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The Beretta Tomcat .32

Colt named many of their revolvers after dangerous snakes: The Cobra, the Python, the Diamondback, the Viper, the Anaconda. Few arms companies have named their guns for dangerous cats, though a copy of the Winchester 1892 carbine that was long popular south of the border, usually in caliber .44-40, was given the name “El Tigre.” Beretta, however, has an affinity for feline nomenclature.

I am not sure why, after calling their little .22 LR pocket pistol the Bobcat, they would choose to name the distinctly more powerful .32 ACP the Tomcat. Not that I don’t think the name is appropriate. You see, the .32 caliber is a pussycat in every respect, but, comparatively, naming a .32 after felis domesticus and the .22 after a wildcat seems a bit over-reaching insofar as the latter. It’s a little like naming your goldfish “Moby Dick.”

Beretta’s Tomcat has earned itself a lot of friends. Some owe it their lives. A fellow identified only as GB wrote the following first-person account of such an instance in the “It Happened to Me” section of Combat Handguns magazine: ⁽¹⁾

Even the short-barreled Centurion 9mm dwarfs the Tomcat .32, below.

“That day had started like any other for the last 15 years. I’ve had a jewelry store and pawn shop in West Palm Beach, Florida, but this day would change my life forever. I set up the showcases for the day. It’s a beautiful South Florida day, hot and humid. (Two young males dressed in black) were hanging around looking at rings and things. The first guy was in the shop in the morning and was looking to sell his 14-karat gold chain. I thought he was going to make a trade for a ring or some cash. The pair just kept looking at more and more stuff. After about 35 minutes I asked, ‘Do you have any cash?’ The first guy just showed me a pocket with nothing in it. He still had the 14-karat gold chain to work with, so I went on waiting on them.

“Not one person came in all of the time they were in the store. The first guy said he was going to buy his girl a ring and I went to show him diamond rings. I pulled a tray of diamond rings out of the showcase and when I raised my head up, the other guy was pointing a gun right between my eyes. It was about two inches from my head. I looked down the gun barrel, a .25 caliber. In a split second I swung my hand and hit the gun. At that point I ducked behind the counter and crawled on my hands toward the back room, hoping the pair would just run off. The next thing I knew I had one of them on my back and he’s calling for his friend to help him get me down. I told his accomplice that he’d better run. I managed to pull my Tomcat from my side pocket. I got it in my hand and hit him with it so hard that I broke the trigger guard, and he went down. He was still calling for the other guy. With no time to waste I had to even up the odds.

Key features of the Tomcat are tip-up loading, seen as the thumb pushes the release lever forward, and a barrel held rigidly in place so the pistol won’t jam if a muzzle-contact shot is attempted.

“Now he was getting back up from the floor so I flipped off the safety on my gun and put it to the side of his head. I kept second-guessing myself. He was getting up and calling out for help from his accomplice in crime. I didn’t know if the accomplice was going to come in the back room so I put the gun to the side of his head and pulled the trigger. Bang the gun went off and he went down to the floor half over a chair. I heard the doorbell ring as the accomplice ran out. I locked up and called 911. He was still where he fell, dead.

The Model 3032 Tomcat is a fast-moving pistol in the gun shops.

Sitting low in the hand, the Tomcat has low bore axis and minimal muzzle rise. The slide abrading the hand is much less a problem than with many other pistols in its class.

“Two days before the holdup I’d just picked up the Tomcat from the gun store across the street. For some time before that I hadn’t been carrying a gun. My 9mm was just too big.”

There are those who like the Tomcat as a police backup gun, too. My friend and colleague Mike Boyle is one of the nation’s top police gun experts, and an outstanding trainer whom I’ve seen teach in such venues as the American Society of Law Enforcement Trainers, and the International Association of Law Enforcement Firearms Instructors. In a roundup article discussing pocket pistols for backup in a police-oriented publication he and I both contribute to regularly, Guns & Weapons for Law Enforcement, Mike had the following to say about the Tomcat in the February, 2005 issue.

“Carried in a Tomahawk holster from Pocket Concealment Systems, the Tomcat doesn’t cramp my style at all. Magazine capacity is seven rounds. I have considerably more trigger time with the Tomcat than the other pistols tested and to date my experience is most favorable. The manual of arms for the DA/SA Tomcat is a bit more involved than the DAOs, but the single-action trigger makes hitting small targets or distant targets easier. On several occasions I’ve watched officers qualify with their Tomcats on the state-mandated course, which includes a 25-yard component. High scores were the rule rather than the exception.

While very compact, the Tomcat has a grip frame that allows two fingers to wrap solidly around it. Some pistols in its class allow only one and perhaps part of a second.

“The Tomcat represents a classic pocket pistol design, which has clearly benefited by the power boost to the .32ACP. As a last-ditch backup, it offers a great deal of potential.” ⁽²⁾ Nothing has really changed since, except for the intro of a couple of still smaller .32s by other makers, such as the Kel-Tec P32.

GB showed in his incident subsequent the efficacy of the muzzle-contact shot. The tip-up barrel design of the Tomcat not only eases loading and unloading for many people, but also holds the gun’s parts rigidly in battery allowing the pistol to fire when it is in hard contact with the target. Many, many auto pistols will have their parts “pushed out of battery” by such contact, and will be rendered incapable of firing. GB’s statement that he had bought the Tomcat because a 9mm was just too big to carry, really says it all. While slightly larger than some of the other new-generation subcompact .32s such as the defining Seecamp, the almost impossibly light little KelTec P32, and the North American Arms Guardian, the Tomcat .32 is spectacularly easier to shoot by comparison. Not in a class with the Beretta .380, by any means, but certainly better in that respect than the other true pocket pistols in .32 caliber.

Personally, when danger threatens I’d like to have the cry of angry 9mm leopard speaking for my side, or the snarl of a .45 caliber lion, or the roar of a .357 caliber Siberian tiger. But, you know, the meow of the Tomcat is still a better sound than the whimper of a victim …

The Meow Of The Tomcat

Beretta is a company that believes, like Burger King, that you, the customer, should be able to “have it your way.” A recent Beretta ad in a foreign gun magazine showed a range of Model 92 options from the old frame-mounted safety style that hasn’t been imported into the U.S. for many years, to the familiar 92FS, the shorter Centurion, and the heavy-duty Brigadier. And of course there’s the double-action-only 92D that’s popular among U.S. police.

Similarly, Beretta USA offers a wide power range to the good guy or gal who draws a weapon in the face of imminent, unlawful use of deadly force. You can respond with the roar of the Cougar (9mm Parabellum, .40 S&W, .357 SIG, or .45 ACP caliber). You can reply with the growl of the Cheetah (.380 ACP).

And now, you can answer with the meow of the Tomcat, the smallest .32 auto that Beretta has offered.

This is not your grandfather’s Beretta .32, which would have been the single-action 1935 model, a solid and chunky gun that was optimistically named the Puma when Beretta sold it here commercially years ago. Nor is it the .32 version of the Model 84, the high-capacity DA first-shot pistol of recent years. Both of those autos were much better in their natural caliber, the .380 ACP. Their recoil was negligible, and they were hell for accurate. Unfortunately they were also big for the power they put out.

The Tomcat, whose name is a quintessential tribute to truth in advertising, is not particularly accurate and, in the feline menagerie of the Beretta catalog, is pathetically feeble. Comparing the Tomcat .32 with a Cougar .40 is rather like putting your own little housecat up against a mountain lion. Consider the following ballistics, courtesy of Winchester:

The Tomcat can be carried three ways with a round in the chamber, though all contravene the owner’s manual. Here is its optional cocked and locked mode …

… here the hammer is down, and safety engaged …

… and here the pistol is off safe, ready to fire in double-action mode.

Mouse Gun Factor

Yeah, I know, I’m the guy who says “Friends don’t let friends carry mouse guns.” Why then am I writing this article?

Mouseguns are a fact of life. There are X number of good people who will carry a tiny gun or no gun at all, either as backup or as first line of defense, and a basic law of life is that “something is better than nothing.” Jeff Cooper once said he’d rather have a hatchet than a .25 auto for self-defense. At belly-to-belly distance, me too, though I’d likely trade the hatchet for my Richard Sokol custom Arkansas Toothpick. However, Jeff was always big and strong, and I am comparatively little and weak. At a range of 20 feet, if the bad guy has a firearm, I’d rather have the mouse gun than the hatchet since I know he can empty his weapon into me in the second and a half it’ll take me to reach him with a blade.

Thus, we take it as a given that this article won’t be a diatribe against mouse guns, but rather an inquiry into how well the Beretta Tomcat fulfills the mouse gun role.

The Pistol

Built to be sold to the people who are tired of waiting in line for the Seecamp LWS-32, a hard-to-find pistol in the Czech double-action-only pattern that has no sights and is the size of a small .25, the Beretta Tomcat partially succeeds. It’s available now at your local gun shop, and at a remarkably affordable price, not the scalper’s ticket so many charge for a Seecamp. It’s the size of a .25, all right, but the size of Beretta’s own double-action first shot, 11-ounce Model 21 Bobcat .25 auto, which is 4.9 inches long with its 2.4-inch barrel. Somewhat more ruggedly constructed, the Tomcat weighs 13.1 ounces with chamber empty and magazine removed, and 16.6 ounces on my calibrated electronic scale when fully loaded with seven rounds of 71-grain ball in the magazine and an eighth round, the Gold Dot 60-grain hollow-point, in the launch tube.

The Tomcat is a cooler looking gun. Its trigger guard looks like it was part of the design instead of a piece of sheet metal folded over and stapled. Where the little Beretta DA .22/.25 has a thin blade front and V-notch rear sight, the .32 version has a small but much more visible square post/square notch rear sight picture.

It has a tip-up barrel, perhaps a tiny bit stiffer in the lever to operate than that of the other pocket .22 and .25 Berettas, but easier to manipulate than the 180-degree lever on the Model 86 .380. Good news. Weak or handicapped people can load the chamber easily without having to actuate a spring-loaded slide. Bad news: there’s no extractor, the design trusts blowback force to clear the spent casing out of the chamber, and if there is an extraction failure, you can’t just work the slide to clear it. Doing that will merely bring up another round against the jammed spent casing, the dreaded and erroneously-named “double-feed jam.”

More good news, however is that during tests, the gun never failed to extract, and a poll of half a dozen other owners showed the same collective experience.

A frontal view of the Beretta 3032 Tomcat. The barrel cannot move back if the muzzle is pressed into the target, an important consideration at the distances at which small pocket pistols are likely to be used, and an advantage it shares with smaller frame Berettas.

A push forward on this lever with the thumb pops the barrel up for cartridge insertion or removal, saving you from working the slide. This can be a godsend for those with limited strength in hands and upper body. Note also that chamber can be loaded or emptied

The Tomcat is bigger, significantly bigger, than the Seecamp .32. However, it’s smaller than any other .32 automatic on the market. (Yeah, I know, at least two companies are supposed to be offering Seecamp clones. Call me if you see one in a gunshop. I haven’t.)

Comparing the new Beretta .32 to my preferred off-duty backup gun, the S&W 442 Centennial Airweight .38 Special, the Beretta is a little smaller in height and distinctly smaller in overall length. Remove the barrel from your J-frame revolver, and what’s left of your gun will be the length of a fully assembled Tomcat. Weight, however, is less dramatically favorable to the .32. Empty, the Tomcat weighs 13.1 ounces and the S&W Airweight hammerless, 15.2 ounces. Fully loaded there’s even less difference. With five 158-grain +P lead hollow-points in the chambers, my favorite pocket .38 weighs 17.9 ounces. With seven Federal ball rounds in the magazine and a 60-grain Gold Dot hollow-point in the chamber, the Beretta .32 weighs 16.6 ounces. One and three-tenths ounces ain’t a helluva lot of difference.

Eight rounds for the .32 versus five rounds for the .38 is a significant difference, until you factor in the potency per shot. The total deliverable muzzle energy of .38 Special +P, times five, dramatically exceeds that of a .32 ACP times eight, even when you allow for the 2-inch barrel of the .38 and the 2.4-inch barrel of the Tomcat.

Does a Beretta Tomcat .32 beat a Beretta Bobcat .25? Oh, my, yes! A .32 auto is by any standard about twice as powerful as a .25 auto. This must, of course, be kept in perspective. A .380 auto is half again more potent than a .32, while a .38 Special can deliver more than four times the raw power of a .25 and more than twice that of the best .32 auto round. So often, there is time for only one shot …

Field Testing the Tomcat

I bit the itty-bitty bullet, as it were, and carried the test Beretta Tomcat, as a backup gun for almost the whole month of April 1997. Just under two weeks of that were in the Pacific Northwest, a week was in the South, and the remainder was in Northern New England. I was legal to carry loaded and concealed in all three jurisdictions.

I’m not gonna give you a lot of crap about getting in touch with my feminine side, or being secure enough in my masculinity to carry a .32 for backup. I will tell you that for all but a week of that time, the .32 was a third gun, since I had an Airweight .38 on my left ankle and a Glock .45 on my right hip. But during the week where the .32 was my only backup I didn’t start going through withdrawal symptoms or anything.

This is the latest incarnation of the Tomcat, with an enlarged and more ergonomic safety lever, and Inox construction.

For all this time I used one holster: Jerry Ahern’s excellent pocket scabbard. While some pocket holsters, like the Kramer, require an upward draw to strip off the holster and clear the sidearm, the Ahern design needs you to rock the gun back with its muzzle pointed tactically toward the threat. Now it clears both pocket and holster, the holster perhaps hanging out of the pocket lining as the separation takes place. I found it unerringly effective.

However, I discovered that while the Beretta .32 was almost as fast out of the Ahern pocket holster as a snub .38 out of one of my usual pocket holsters when I was wearing loose trousers (i.e., BDUs), this changed in tight jeans. With the jeans it wasn’t nearly as fast. This isn’t a fault of Ahern’s holster design or anything unique to the Beretta Tomcat; rather, it’s a fact of life with tight-to-the-body carry of any semiautomatic pistol. An autoloader’s grip profile is flat on the sides and tight clothing or holsters hug it close to your body requiring your fingers to sort of claw in to get a drawing grasp. The rounded profile of a small revolver’s grip frame allows a much easier draw in these types of carry. The rounded edges of the revolver’s stocks sort of guide your hand quickly into position.

Accuracy? The first thing I saw with this little gun was that it shot way low. At 7 yards, while it would put a decent group together, that group would be some two or three inches below point of aim. The trigger pull didn’t help. While it improved with lubrication, the double-action pull never got better than mediocre and the single-action pull had “bad creep” with about four stopping points through an almost interminably long stroke that seemed to reach all the way back to the rear of the frame before the gun went off.

The action and trigger were very rough when we started. Wear and lubrication took off the “very” but couldn’t eradicate all of the “rough.” This little gun is not the glass-smooth Beretta 92/96, whose exquisitely polished moving parts and contact surfaces are the envy of the rest of the handgun industry.

Reliability? We ran just under 300 rounds through this gun. There were only two malfunctions, steep-angled 12 o’clock misfeeds that could not be cleared without stripping the mag from the pistol. Both occurred, surprisingly, with full-metal-jacket ball ammo, Winchester’s USA brand which is normally utterly reliable. Yet the gun was flawless with Federal ball, and with 20-some rounds of Speer Gold Dot and 50 of Winchester Silvertip, both 60-grain hollow-points. Go figure.

The two jams were cleared by ripping the magazine out of the gun, thumbing the topmost round either out of the mag or back in place, and then “reload, cycle, shoot.” As previously noted, there were no extraction failures. (Interestingly, we got into a bad batch of contaminated old .22 ammo when shooting a Beretta 21 next to the Model 3032 Tomcat. These rounds failed to cycle. We had to pop the barrel up and pry the spent rimfire casings out with a pocketknife. Determining what we would do if a Tomcat failed to extract a .32 hull if the round was too feeble to cycle the gun, we found that a #2 pencil would go down the barrel to punch the casing out. Colleague Marty Hayes, no fan of small-caliber pistols, commented dryly, “If you have to carry a #2 pencil anyway, cut out the middleman. Leave the .32 at home and just carry a sharp pencil. If you’re attacked by a violent criminal, stab him with the pencil until he dies. You’ll probably have about the same wound profile anyway.”)

The rear sight on Tomcat is better than those on most guns its size …

But I won’t make any mouse gun jibes here. I won’t ...

The tradition is to test pocket pistols at no farther than 7 yards, the theory being that this is the greatest distance at which you’ll have employ one. I’m sorry, but I can’t buy that. I’ll go with Affirmative Action hiring so long as it’s enlightened Affirmative Action hiring.

What that means is, Affirmative Action hiring does no one any good if it’s construed as lowering the standards to let in people who otherwise wouldn’t qualify for the job. Enlightened Affirmative Action hiring is, you let people of every size, color, gender, and belief system compete and the ones who can do the job better are the ones you put to work. The history of it is, if you hire people who can’t do the job because it seems politically correct or convenient, the job doesn’t get done and people who needed the job done right end up suffering. But if you throw out height and weight and color and similar requirements and hire people who can do the job well however they do it, you end up getting the job done.

When cops were whining in the 1970s and 1980s about having to be backed up by women and small-statured men, they shut up after the new hires showed they could do the job.

With this in mind, I test even pocket guns the way I test service pistols, including 25-yard shootability tests. If the bad guy doesn’t cooperate with your game plan of being in close when the fight starts (and, let’s face it, he didn’t cooperate with your game plan when he started the fight in the first place), you need equipment that will allow you to engage successfully at parking lot distance. My Tomcat .32 shot so low that with a 12 o’clock hold on a piece of 8½- by 11-inch typing paper, Federal 71-grain ball put five rounds in 5 inches, the best three in 2; Winchester ball put the five in 7 inches, the best three in 3. Some people find that acceptable. I find it beyond the edge of acceptability, having perhaps been spoiled by the exquisite accuracy of Beretta’s .380, 9mm, and .40 pistols.

Yet all is relative. Its group is enough to shoot a 300 out of 300 on the police qualification course’s generous B-27 target, assuming you have your Kentucky windage right. While I’ve qualified with the sightless Seecamp on that course, I wouldn’t bet my life on shooting a 300 with one.

Feedback From Others

One career cop I know bought two Tomcats and carries one in each front pocket. He likes the portability, hates the trigger pull, and doesn’t find the gun hurts his hand. Neither of his Tomcats shoot where they look.

A male civilian I know liked the grouping capability but didn’t like it being someplace other than where he was aiming, and found the sharp edge of the safety catch painful. A female civilian noted similar concerns and found the slide and the barrel tip-up lever difficult to operate. Both of them found the gun hurt their hands.

Another woman found the gun too weak in output, too inaccurate, and painful to shoot due to sharp edges. A large male cop found its slide bit his hand when he shot it and went back to a .38 snub for his second gun. A large male civilian fell in love with it, finding it easier to shoot every shot in the same place than his Seecamp .32, even though his Beretta didn’t shoot spot on.

Personally, I found hand bite – a common thing with pocket autos and male hands – to be minor. Like the other users, I was disconcerted that the gun was not sighted in at the factory. The other Tomcat users, like me, carried the gun off safe because its sharp-edged safety worked too stiffly to rely on in a crisis.

… as is the front sight.

The Owner’s Manual

Many have lauded the Seecamp owner’s manual for its refreshing approach to user instructions, such as, carry it loaded with a round in the chamber ready to fire. It is, after all, something you bought to protect your life in an emergency. Duh! Kudos to Seecamp.

I was disheartened when I compared that to the Tomcat owner’s manual. “IN THE FIELD, the pistol should be carried unloaded (empty chamber, magazine removed, the hammer fully-lowered and the safety ‘ON’) in a holster, with the magazine in a pouch or pocket. It takes only a second to insert a loaded magazine and to retract and release the slide for chamber loading and cocking.” (Introduction.) “WARNING!! If the pistol is carried chamber loaded (NOT RECOMMENDED) with the hammer full-lowered, ENGAGE the SAFETY: DO NOT try to override the Safety by asserting (sic) excessive trigger pull force. Also, the mechanism may be damaged by forceful manual hammer cocking.” “The Model 3032 has an INERTIA type firing pin which, when used with the hammer down, external safety engaged and with the double-action trigger pull, assures the greatest degree of safety if it is necessary to carry the pistol chamber loaded (NOT RECOMMENDED).” “Extreme care must be taken to avoid hitting or dropping a loaded firearm. Even if on SAFE, accidental discharge may occur – some ammunition have (sic) very sensitive primers.” (About the Author.)

Does this just mean that Beretta has more lawyers than Seecamp? It can’t mean they have better lawyers than Seecamp, which was represented by current NRA director Howard Fezell in the lawsuit that beat the Maryland Gun Board’s attempt to ban that pistol in that state. I have to go on the assumption that the gun’s maker knows the pistol better than the gun’s user, and if they worry about me carrying it chamber loaded, I worry about it when I carry it. For most of a month I had a Gold Dot in the chamber, the barrel closed on an already lowered hammer, and seven rounds of easy-feeding Federal ball in the magazine because I hadn’t put the requisite 200 rounds of any one hollow-point through the mechanism and don’t trust any handgun until I have. And … I thought about the safety factor and the owner’s manual every day I carried this gun.

Beretta Tomcat vs. Seecamp LWS-32

Let’s get right down to it. How does Beretta’s entry in the Seecamp market compare to the gun that defined that market?

The Beretta points much better. The Seecamp points low, a tough thing for a gun that has no sights. Most anyone will hit better with the sighted Beretta, even though the Tomcats all seem to shoot low. The Seecamp is a lot more portable: slightly shorter than the Tomcat, much smaller in height (you can get one finger on its grip, but two on the Beretta’s), and a significant 3 ounces lighter, while holding only one less round of ammo. The LWS-32’s double-action-only trigger is smoother and more controllable than the Tomcat’s. The Seecamp is on a restricted diet by its manufacturer: Winchester Silvertip and Glaser Safety Slugs only, while the Beretta has no such limitation.

Seecamp endorses carrying their .32 with a round in the chamber. Beretta does not.

Perhaps most important for many, the Beretta .32’s suggested retail price is much lower than that of the Seecamp.

Bottom Line

The Beretta 3032 Tomcat came to me with only one magazine. This is the way most pocket pistols are sold. The industry has come to believe that any blithe spirit who trusts his life to a sub-caliber firearm probably isn’t into carrying spare ammo. This tells you something about the market profile you’re matching yourself to when you consider buying one.

I’d rather you carried a .32 auto than a .25, or no gun at all. But this is not the accurate, point of aim/point of impact, glass smooth, and sufficiently potent Beretta that the U.S. military adopted for soldiers, and that INS adopted for U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. It’s a damn good pocket pistol, more affordable and more available and more accurate than the Seecamp .32 whose market it was designed to invade, but that’s all that it is.

If that’s good enough, buy one. If not, buy a bigger caliber Beretta … and if you ever need a defensive handgun for its intended purpose, you’ll thank me and Beretta after it’s all over.

Endnotes

1. “A Timely Tomcat,” by GB, Combat Handguns magazine, New York City, November 2004 issue, P.6.

2. “.32 ACP Triple Play” by Mike Boyle, Guns & Weapons for Law Enforcement magazine, New York City, February 2005 issue, Pp. 32 and 84.