Im 15 years old, i could get my dad to buy me a pistol. For home protection and general plinking. I was think a 9mm or .40cal. A berreta 92 or a glock model 18 was on my mind as i have shot a .22 revolver and i want a semi-auto. with a high magazine capacity of about 15.

Howdy Critter,
I was in your boat a decade ago, and I really really wanted my dad to buy be me a used nickel beretta .380, i even came with two 13 round mags!. Luckily he didn't and I came home with a ruger Mark I 6" pistol. I still have it and it's my favorite pistol. I shoot it all day, and it hardly costs me what a box of 9mm shells runs.

Now of course, a .22 just doesn't go BANG! Thats why you need to go buy a .357 revolver, no matter how used it is, it will be sure to outshoot you for a few years. Stuff it with .38 specials to begin with, and then grab the magnums for some real fun. By the way, it's cheap, and can reach out and touch things a lot farther than an autoloader.

Polymer-people-poppers just don't hold a candle to a wheelgun IMHO

Oh, and if you have to have a Glock 18, I would go to Cabelas, and check out their airsoft version, it's less than $200 and you can shoot it inside, just not when parents are around...

79

Well i guess if your not willing to go to a 22 i would go with the 9mm it is a nice easy fairly cheap round you can pick up old taurus 92's cheap and are fine quality but if money is not a problem go with the 45acp once bittin by the 45 bug you will love it.That's my 2 cents and it's good seeing our younger adults getting to appreciate shooting

Thinking about this a little more and reading the post the fellow put up about a .357 revolver - that's some pretty sound advice too, even if it deviates from your wanting a semi-auto.

A good revolver is hard to beat, and a 38/357 is very versatile and fun to shoot, and a much better general multi-purpose handgun for plinking, defense and hunting.

Plus, in a pinch - I have to go back to a statement I read in an article years ago comparing wheelguns to semi-autos.

If you pull the trigger and the gun doesn't fire:

Semi-auto: Check for jam or stovepiping, and if jammed, clear the jam, pull back the slide, in some cases eject the magazine, re-set the magazine if needed, reload the gun, and pull the trigger again.

Revolver: Pull the trigger again.

i dont know anything about a shotgun, im a rifle kinda guy. But my .270WSM caliber got alot of research. but with a shotgun i dont know what to reaserch.

Wal Mart won't carry the Mossberg special purpose line or any pistols I believe. You used to be able to order them, but they've cut way back on anything except basic hunting rifles and shotguns in the last few years.



Even those I'm suspect of ... all too often, in order to cut prices, companies will make special lot runs for Wal-Mart or send their lower-end batch runs, just to get in under Wal-Mart's pricing demands. Not everyone does it though, and not all companies on all models, so just do your homework before buying from Wallieworld.



Don't settle or accept substitutes once you figure out what you want and you should be fine. If you want a Kimber 1911 45acp - don't settle for a Rossi .357 just because you see one for sale. Buy what you want, and make sure you want what you buy, and you'll save a lot of time and money later, and be happier in the long run with what you get.



======

As an answer: I bought a Mossberg 835 26" a while back in full camo, and it's a functional gun. It shoots 2.75 all the way to 3.5" mags. I also have a Browning BPS-10 with 26" bbl and I absolutely love it... To me, there's absolutely NO comparison between how smooth the Browning BPS is vs. the Mossberg in a full-sized "hunting" shotgun.

the .357 mag is popular isnt it?

Critter_Killer: A couple of thoughts...

If you want a handgun and have your dad convinced to buy one for protection, get it and use bird hunting or some other reason for the shotgun...that way you get both. Guess it might take a couple of years but that would be my approach.

I am not sure you will be satisfied with the accuracy of the typical auto if you can hit soda cans at 74 yards. I would get a good quality .357 with a +/- 6" barrel which will better enable you to shoot to your potential. Besides, if you shoot much, reloading is the next step and picking up brass in the field becomes old in a hurry.

If you have to have an auto, Sig Arms have had the best out of the box accuracy in my admittedly limited auto experience.

I started with a Ruger Blackhawk which was good in the accuracy department but probably wouldn't be most people's first choice for home defence. Maybe a S&W L or N frame would be the better option.

My $.02, dvnv

Sig's are ok, but my P220 had an annoying trigger out of the box, and nobody around here would work on it. So many guns these days are coming factory with 6,7, even 10 lb triggers in DA, OR MORE on some .... and that's just too annoying for words to me. Especially those long DAO trigger pulls.

Sig: Accurate? Yes. Ergonomic? Yes. But that trigger was annoying to me. But then again, triggers are a lot of personal preference.

And yes, the .357 is a very popular round - for a whole lot of reasons. Firstly, it's a well-respected hunting cartridge, and with a .357 pistol, at some point you'll be wanting to buy a .357 Marlin lever action rifle to accompany it. Trust me, it just happens - it's ok.

Most revolvers out of the box have better triggers than your average auto, and the .357 will also chamber .38 special, so you can shoot it with lesser recoil and flash and build up your shooting skills, and the "feel" of the gun.

For home defense, the last FBI report I saw showed the .357 mag as the #1 pistol for 1 shot stopping, and even if something else out there has somehow dethroned it from the top, it was the #1 choice for a LOT of years - and the round hasn't changed. It has the perfect blend of energy and velocity to put down an assailant without just powering through the very thin human frame and wasting all that energy like the .44s and bigger rounds. Personally though, I still keep a .44 in *my* nightstand, statistics be d**ned.

A .357 revolver is a very versatile gun, sort of like folks consider the .375 H&H (or some others, myself included, the .416 rigby) to be the only rifle you'll ever need for anything on the planet, the .357 can do just about anything you'll ever want a pistol for near Georgia, and reasonably well for anything in the lower 48. (Moose or Grizzly I'd probably recommend a .44 mag, or maybe one of the new .480s, but I've never met one, and at any rate would probably just refer that one to Mr. Rigby.)