re: Help!! Handgun question

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Back to your OP, I think you'd be better served with a compact/full size semi auto for shooting with your sons and home defense. I'd take a look at either a Glock 19 or Smith and Wesson M&P. Both are 9mm, fairly light, low recoil, more capacity, and better overall for novice/new shooters. The snappy recoil of a short-barrel revolver might turn off a new or inexperienced shooter. Just my thoughts.

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This ^ 100%

You can safely ignore most of the stuff in this thread. As a general rule you should steer clear of any advice from the OB concerning firearms (frickin judge rules) and home defense (desire to shoot anyone for any reason on their property with no regard to law or reason).

Having said that, as some mentioned your best bet is a revolver. Simply because a revolver will not jam. If you squeeze the trigger and no bang, just squeeze again and you're back in business. They are also inherently heavier than your plastic striker fired auto loaders recommended (GLOCK/M&P/XD). This means less felt recoil and better follow-up shots. Your wife, in a true life/death situation is going to be flipping her shite. The last thing she needs is to have to remember the 5 steps to getting her Glock ready to shoot, steps you taught her that one time you took her to the range 2 years ago. A revolver is also a good gun to learn on. No hard magazines (clips for all you OBers) to load, no fail to ejects, no fail to feeds, no slide to rack, fewer moving parts, and the list goes on and on.

A shotgun is a close second. Similar to the revolver, it is easy to operate. Unlike a revolver, if there is no bang there is the added step of pressing the slide release and then pumping to eject the bad shell. Also, one must remember to rack the slide after each shot in order to chamber a new shell. Silly for us avid hunters and dedicated 870 owners to think about. But for someone (his wife) who does not operate a shotgun on a regular basis and is currently flipping the frick out (life/death situation), having to remember to do anything but squeeze the trigger repetitively is asking too much. Then there is the spread that a shotgun shoots, this can be an advantage or disadvantage depending on the situation and the shooter.

Sorry Downshift, a handgun is a excellent fighting weapon. It is compact which makes it easy to turn tight corners, quickly reloaded with removable magazines and can be conceal with ease. I wouldn't bring it to face off over distance or against body armor, but inside my home it'll do just fine. You have to consider the situation and environment you are fighting in. A 24" bbl 30-06 with 6-18x50mm scope is a horrible fighting weapon, until you put a few hundred yards between you and your enemy. A shotgun is a horrible fighting weapon after 100 yards, probably even over 50. If your statement were true they would not be used by EVERY military/LEO/pirate/mass murder gunman.

Bottom line, it is not recommend to give someone a gun that has no idea how to use it. But if you are, a revolver is the easiest to not frick up. Take your wife/kids/gutter bitch/anyone shooting. If they like it and continue to shoot and learn the revolver then you can introduce them to other systems.