Darker Loaf
Senior Member
Join Date: October 25, 2012
Posts: 409
It is basically smarter for anyone to start shooting with a .22 LR. If you have never had much time on pistol, .22 LR is a much "safer" way of practicing, and what I mean by that is this: it is much easier for a beginner shooter not to develop bad habits. Centerfire handguns all have MUCH more recoil than .22 LR. It's not to say that you CAN'T learn to shoot with a 9mm. I taught my ex-wife to shoot with 9mm and skipped .22 LR (I just didn't own a non-9mm gun at the time), and she did quite well... and she was a 110 lbs petite woman.
But... that being said, now that I do own a good .22 LR pistol, I would NEVER, EVER put a first time shooter on a centerfire gun. My ex did fine, but she is a scrappy little lady and she worked through her problems pretty well, even with +P (she chewed through 200+ rounds of +P in one sitting, no complaints, while I was shooting in another lane!). But, I've developed flinches from firing centerfire guns before. Like you are dragging the gun down too soon BEFORE the gun actually fires. Basically, you are going to learn the raw mechanics of shooting, which most importantly is trigger control. Before you are going to master recoil control, you should really work on trigger control, because this is going to affect your shot placement more than anything.
I liken this unto student teaching (learning to be a teacher). At first, all you can do is work on controlling yourself and getting the students in line. It's not until later that you can refine what you are doing or how you are tweaking your teaching because there are too many factors going on that you don't understand at first and you are too busy getting your lesson plans right. Well, shooting is a bit like that. When firing a semi-auto handgun, there's a lot going on... especially when there is a big distracting explosion in front of your face. Since pulling the trigger itself is the most important part of the skill, it's best to leave off the big explosion (centerfire) until you are consciously aware of what your trigger finger is doing. Once you've mastered that, you can add the complexity of an explosion and recoil.
A .22 LR gun will allow you to learn essentially without recoil and without a pressure wave/explosion.
However, it is not crazy to think that you could learn to shoot on a 9mm. After all, my completely inexperienced ex did it, so could you. But make sure it's a full-sized 4", 5", or 6" barreled gun. An all steel framed gun would be better still. This will mitigate the perceived recoil and give you a full-length sight radius that will aid you in shooting. You could do worse than starting with a 5" 1911 in 9mm or a CZ 75, for sure. Any plastic service gun will also be OK, but not quite as soft-shooting. Also, you might want to avoid porting. I learned to shoot on an aggressively ported Springfield Armory 9mm 4" Service Length XD. It has holes in the barrel, that DO make the gun incredibly soft shooting with really low perceived recoil. But the trade-off was that it created a fairly large pressure wave that I could feel on my face and eyes often causing me to blink. I had to shoot it for thousands of rounds to overcome this almost knee-jerk reaction.
The other feature of 9mm when compared with .22 LR is price. 9mm is much more expensive than .22 LR. Oddly though, during the Great Ammunition Scare, .22 LR has irrationally become the most rare type of ammo, since everybody owns a .22 LR--especially panic-driven middle-aged types who tend to own lots of .22 LR guns and have the disposable income to buy outrageously priced .22 LR. 9mm was also pretty rare for similar reasons, because of its prevalence, but more 9mm was available while .22 LR was non-existent until somewhat recently. That being said, 9mm is a great caliber to learn on since it is the cheapest centerfire pistol cartridge and it is ubiquitous (about $12 to $13 per 50 right now).
Another feature of .22 LR is unreliability. Yes, many people on TFL will chime in to say that they have *NEVER* had a malfunction with .22 LR in their semi-auto guns, but that is generally not the case. Expect occasional jams with .22 LR in QUALITY semi-auto guns (like Ruger Mark II/III or 22/45 or Browning Buckmark). Expect frequent jams in poorly made .22 LR semi-auto guns (like Sig Mosquitos and other Umarex-variety guns). This unreliability is inherent to the .22 LR case. It's rimfire (which is problematic) and the case is thin which allows no room for slight deviations in the case; the long and short of this is that the .22 LR round is never 100% even by better manufacturers. Quality .22 LR will rarely be bad, but cheap .22 LR can have many misfires out of a 500 round brick.
For many years, I loved and shot .22 LR. I've shot multiple .22 LR semi-auto guns into parts breakage, meaning 10,000's of rounds. But I came to learn that it was rarer for me to have a problem-free .22 LR semi-auto than a lemon. If you do buy a .22 LR gun that cycles well, NEVER sell it. I made the mistake of selling my 10,000+ round-count Browning Buckmark. Sure, it had parts fly off the gun during firing. Yeah, I had to repair the gun a number of times, but at the end of my ownership, it ran with bulk, crappy, low-quality .22 LR ammo. That break-in period was worth money in itself, because at the beginning of the life of that gun, it could only run CCI Minimags or other higher velocity .22 LR. Oh, and for a beginning shooter, I'd definitely recommend a Buckmark. They are one of the best factory .22 LR pistols, with one of the best factory triggers. They are easy to maintain and breakdown, too.
Good luck! Have fun! Whatever you buy, shoot it a lot!
My youngest kid is 75lbs and 11yrs and outright owns with a 9mm. And a 22.