How to Choose Your First Gun
If you’re thinking about buying your first gun, I commend you. There’s never been a better time to purchase your first firearm. But before you head to the store or get online, you need to decide exactly what you’re looking for.
Why Do I Want A Gun?
In this country, you never need to justify your purchase of a gun. It’s your right to own one, and you can buy one for any reason or no reason at all. But it is important to ask yourself what you are buying a gun for. That will help you decide what type of gun to buy. The three main types of guns are rifle, handguns, and shotguns. Each has specific uses, although the uses can overlap sometimes. For example, Shotguns are excellent for home defense, but would be difficult to carry for personal defense. Handguns are great for both keeping you safe at home and away from home. If you’re into hunting, you probably already know that rifles are good for hunting mammals, while shotguns are better for taking down birds like ducks and doves.
Hunting
If you’re going to be hunting with your new gun purchase, the type of game you hunt will determine which type of firearm you buy. Rifles fire a single, high-velocity bullet that are accurate at long distances with the right scope. Rifles are good for hunting mammals such as deer, elk, coyotes, hogs, etc. Rifle hunting is generally done at longer distances, often 100 yards or more.
If you are a bird hunter, you probably want to go with a shotgun. Shotguns fire multiple small projectiles, like BBs, from each shell that you shoot. They spread out as they travel, and are better for hitting objects at close range. Because the shotgun pellets spread out, they are good for hunting birds. Most bird hunting is done while the bird is flying (turkey hunting is an exception), and shotguns are good for hitting a flying target.
Home Defense
As I mentioned previously, both shotguns and handguns are excellent for home defense. Shotguns are great because they don’t require perfect accuracy or even much aiming to be effective. And handguns are popular for home defense because they are small and hold multiple rounds. You can also use attachments such as flashlights and laser sights on your handgun to help you aim in the dark.
Rifles do not make the best home defense weapons because they are large and bulky, and their high velocity rounds can travel through walls, not good news if you have children in the home. But a rifle is still better than nothing.
Personal Defense
Handguns are the only real choice for personal defense. They are the only gun of the three categories that is small enough to carry concealed. For personal defense, you have to decide if you want to carry a semi-automatic pistol or revolver.
Semi-automatic pistols usually have a larger capacity and are easier to reload, important factors to consider in personal defense. But if they aren’t maintained properly or loaded properly, semi-automatics can jam or malfunction.
Revolvers are much more reliable than semi-automatics, there are less moving parts and they are impossible to jam. The tradeoff is that they usually hold less rounds, only five or six in most revolvers. They are also more difficult to reload.
Whichever handgun you decide to carry, make sure you are comfortable with it and train with it often. Get comfortable drawing and holstering it. Understand how to reload it. Remember to always handle your gun as if it’s loaded.