So now we have gone from answering a question to teaching a class. There is nothing wrong with that, but it’s a solution with different resource requirements. I am certainly not assuming that ignorance is incurable.

Personally I see nothing wrong with issuing huge blanket statements: Normal size hands = Glock 19, Smaller size hands = Khar P9 (notice I didn’t say anything about gender.) If either of those two options don’t perfectly fit their special niche application then they can sort it out later, once they have a basis for making a decision.

Well, yes. And no.

Even a beginner who has been given no other instruction can tell you whether or not they find a specific gun pleasant to shoot when given a chance to do so. If you give them a pile of guns and some time on the range, they can tell you which ones they enjoyed shooting and which ones they did not enjoy shooting. This takes no specific instruction at all (apart from the general safety basics required before walking onto the range), and is as good a place to start as any. The resulting targets give another narrowing down clue that takes little or no advance instruction to figure out.

In the absence of a range trip, even a beginner can easily be shown how to assess gun fit with an unloaded handgun at the sales counter. It takes about two minutes to run down the basics, and thereafter, they will know whether or not a gun fits them when they pick it up. It’s not rocket science.

With five minutes, you can explain your favorite defensive caliber choice and why it’s a good choice.

With ten minutes, most can intellectually understand the dynamics between heavy triggers, ease of shooting, and safety. Similarly, and with roughly the same amount of time, most can understand the dynamic between gun weight and perceived recoil. Not quite the same as going to the range with a pile of different guns and feeling the difference for yourself, but understanding that a heavier gun is generally more pleasant to shoot is not an intellectually challenging task.

What I’m getting at here is that it’s almost always better to educate someone than it is to simply assume their ignorance is a permanent fixture. But far too often when someone recommends “a good gun for a woman” that’s what they’re doing: assuming that her beginnerly ignorance is an incurable permanent feature of her personality, rather than a minor, easily cured, and temporary condition.

When someone says “she can’t handle that gun” before she’s even tried it on, and the comment is based solely on her sex and (presumed) timidity rather than her hand size, then yes, it is in fact a sexist statement.

What I said was: Saying “she can’t handle that gun” isn’t a sexist statement any more than “he can’t handle that gun.” The point is that small people and big guns makes for a very poor shooting experience.

…encourage new shooters to sample as many guns in as many different calibers and action types as possible before making up her own mind about which one matched her best?

The only problem with new shooters (of either gender) making up their own minds is that they have little or no basis for that decision. If the gun magazine fiction of “stopping power” is your sole criteria you will buy the wrong gun. The gun a new shooter shoots the most accurately with on the square range isn’t necessarily the best choice for a carry gun. There is a laundry list of these sorts of problems.

People are individuals…

That said, you know I agree with you very strongly that the gun should fit the shooter. Gun fit is very often the missing part of the puzzle when it comes to defensive handgun. It’s not all that hard to check and it’s fairly major once you begin working dynamically rather than on a static range.

Related, sometimes I do grow weary of talking to women who show up at the range with ridiculous, unshootable, teensytiny guns that kick like a mule and are chambered in impractical calibers. It’s particularly heartbreaking when a woman shows up with a totally stupid gun and notes that she bought it because Sumdood told her that it was “a good gun for a woman.” Wouldn’t it be better if, instead of recommending guns based solely on one’s genital arrangement, people would encourage new shooters to sample as many guns in as many different calibers and action types as possible before making up her own mind about which one matched her best?

I am not really interested in the way things “should” be, but rather how they are. If you make yourself a target then someone of evil intent will take you up on it, I am certainly not saying it is “right”, but I am saying it will happen.

Anticipating the bad actions of others isn’t a moral requirement, but it is certainly a prudent one in the practical sense. I don’t think that recognizing that bad people might exploit the risks that I take makes me a sheep, rather I think it perpetuates the opposite.

Blaming may not be useful, but adequately punishing and detaining criminals, and our society rightfully acknowledging who was the victim and who was the agressor would go a long ways to at least moving us back to the above-mentioned historical situation. With the “blame the victim” mindset so many people seem willing to adopt, we are becoming more and more a society of timid sheep, who are unwilling to push even the slightest of boundaries lest we become victimized by a stronger foe, and then blamed for that event.

Do we really want to perpetuate that? Do we know where the end result of that is?