I used to switch up between a G26 and a G19. Eventually gave up the 26. Just felt more comfortable with the 15rds at my side. I IWB CC regularly the G19, and the G26 never gave me a considerably more concealed or comfortable carry.
If you shoot birdshot or buckshot through a rifled barrel, you'll end up with some larger patterns than you want.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnpjrRvFTLw
^^this
Check out that article. It's been my experience, with the women in my family, that they only have "trouble" racking the slide because they're trying to do the "pinch" or "slingshot" method, and after they were taught to do the overhand, their troubles went away. People (new users) also have to...
Did you recently disassemble/reassemble the FCG and maybe you put the retaining spring in wrong? (I've done this before.) If so, the pins holding the trigger and such might slide out just a little bit from their holes in the receiver and cause some unexpected behavior.
Everything sells for the right price.
The question really is how valuable will people consider silver to be at any particular point in time during SHTF. The longer things go and the less excess supplies there are to trade, the more silver you'll have to cough up to trade for those things.
If...
You should be fine with either. Pick the one that has the physical features that you desire. Worst case: you can sell either gun for about as much as your paid for it.
Okay, okay, if you still need advice, get the Glock.
Sometimes I'll carry two, depending on the who-what-when-where-how circumstances of the situation. It plays the dual role of backup gun and arm-a-friend gun.
Your prep involves wandering the SHTF wasteland with your broken gun in hand, looking for a stash of Glock trigger springs? Or maybe you'll just pick entire guns up off the ground because everyone else just left them laying there.
Maybe a barter experience like:
You: "Pardon me fellow...
All machines will fail at some point. If one is good, get two. Seriously. If you're a prepper who wants to go with common guns as you say, what's more common than having two of something? Get two S&W 686+ revolvers, or two Glock 19s. You'll have two firearms that use the same components...
They all saw the Judge Dredd movie in the 90's, and think that biometrics means the gun will do an instant DNA scan to compare against its registered user.
Inspiration for real-world weaponry
No safe queens here. I won't put myself in a position where I have a gun so nice that I'm afraid to use it and get some wear on it. I have plenty of sub-$600 firearms that, when they receive some wear marks on them, I simply call it "character."
Also, I do my post-usage cleaning because... I like to take my firearms apart. I like to see how they work. I enjoy learning about their operation. Cleaning is just a good time to get that all in at once.
I will typically clean any firearm after use. For those firearms that don't get shot regularly, they'll receive at least one cleaning every year and will be inspected biannually. Most don't make it that far and will usually see some range time each year.
Good article. I liked the history of other failed supposedly-safety-enhancing technologies as well.
Every time talk of some "feature" that might be legislated into firearm design comes around (with a hefty price increase to be passed on to consumers), it just reeks of class discrimination...