[Mazryonh]

Originally Posted by funkychinaman

Cops, who's lives can hinge on being able to hit their targets, still would rather go with .40 S&W, despite probably having as much range time as they want. (Cops shoot for free at my range.)

You mean they get range time for free, right? It's not like you hand them ammunition for free, too? Last I read not many pistol-users know where to get 10mm Auto ammunition at a reasonable price. Good to know that some cops are looking to not be part of the statistic that says "Cops only hit their targets 20% of the time," if not necessarily in an environment that simulates the randomness and rapid change from friend-to-foe of on-the-beat situations (i.e., someone pulls out what you think is a gun, you plug two rounds in his chest and one in his head, only to find that he was holding an aluminum-wrapped sandwich, or someone claims that he's needs help and pulls out his drivers license, only to pull a small revolver to fill your face full of lead).

Originally Posted by funkychinaman

You can't TRAIN away the fact that someone's a smaller person. Not being able to handle the recoil is not a conditioning issue.

Gary Coleman, at all of his 4' 11'', is too small to handle the recoil, until he isn't.

(Interested viewers can see the full vid here. Watch your step around the missile launcher, the machine guns, and . . . the magazine models?)

Originally Posted by funkychinaman

A friend of mine from HS did two tours in Iraq as an MP. She's an officer, and an MP, so I would think at least one of those facts would mean she was issued a sidearm. She's also tiny, probably no more than 5'2", 110 lbs. How much conditioning would it take for her to handle a full sized 10mm sidearm? And giving her a smaller 10mm pistol would only exacerbate the issue.

To misquote a popular saying, the sources I've seen seem to corroborate this: "A gun that's good for the gander is good for the goose" (double entendre totally intended).

From this website:

To further counter this myth we report our observations in watching women shoot some very big guns repeatedly, without flinching. We're talking about very petite 100-110 pound women shooting .357 magnum pocket pistols, full powered 10mm Glock 20s and 4 inch .44 magnums. Not only can they shoot these guns -- they can shoot them darn well! We have seen these same women shooting 458 Lott rifles, loaded to the max. The 458 Lott is a rifle designed for the largest animals on earth, a true elephant gun generating nearly 6000 foot pounds of energy. Women hunt all over the country using high power rifles and are very effective. When asking these women how it was that they were able to shoot such high caliber firearms, they told us that it is simply a mind-over-matter situation. They continued by saying that if you think the gun is in control of you, then you will be afraid. But if you realize that it is you in charge of the gun -- it's a piece of cake.

So what caliber and type of gun is best for a woman? Clearly, the answer is: "The same one that is best for a man." Any woman can easily learn to shoot any handgun effectively. Of course, practice is the key for both men and women.

Are these women exceptional in some way that I am unaware of?

There's also the assistance that can be rendered by technology. Aside from the aforementioned slim frames that Glock 20s/29s come in, there's always the compensated models (which can be changed back to uncompensated simply by replacing the barrel with a non-ported version). How about the pseudo-foregrip used by the Beretta M93R? Is that covered by a patent somewhere that disallows its use on other pistols without paying a hefty licensing fee?

To get back closer to topic, why hasn't the M9 been replaced already by the "winning candidate" of the Joint Combat Pistol program? It's not a good way to address a problem by cancelling the program that was supposed to appoint a replacement twice. And here I was thinking that because pistols are easier and less costly to make than rifles, the Joint Combat Pistol would have a better chance of reaching completion and meeting its objectives than the M4/M16 replacement program did.