by moopere » 02 Jan 2022, 2:31 pm
Yeah this is a fair ask but really difficult to enable in a meaningful way. Its pretty much buy then suck it and see.
My club has probably 3 dozen pistols available, might even be more than that. Of those though there is probably only a handful that you can still buy new in the same configuration. Manufacturers go out of business or they are bought by other manufacturers, or drop models from their line, etc.
I spent more than a year shooting club pistols before I applied for my first license and even then, I only had some broad thoughts on what pistol would be suitable.
I guess you can get some ideas on calibre, poly versus steel, hammer versus striker, etc. Through practice for example, I realized that a 44Mag revolver is just too much gun for me ... heh
I ended up gravitating towards a Walther PPQ M2 9mm and shot it a lot. I'm left handed, so ambi controls matter to me. A lot of modern pistols allow for this though so its not as big a deal as it was. Problem for me was going to be getting hold of a PPQ and then fitting a reflex sight (my eyes are crap). I know there was a 'combo' deal of PPQ + Shield RMS available for a while, but they were long gone by the time I was in a position to purchase, and getting a regular PPQ slide milled was going to be a bridge too far for a first pistol. So, I went with a PPQ Q5 match which has a factory milled slide and adaptor plates for common reflex footprints.
Same pistol right? No ... not really.
I'm enjoying shooting the Q5, to be sure, but on the range actually firing as opposed to just holding (or dry firing), its a different beast to the plain PPQ M2.
I'm actually quite interested in getting hold of a cap-n-ball or early cartridge style peacemaker or opentop mid-late 1800's style revolver ... but I doubt I'll ever get to even hold one, let alone fire one, before a purchase is made.