I conduct a women's Firearm Safety and SD course every winter. The class contains a lot of ladies, who may be single mothers, low to low/middle income, in other words for the most part these aren't well to do people, but still have the desire to protect themselves and their families.
I don't tell the students what gun to buy, we're all different and different guns fit different people.
Having said that, small 38 revolvers seem to fit a lot of these ladies, Low recoil and concealable.
That brings us to the Charter Arms. They are quite popular, easy to shoot (at self defense distances) easy to conceal, and for most of these ladies, reasonably priced.
Though I don't own a Charter Arms I deal with them quite a bit and have some observations.
They aren't designed for Plus P loads, so I suggest people avoid those and stick to standard 38s.
I also see a lot of weak hammer falls, not all primers are reliable in these guns. When I find a round that wont go off in the Charter Arms, I shoot them in my Smith 642, it shoots them all.
Charter arms revolvers work, but caution needs to be addressed. First Charter Arms greases (or oils) their internal parts. This grease hardens and makes the gun sluggish. That should be cleaned up. It also makes the gun sluggish in cold weather. It gets cold here in the winter, (9 below at last nights class). I try to get to the range early to get the heat going, but its still rather cold at the start of the class, plus many of these women keep the gun in the car prior to the class. So they are often sluggish at the start of the class but as it warms up, the start working better.
Another problem is primer choice. These people cant afford a lot of ammo so our club furnishes the ammo. I'm a big fan of Winchester Primers and use them in all my reloading. But often the cups are too hard for some of the Charter Arms, I had to go to Federal Primers to get more consistent ignition.
With out bad mouthing any ammo manufacture, some ammo works better then others.
Any SD handgun needs ammo that works each and every shot. So with the Carter Arms (and every other gun used in SD) one should be picky on his/her carry ammo. Buy one box at a time, firing the whole box until you find what works. If you get one round that fails to fire, save the remainder for practice and get another brand. Same thing, shoot the whole box to make sure it works. Then when you find a brand that works, buy a couple boxes for Carry.
Make sure its the same lot, ammo does very from lot to lot.
Having said all that, the Charter Arms' are good little revolvers. Some shoot better then others, but most all can be reliable if the proper ammo is found and you clean the guts of the revolver.
One more problem I've noticed, many with small or weak hands tend to short stroke the trigger, (not pulling it back all the way to release the hammer). I see this a lot more on CA then I do on Smiths for some reason, but that is really the problem with the shooter, not the gun. Care must be used to work the trigger properly.
Like I said, I don't own one, but this is my observations to the little revolvers over that past 5+ years where I've probably seen over 100 in use.
I'd venture to say, in my class, the Charter arms is the most popular revolver, for autos its the Ruger LCPs. One must take into account reading this, I'm dealing with mostly low income students. I don't get many (none actually) women showing up with Smiths out of the Smith Custom Shop.
