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When selecting a specific handgun for concealed carry self defense usage, numerous factors are of great concern.

Some of these factors include: handgun size, weight, caliber, capacity, reliability, accuracy, action type, safety systems, and cost.

Additional factors also to be considered include: user’s body size and shape, user’s skill level, holster type and carry location, and an expected worst case threat level.

Many of these concerns require a compromise such as: 1) the most powerful caliber is not associated with the lightest weight, 2) the largest capacity is not associated with the smallest size, and 3) the lowest cost is not associated with the highest reliability, etc.

Therefore, given the large number of opposing parameters, when selecting the specific handgun for concealed carry self defense usage, a compromise handgun is always selected.

In this study I attempt to evaluate the handgun compromise by only looking at four handgun parameters: size, weight, caliber, and capacity.

This compromise is shown pictorially by:

If we can select a group of handguns that satisfies the compromise based on an appropriate balance of size, weight, caliber, and capacity, a user could then select a single handgun from the group based on the other important parameters of reliability, accuracy, action type, safety systems, cost, etc.

The group of handguns that satisfies the compromise will be highly dependent on three additional factors: 1) number of adversary targets, 2) the number of shots fired at the target(s), and 3) the percentage of shots fired that are good solid hits on the target(s). These factors are not attributes of the handgun and ammunition but are specific to a particular situation or scenario.

Therefore, the optimum compromise handguns are specific scenario dependent. This is realistic because various handguns are more or less suited for differing scenarios.

This study looks at optimizing the handgun compromise from a mathematical viewpoint.