Quote:
Originally Posted by stomachmonkey
There are a dozen ranges / gun clubs in your area.
Pick one, go, rent the options they have, shoot, figure out what you like, buy.
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There's lots and lots of good advice here, but this ^^ is the best.
Find a range where you can rent a wide variety of guns and try them out. Red helped me with that years ago, and then I went and did it again with someone else. I shot a bunch of stuff. Not only did I shoot and feel what I liked shooting, but I also watched my accuracy across the range of guns that I shot. I narrowed it down to a couple and shot them back to back.
If you imagine a Porsche as being fairly expensive, finely engineered, built to a high precision and for reliable operation, and if you imagine a toyota corolla or the original VW bug to be the peoples car, inexpensive, but engineered and built to run reliably for many miles, albeit in a very different way, then there are guns like both.
a nice 1911 or the Sig 226 that you have seen mentioned are probably both more like the 911.
Something like a Glock, Springfield Armory XD or member of the X__ family or Smith and Wesson M&P are all pretty much the same and kind of like a Toyota Corolla, inexpensive and reliable.
A S&W revolver is probably like a little of both. You could maybe imagine it as being like a combination of the two, very well built and ultra reliable.
The cheapest ammo is .22 rimfire.
Then, unless things have changed a bunch, I think it would go in this order
1) 9mm
2) .45
3) then you'll see others like .38 and .40 and maybe .380
I'm not exactly sure where others like .357sig, 357mag, 10mm, etc would come in, but I suspect they are a little more expensive on the whole than the others.
And that set of rankings is probably for new (not reloaded) FMJ practice type ammo. Once you start looking at hollow point or defensive rounds, the prices are all over the map.