Author: Kim du Toit

Yesterday I told you to expect a story about how I came to possess that S&W Mod 10:

Here’s that story.

A Longtime Reader of my acquaintance — i.e. we’ve met in person and spent more than a few minutes chatting away — wrote to me and asked me a favor.

You see, his personal circumstances are changing (and not in a good way, which absolutely sucks), to the extent where he’s going to have to get rid of all his guns.  He’s managed to do that for most of them, but for reasons that everyone here will understand, he didn’t want to get rid of his treasured Model 10 because of all the history he’d had with it.

So he wanted to find a “good home” for the thing, with someone who would treasure it in the same way that he had, and not neglect it or gawd forbid, just sell it.

Hence:  the above gun, which now resides chez  Kim.  (And thank you again, Ken, for this most wonderful gift.)

Now comes the interesting part.

He didn’t just send me the Model 10;  he also included in the box* a little gun which I’ve always been fond of, fired quite a few times but never owned:  a Bersa Thunder .380 ACP.

Now, as I explained to Ken, I need another semi-auto pistol like I need a second New Wife (to paraphrase another Longtime Reader GT3Ted), and besides, if I think the 9mm Europellet is an inadequate self-defense cartridge, the weeny lil’ 9mm Short (.380 ACP) is going to be even less adequate.

However, I have taught plenty of women to shoot over the years, and I can recall at least three who ended up owning a Bersa simply because the little gun fit their hands nicely, the operation thereof was easy and the recoil very friendly.

And here’s the thing:  I know a woman who doesn’t own a gun herself, but who works from home and is there alone during the day while her man is at the office.  True, she lives in a decent neighborhood with a nearly-non-existent crime rate, but “nearly-non-existent” is not zero, as any fule kno.  She’s not anti-gun herself — she grew up hunting with her father — but she’s never owned a handgun, and would like to try it out.

So, as I explained to Ken, I’m going to pass it over to her with the proviso that there is absolutely no obligation for her to keep it:  if she likes it, all well and good.  And if she doesn’t, she can just return it to me.

Ken, by the way, was perfectly okay with this plan when we discussed it, and told me that as he’d read about how I’d done the same thing with a couple of my previous lady shooters, he’d passed the Bersa on to me with precisely this end in mind.

Side note:  Longtime Readers would about now be asking me why I would saddle someone with an inadequate sidearm chambering, but there are two responses to this:  any gun is better than no gun, and a “friendly” gun will always be used if necessary.  Also, Ken being the thoughtful man he is, he’d included a couple boxes of Hornady’s Personal Defense loads (which make the 9mm Kurz cartridge a lot more lethal) as well as a couple boxes of FMJ practice boolets.

So there is is.  I’ve taken the Bersa to the range already to test it for function, and it does perfectly well, chugging through the Hornady as well as it handles the FMJ rounds, with no stoppages.  And when next I see the young lady in question, there’ll be a gift from Santy under the tree for her.

Tomorrow I’ll be talking about something else that Reader Ken and I discussed.

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*which, by the way, went to my Merchant Of Death; so the transfer was perfectly legal, and fuck you ATF.