big people can handle big guns" nonsense; it was even worse to have the "small calibers are better for the girls" nonsense slyly shoved in there too. I realize that Ayoob may not have done the latter intentionally -- but that doesn't let him off the hook. If he's to be taken seriously as an expert, he needs to be extra-careful to avoid sloppy shit like that.