Imagine with me for a minute: You're building a house, and your contractor puts the dishwasher in the master bathroom instead of a commode. Do you think that dishwasher will serve the same purpose in place of the commode? Or, would it be better placed in the kitchen where it can be much better used?

Each appliance in your house has a fairly specific purpose. What we found throughout this Best 9mm pistol project is:

Each handgun in your safe also has a specific purpose!

If you go to any local gun store or bigger box store like Sportsman's Warehouse, they will likely have a multitude of handguns on display. How can you ever decide on which one to choose?

‍

‍

The first thing you need to decide is, What purpose will this new handgun serve?

Are you looking for a pistol to take to the range and practice shooting? Are you looking for a home defense pistol to leave in a lock box by your bed? Do you need a handgun so you can complete your concealed carry class? Or, are you on the search for your next EDC?

The answer to those questions will help determine not only what style of pistol you might purchase but also which caliber and what size.

Each pistol is usually built with a specific purpose in mind, even though some may serve several different purposes.

For this project, we used several 9mm semi-automatic pistols and had women of all different experience levels come to the range with us to shoot them. Tisas, Glock, Taurus, SCCY, and Lipsey's (Sig Sauer) were all gracious enough to send us handguns to shoot. Add in a couple that we already owned and one from a friend, and before we knew it, we had a variety of sizes and grip styles for our test.

Obviously, those guns are designed such that some have the same purpose, but others differ.

Our mission was to figure out which of these 9mm handguns our female shooters would like the best.

Ammunition Depot really came through for us and supplied enough ammo for these ladies to shoot each pistol as much as they wanted, but at least 5 rounds through each one. They ranked them on a 1-5 scale in 10 different categories. Then they each picked their top and bottom three.

We had a great time with these ladies. Several of them had very little experience with a pistol, and this was a great learning process for them as well. They went from not knowing how to hold a handgun, much less load and fire one, to being safe handlers that could accurately hit a target within 7-10 yards.

I'd like to give you some of the results for how each gun ranked,

but I also want to emphasize how important it was for each of the ladies to shoot each of the guns.

Several times they would pick up and handle a pistol, be impressed initially with how it felt, but then after shooting it think differently. Maybe the grip felt great at first but after the recoil from firing the gun was added in, the grip was actually too scratchy on her hands.

Several ladies thought the smaller guns were easer to handle initially but, after firing them, didn't like them as much because they felt more recoil.

‍