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I completely agree with all of the recommendations to try before your buy and to be an informed buyer.

Having said that, when it came time to get a handgun for my wife, I took her to a Cabela's, located a gentleman behind the gun counter who seemed to be frendly and knowledgable and had enough white hair to possibly know what he was talking about (other clerks were going to him when they couldn't answer the questions). We flagged him down, told him what we wanted and I took a step back and let him go through just about every handgun in the case (within reason) with my wife. The pistol my wife kept going back to was the Ruger LCR, which is a .38+P rated, five shot, polymer framed, snub nose revolver with a Houge rubber grip. It's the gun that she said felt best in her hand (possibly because of the grip), had a very smooth trigger, wasn't "too heavy" and pointed most naturally for her. And, while I'll agree that this wasn't as good as actually shooting the thing, we already knew my wife could hit with a snub nosed .38 because she'd shot them before (two of our kids have had snubby's). I'll also agree that Cabela's usually isn't the cheapest place to buy a gun, but they do usually have a good selection and I've always been able to find at least one knowledgeable person behind the gun counter - and I'm willing to pay a little bit more for that.

As was said before, there are advantages and disadvantages to everything. There is no perfect gun, or gun type or caliber or trigger or feed mechanism. It's all about what works for you and what works for you may well be different than what works for the next person.

One saying I'll always remember is that when it comes to handguns, if you can't hit with it, you'd be better off carrying a whisle to scare the bad guys, because all you really have is a noise maker and there's a lot less liability with a whistle.