Random Thoughts From Marybeth

Cute, Little, and Loud (No I'm Not Writing About When My Children Were Toddlers)

I had really planned on waiting a bit longer before I went gun shopping again. I also had thought that when I did decide to buy my next gun that it would be a revolver. Wrong on both counts.

I started thinking (this always gets me into trouble) that a gun that was small and as comfortable to hold as my Walther P22 but went BOOM like the S&W MP .40 would be just the right combination. So I started looking online for guns that were recommended for people with small hands. I read some good reviews of the Springfield XD and decided to check it out.

Last Friday, I went to the gun store (Shooter's Supply) and told the salesman what I wanted to see. He asked if it would be a defensive weapon and I said that that was a good possibility. He then tried to talk me into buying a revolver.

His reasons for suggesting a revolver instead of a semi auto were ones I have heard before - mostly having to do with reliability. There are very few times in my life where I have felt that I was treated differently because I'm female but this was one that made me wonder, if a man came in asking to see a specific gun, would they try and sell him something completely different?

If I were just slightly less interested in the XD I would have told him that he's absolutely right and that there was a revolver for sale at OpenRange that I've had my eye on and that he just convinced me to go buy it. Instead I let him show me a couple of revolvers, told him they were nice and asked to see the .40 XD (he had already shown me the 9mm).

Another thing he did that annoyed me was when he checked the guns to make sure there were no rounds in them before handing it to me, he didn't turn it so that I could see also. Maybe this is nitpicky but when I look at the ones OpenRange has, the person showing me the guns lets me (and anyone else who's with me) see that there is no ammunition in it. I like this from both a safety and a courtesy standpoint.

I would have gotten it from OpenRange but when I looked online it said that the one I wanted was allocated and since I hadn't seen one in person, I didn't want to ask them to try and order one if I wasn't sure I wanted to buy it. They had already ordered one gun that I thought I might be interested in but didn't end up buying and I hated to risk doing that again.

Anyway, I did end up getting the XD and today I went to the range to try it out. It's lovely. Such a cute, little gun with such a big boom. It's comfortable to hold and while there's some kick to it, it's not anything that I can't handle. I tried shooting several rounds rapidly and managed to get them in my target's circle area so I'm thinking that with more practice this may become my first choice for a defensive weapon.

There a a couple of bonuses that came with the gun that I really like. One is a magazine loader. My fingers still aren't strong enough to load more than the first couple rounds in a magazine so this is a big help to me. (It also comes with a belt holster and a double magazine holder but I doubt I'll get much use out of either of those.)

The second thing that I considered to be a bonus was a sticker on the case that says, "Not Legal in California". That sticker alone is almost worth the price of the gun.

It's not the gun that's illegal, it's that it comes with a "high capacity" magazine. They define this "as any ammunition feeding device with the capacity to accept more than ten rounds". I've been trying to figure out what makes the last two rounds more dangerous than the first ten but I'm at a loss.