Poor equipment selection is a huge problem in the classes I teach, mostly to people who choose the “gun owner, no formal training” option on the “experience” pulldown on my signup page. People buy guns based on brand reputation, caliber, capacity, weight and price – typically ignoring major issues that affect their ability to use the gun like gun fit, relationship of trigger pull distance and weight to first and follow up shot hits, and proven reliability.

20-25% of the students I teach (including both me and my wife) have hands that are too small to reach the trigger without the trigger finger rubbing on the frame or having to rotate the gun into a suboptimal grip. Most shooters don’t understand that it’s a bad thing to have a trigger finger pressing on the frame during the trigger press. Some don’t even understand that it’s a bad thing to have to twist the gun into a lousy grip just to reach the trigger.

In every class I end up loaning guns and holsters to students who show up with gear that just doesn’t work for them, and most are amazed at how much better they shoot with the borrowed gear.

Guns that have narrower grips and shorter trigger reaches than the G19 but offer similar features: (in decreasing order) XD, M&P, SR-9. There’s a market for a single stack polymer 9mm that has all the good features of a Glock/XD/M&P. So far nobody has stepped up to address this because the vast majority of gun buyers still favor capacity and caliber over gun fit whether that’s in their best interest or not.