Maggie's Farm

Last spring my husband, who is 82, and I, who am 79, found to our distress that the pump shotgun on which we depended for home defense, was now too heavy for our arthritic hands, and the trigger pull too stiff. We live in Houston, and Texas is a border state, with more illegals and smugglers every year, so we need something in the house to discourage home invaders. We went to an excellent gun store and tried all the different shotguns and found none of them easy to use because of our advancing arthritis. Finally, our clerk took me over to a gun case and pointed out a pistol, called The Taurus The Judge. It has a 6 1/2" barrel and an elongated bullet chamber that can accept either 45 bullets or .410 shotgun shells or both at once. The elongated barrel gives some of the stability of a short-barrel shotgun and it handles very nicely in my claw-like hands. We bought it [can't remember the price but it was less than $1000 but more than $500] and took it to the shooting range to practice with it. I am not an experienced shooter as my husband is, but it handled very well, whether firing 45 bullets or the shotgun shells, and I did well with it.

If you all have elderly parents or friends who are looking for a usable gun for home defense, I recommend this one. The short-barrel version [3 1/2"] can serve as a glove compartment gun, I understand. The reason we wanted a gun which would fire shotgun shells is to confine the mayhem to our own property. We live in a densely populated suburb and I don't want to hurt anybody, except the guy invading my home.

Marianne Matthews

buddy larsen ... You're so right. What i liked about the Taurus is that I could line up the front sight in the notch of the back sight and train the front sight on the target. Once that's done, one just has to hold it steady as one pulls the trigger. And voila! it works as it should. The gun doesn't recoil a lot, even when I use the 45 bullets. It's really a great gun.

Marianne Matthews