As a senior citizen, I find 9mm much more comfortable to shoot than .45. Icompensate in my self defense loads with loads like Critical Defense. I find both my M & P 9mm and my Kahr P380 relatively easy to rack. On the other hand CZ slides have become difficult.
When I was young I did Tae Kwon Do. Now the economy of movement in Krav Maga or Aikido is a better fit. But given how falls can injure senior citizens. Handguns do not require close quarter hand to hand combat.
Our diminished physical capabilities alone mark us as victims. Predators look at us and think we can’t fight back or run away. It is like having a target painted on our backs. Even our situational awareness is reduced due to hearing loss and visual impairment.
Rather than taking away senior citizen’s gun rights they should perhaps issue carry permits to all senior citizens revocable with the onset of Alzheimer disease.
From America’s 1st Freedom: http://www.americas1stfreedom.org/articles/2016/4/8/carry-life-senior-competence/
by Frank Winn, Guns & Gear Editor
Friday, April 8, 2016
Regular “Carry Lifers” know we much prefer to stick to the useful, the objective, the constructive. Now and again, however, we happen across such outrageous claptrap that comment becomes necessary, mainly because it’s not useful, objective (or corrective, as in this case) and constructive to stay out of the fray.
Take a look here, and you’ll see what we mean. The short version is simply a beatdown of “old people” who want to own a firearm for personal protection. The thesis is as sketchily condescending as it is deeply prejudiced: Such old people—creatures never actually defined, we notice—shouldn’t have firearms because they’re ipso facto too infirm to use them. Beyond some unspecified age, we evidently become rightless un-persons, explicitly doomed to wait on help that may never arrive. We should shut up and take our lumps: lethal, merely injurious or otherwise.
We guess this is what passes for progressive thought, culture and compassion in the universe of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. For actual grown-ups who don’t want to breathe life into such snide assertions through misstep, however, Carry Life has a few suggestions.
Handgun Technique
If you’re much past 40, a lot of what you know in this arena isn’t wrong, per se, but may prove increasingly, unhelpfully out of date. Ideas about the best head, body and particularly hand positions have changed in significant ways, both obvious and subtle. While we don’t know of any intentional accounting for age-related effects in these modern techniques, we’d argue there’s an important nugget here: Under close examination, most will disproportionately help less powerful (or smaller) shooters with no regard for the source of disadvantage—age, stature, gender, etc. They do so by putting genuine “combat” learning into play, and leveraging available body mass, substitutions for fine dexterity, and the application of larger, stronger muscle groups.
A glaring example relates to auto-loader/semi-automatic slide manipulation. The over-40 crowd generally learned what’s called the “slingshot” method, and it’s OK for young, strong hands.
Oddly—and especially for a pointedly out-of-favor technique for those of any age—it is still reinforced by the design of the so-called cocking serrations on many semi-auto slides: those vertical or near-vertical grooves milled into both sides of the rear of the slide.
Sling-shotting to load or unload consists simply of pinching the thumb and forefinger of the weak hand over the cocking serrations, and pulling to the rear. Often, the pistol is sloped to the left for righties, and to the right for lefties. For chambering, the slide is then released to move (rapidly) forward under the tension of the recoil spring, and strip the top round from the magazine into the chamber. Unloading is a special case of the same action: With the magazine removed, a chambered round is extracted and ejected.
Continue reading at: http://www.americas1stfreedom.org/articles/2016/4/8/carry-life-senior-competence/
ORP Trading Post 