my friend Vince achieves fame!
Hot dang, my friend Vince is famous! He got mentioned in Massad Ayoob's latest column for BACKWOODS HOME magazine. It's obvious that people with small hands and limited hand strength will have trouble operating larger or harder-recoiling guns -- small-framed women who are new to shooting really have this problem -- but you don't think as much about the problem in the opposite direction. Some people are just so big that they can't operate smaller guns safely, or effectively, or sometimes at all. What works great for a small person could be nonfunctional or downright dangerous for somebody who's ginormous.
(That would be Vince.)
As I've mentioned before, Vince is just a *huge* guy, and as Ayoob recounts, his hands are so big that there are guns he has trouble operating. I knew this on a certain level -- I'd never expect him to try picking up a Kel-Tec P3-AT -- but holy cow, I didn't think he'd run into trouble with a Glock 30! To put things in perspective, the Glock 30 is my *carry* gun. It's a subcompact, because I have a skinny frame and can't effectively conceal a large pistol, but it's straight-up .45 ACP, a solid gun with a fat Glock-sized grip (the GF, who has tiny hands, can't even reach the trigger on it). But as Ayoob reports, Vince's hands are so massive that they interfered with the gun's operation (sometimes painfully). Man, that's amazing. Something to file away if I ever train somebody Vince's size. If I ever *encounter another human being* Vince's size.
(Vince's carry gun is a full-size 1911. The guy's a freakin' mountain; he could carry a brace of them, and nobody would ever notice.)
The pink rifle amuses me.
Speaking of training are you certified with the whole NRA training thingie? I think my parents are highly unlikely to go out to Blue Ridge or the NRA range, even though I do have Instructor friends, and ideally they should be using their own weapons anyway, and driving up to DC with them is problematic.
If there's anything local to them I'd be far more comfortable if they'd at least spent some time on a range, although ideally at this point I'd like an Occupational Therapist Weapons Trainer, as my worries are around the intersection of mobility problems and assumption that "hell, it's a shotgun I'm not going to use unless someone gets through the bedroom door."
Now /that's/ a niche career...