In the interest of not scaring him out of shooting the fine old pistol, I'll comment that I've never felt the PPK/S recoil to be severe. It's one of the best behaved .380autos on the market these days, with VERY mild recoil, especially compared to the rest of its 380 bretheren. Felt recoil is very subjective, but the reality is that the PPK/S has very little recoil to start with, and a MUCH larger footprint in hand than most 380's.

Relatively speaking, the Walther is a giant .380auto. She's nearly 3 times heavier than her cousins like the LCP; the PPK's a pound and a half, to the LCP's 9oz, the Sig P238's 15oz, 12oz for the Shield. Even the LC380 in her same size class is only 17oz, garnering TWICE the recoil energy as the PPK/S in the same load. The same load in a PPK/S and an LCP will have SEVEN TIMES the recoil energy in the LCP.

To add a bit of context, a Glock 19 with 115grn loads has 4x the recoil energy of the PPK/S, and a 1911 5" has 2.5x the recoil energy. Just for fun, a Ruger Super Blackhawk 44mag has almost 15x more recoil energy.

With around 1.5ft.lbs. of recoil energy, it's actually pretty hard to find a centerfire pistol with less recoil. It's the only 380 in my safe that I'd say IS a good time taking to the range just to burn a few hundred rounds.