Too small a gun

Mas Ayoob has an older, but excellent post on how there certainly can be such thing as a gun that is “too small for carry”.

Photos showed later that Vince, who shoots with the popular straight thumbs grasp (see below), had his humongous thumbs in proximity to the slide. All that we can figure was that the combination of the web of his hand making contact with the underside of the moving slide, and pressure of his thumbs against the side of the slide, was enough to retard the mechanism and prevent complete extraction. So, yes, there is such a thing as a pistol too small for the shooter’s hands.

Also, for the record if your hand is so big that it causes malfs on a Glock 30, you have REALLY BIG HANDS.  This however is why I encourage people to try guns out before they purchase them for every day carry.  A gun that actually cuts you and causes you pain isn’t a gun that you’re going to practice with; and a gun that you don’t practice with is basically a talisman as a self-defense tool.

I don’t have particularly large hands for a guy.  This isn’t really surprising, because I’m not a particularly large guy – however there are guns that just wreck my hands when I try to shoot them.  I’ve picked up racing stripes and hammer bites from quite a few guns although the worst culprit was a little Llama .380 I had back in 2005.  That thing was apparently made out of razorblades and hate, because it seriously wrecked my hand.  The next worse was a Bersa .380 – that was fine until I learned how to properly hold a pistol at which time the Bersa joined the Llama in the bin of fleshreapers.

Make sure you shoot any gun you plan on carrying before you spend your hard earned cash on it.  A gun that actually causes you physical injury isn’t a gun you’re going to want to carry.  More importantly, you shouldn’t have to.  In an age of quality, compact defensive firearms such as the Ruger SR9c, the S&W M&P Compact, or the sub-compact Glocks there is simply no need to carry a gun that has poor ergonomics or that injures your hand.  And if your hand is too big for the little guns, then get a bigger gun!