Defensive Handgun Session 3: Choosing Size & Capacity

All right, now that we've narrowed our choices down in terms of defensive handguns to modern striker fired guns, let's talk about the size and how that affects capacity and fit of the gun. So there are various sizes that you're gonna see available in various shapes of grip depending on the brands that you look at. Now, primarily in my experience the brands that I've seen have the most success with the most number of students, over the longest duration of time are the Glock mid-size guns the Smith and Wesson MNP mid-sized guns and the Springfield XD mid-sized guns. Now, what I've done here is I've pulled out the Glock and the Springfield XD gun because I think they're the two that I see the most commonly on the range that are the most dramatically different in terms of grip size and grip shape. And that means that, one of these guns may fit your hand perfectly.

And the other one may not. The Smith and Wesson MNP is another really great choice that I see a lot of people have success with and it tends to be in the middle of these two types of guns. So it's a little bit more mid range a little bit more universal in some ways but ultimately it's the Springfield XD that tends to fit everyone's hand when they come out to the range. And I'm going to go over why, by looking at the entire family of guns. First a little bit of a comparison.

If we look at the grip shape of this Glock and the Glock is an incredibly reliable gun incredibly common gun, and it's the gun that historically I've carried the most probably for about 15 to maybe 15 to 18 years. This has been the gun that I've primarily carried. This gun has also stayed inside of my home for personal defense. It various size levels. This is the mid-size gun.

Now they make a gun is a little bit larger than make you gun is a little bit smaller, but they all have the same grip. All of your Glocks are going to be double stack guns in the nine millimeter, which means the magazine has alternating rounds that go a little bit from the left a little bit from the right and they're stacked next to each other. The Springfield guns offer both single stack and double stack. So this is a single stack magazine. It just has one line of rounds.

And this says that staggered alternating line of rounds obviously at that height you can see these magazines are about the same height but there's going to be many more rounds in this one because it's holding twice as many for any given amount of height. This gun is going to have only that double stack option. This gun has a relatively square grip and there's a relatively long distance between the front of the trigger and the back of the grip. And there's a thickness here that is pretty consistent. So you'll see it gets narrow here, right behind the trigger.

But back here, it's almost overly thick for a lot of people. And what that means is if you can't get your hands this distance from the web of the thumb and index finger next to this knuckle if you can't get that distance to the pad of the finger around the Glock then that's not going to fit you very well. And we see that a lot. What we see the symptom there is that on the range a shooter will have the knuckle of the base of their thumb underneath of this backstrap as opposed to next to it. So if we look at that from the top you're gonna see that this is proper.

This allows me to touch the trigger with the pad of my finger and the knuckle of the thumb is going to be next to the frame not under the frame. So if someone can't reach the trigger without putting their knuckle under the frame we have a problem. They're not getting a good natural grip. It's going to affect the way their weak hand interacts with the gun as well. It's gonna affect their ability to control recoil.

And during the training day what's gonna happen is, they're gonna start to get a blister and eventually wear the skin off here. And it's going to be very uncomfortable and even painful for people during the day, towards the end of the day. And they're not gonna get the training value. They're not going to get what we need them to get out of the gun. Could they pick a Glock up and defend themselves?

Sure, but we'd rather not have them in a position where they have a gun that doesn't fit them well. So we'll take someone whose hand doesn't fit this gun and we'll put them into the XD type grip which is much thinner around the back and has a shorter distance from the front of the trigger to the top of the grip. And what that means is going to fit more hands. So someone with my size hand that fits the Glock pretty well, can still hold this gun. And it feels very good as well.

I'll get a little bit more distance out of my trigger finger here but you can see that my knuckle is still next to the frame where I want it to be. Well someone with smaller hands that can't hold the Glock, will find this gun much easier to hold. And that's why this is a great gun as an instructor for me to carry around, in the tour vehicle, as I tour the country, putting on classes, having these guns in the car means that, anyone is likely to be able to pick this gun up and use it. If someone's hand is too small, still for this gun. Well, that's where we change inside the family of the Springfield XD guns to a single stack gun.

So this is a gun that takes one of these single stack magazines instead of the double stack magazine. This won't go in there which means that the grip is even narrower. And this means that it's going to be that much easier for somebody to be able to get the gun set properly into the web of the hand between the thumb and the index finger. And that's what we see with the single stack guns. These guns that only have one row of bullets.

Now, obviously that's a compromise but when it comes to size of the gun, there's a few factors. The first one we talked about was grip. The next one we're going to talk about is capacity. And then the third one, which only affects people who are going to be carrying the gun in public as opposed to people who going to just have the gun staged at home, is carry ability. So we've got the grip of the gun which affects shoot ability.

How well do you interact with the gun? How consistent are you going to be able to grip the gun? How much contact can you get between your strong hand your weekend and the gun, as well as your strong hand your weak hand, with each other. And we talk about that in our fundamentals of grip class but in this class about selecting a gun we have to understand that shoot ability is a function of how you integrate with the gun. Carry ability, is a function of how large the gun is relative to your style of dress how heavy it is to carry around all day.

Does it fit in a way that you can conceal it and carry it comfortably? That's a carry ability issue. Well, obviously this gun, which is much smaller and thinner than this gun has a higher degree of carry ability for just about everybody. Now, the question is, if you're always in a cold environment if you're a relatively large person and you're always wearing layered clothing why would you go to a smaller gun with a lower capacity when you could carry the larger gun with the higher capacity that carries more rounds that's gonna have a higher level of shoot ability 'cause this gun is gonna fill your hand better as a larger person. And the weight of the gun is going to help you manage recoil more.

So you'd naturally want to choose this gun. So our general guidance is the largest gun that fits your hand well, and that you can carry is going to be the better choice. In nine millimeter, reliable, modern striker fired gun. Another thing that you'll see about these guns when they're in a family and it will be true also for the three different sizes of Glock nine millimeters. But when we have the Springfield guns there's also obviously a larger size for this gun to full-size gun.

This is the mid-size gun. And then we go down to the single stacks. Well, the magazine from the mid-size gun is gonna hold a certain number of rounds. Obviously there's more rounds in the full gun and these magazines will still work. So we can carry spare magazines or we can have guns with magazine staged next to them in our home, that hold a much higher capacity in almost all versions of the modern striker fired hand guns.

You can buy the smaller version of the gun as long as it stays within the double stack mode and still get the extra capacity magazines which is a great advantage to that design. When it comes to the single stack magazines, what you're going to see Springfield has done is they've got two sizes of magazines. It's actually three sizes of magazines inside of the family. I've got two here, a seven rounder and a nine rounder. So while the seven rounder fits flush.

So if I were to carry this gun in a holster it's gonna protrude less from around my waist pushing out less against the shirt or the jacket that I might be using to cover it up. But my spare magazine, the magazine that I'm carrying inside my waistband or inside of a pocket to reload is going to be extra capacity. I've got an extra couple of rounds there. If for some reason I was staging this gun for home defense. And sometimes when I'm traveling, I'll do this.

I'll only be traveling with one gun. It's usually this gun, I'll have this magazine inside of the gun when I'm carrying it because with my build and the way I dress it's much easier to conceal something that is this width. And then when I get to the hotel and I go to put this gun into the quick access safe and stage it for defense inside the hotel room at night I'll stage it with the larger magazine which gives me a couple of extra rounds. Obviously, why not take advantage of that opportunity? You'll also notice that this particular gun has a longer barrel than this one.

So there's two barrel lengths available here. Again, interchangeable magazine, same size grip but this gun with the silver slide has a longer barrel. What that allows me to do is get faster follow-up shots and there is also an extended sight radius. So in theory, although it's not really applicable or practical in a rapid defensive shooting situation there is a technical advantage in terms of the ultimate level of precision available from this particular gun because that has a longer sight radius but also in primarily what I'm interested in, is that I have extra weight, extra weight out in front of the gun to help me fire follow-up shots faster. There also is a slightly greater amount of powder that'll get burned inside the barrel which means that the bullet will be coming out at a slightly higher velocity with the longer barrel.

So if you can conceal it, and obviously once I stick this inside the waistband of my pants, it doesn't really matter if it's a four-inch barrel or a 3.3 inch barrel or a 4.5 inch barrel as long as it's not something egregiously long I'm going to be able to conceal it. And that means I get those advantages. So I prefer to carry the four-inch over the 3.3 inch in most cases, if I were carrying in a pocket holster that's where having the shorter barrel length can be actually be an advantage. If I were to put this into a pocket holster into my back pocket or into a cargo pocket then the four-inch might be a little bit long and I'd want to go with this more compact gun. And obviously I own both of them so I can choose the gun that is appropriate for the way I'm going to be carrying it where I'm going to be concealing it at any given time.

When you go to choose a gun for defensive purposes it's important that you take all of these things into consideration. The capacity of the gun, the size of the gun, shoot ability of the gun and the carry ability of the gun, if you're going to be getting your concealed carry permit and taking the gun out in the public space with you when you legally can. Inside of a family of guns, you can also get various sizes, various configurations, that'll use the same magazines use the same ammunition and feel very consistent when you're shooting them, to be able to cater the exact gun you have to the exact circumstances you're in as well.