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C HAPTER T HREE Modern Paradigms

The Glock

Gaston Glock had made a fortune producing assorted polymer items at his factory in Austria. His reputation was such that more than one firearms company soon approached him to make a polymer pistol frame. Being (a) a manufacturer, (b) a businessman, (c) a designer, and (d) smarter than hell, it occurred to him that he could design his own gun to manufacture. He set his design team to work, giving them a clean sheet of paper.

In the early 1980s, there was little new under the sun in the form of handguns. The most high-tech auto pistols were largely refinements of older designs. For example: take the 1950 Beretta service pistol, add on a 1930s vintage Walther-type hammer-drop safety and a 1908 vintage Luger magazine release, and you had the “new” Beretta. But what came off the Glock drawing board was something new indeed.

It looked like something out of Star Trek. It was sleek, with a raked back grip angle that could be compared to a Luger or a Ruger only in the angle, not in the shape. It was square at front and back. It had no hammer, inside or out; the pistol was striker fired. The polymer frame, plus a design created from the ground up for economy of manufacture, ensured under-bidding of the competition. The other makers’ guns carried 14 to 16 rounds of 9mm Parabellum, but this one carried 18. The trigger pull was very controllable, and consistent from first shot to last. More importantly, the thing worked with utter reliability and survived torture tests.

In the Glock light-weight, compactness, controllability and power come together in the author’s favorite of the breed, the .45 caliber Glock 30. This one holds the short 9-round magazine designed for maximum concealment.

It wasn’t the first “plastic gun.” Heckler and Koch had pioneered that more than a decade before, with plastic framed P9S and VP70Z lines, only to be met with poor sales. No one predicted success, figuring that the Austrian army’s adoption of the pistol was merely a sign of chauvenism.

It is doubtful that any greater underestimation was ever made in the world of the handgun.

The Glock’s entry into the American handgun marketplace was nothing less than stunning. The American branch of the firm, Glock USA, was established in Smyrna, GA. A couple of guys who knew the marketplace were on board: Bob Gates, late of Smith & Wesson, and Carl Walter.

Author appreciates “shootability” of Glocks. He used this G17 to win High Senior and 2nd Master at 1999 New England Regional IDPA Championships, placing just behind national champ Tom Yost.

A number of signs in the marketing heavens were in alignment, and this confluence of the stars would make Glock the biggest success story in firearms in the latter half of the 20th century.

American police chiefs still clung tenaciously to their service revolvers. Unique among police equipment, the revolver had not changed materially since the turn of the century. Uniforms were better, the cars had modernized along with the rest of America, communications were state of the art, and even handcuffs had improved and been streamlined. But if you went to a police museum, you would find that only two things had gone basically unchanged since the dawn of the 20th century: the police whistle, and the police service revolver.

Patrolmen’s unions and well-versed police instructors were clamoring for autoloaders. For years, the chiefs had put off these requests with stock answers. “Automatics jam.” “Our guys won’t remember to take the safeties off when they draw to fire in self-defense.” “They’re too complicated.” “Automatics cock themselves and go off too easily after the first shot.”

Meanwhile, instructors were chanting the old military mantra, “Keep it simple, stupid.” Any auto adopted by most of them would have to be simple, indeed.

Enter the Glock.

It endured torture tests for thousands of rounds. Buried in sand and mud and frozen in ice, it was plucked out, shaken off, and fired. It worked. Sand and mud and ice chips flew along with the spent casings, but the guns worked. One adventuresome police squad deliberately dropped a loaded Glock from a helicopter at an altitude of 300 feet. The gun did not go off. When it was retrieved, though one sight was chipped, it fired perfectly.

Safety? There was no manual safety per se. All safeties were internal and passive. “Point gun, pull trigger,” just like the revolver. When BATF declared the Glock pistol to be double-action only in design, the argument about cocked guns being dangerous went out the window, too.

The Glock 17 holds 18 rounds of 9mm Parabellum in a pre-ban magazine. This specimen has Glock’s oversize slide release and Heinie sights.

The first pistol was the Glock 17, so called because it was Gaston Glock’s 17th specific design. It became the flagship of a fast-expanding fleet. Though Glock would later describe it as “full size,” it was actually smaller than a Model 1911 or a Beretta 92, more comparable in overall length to a Colt Lightweight Commander, and it weighed even less.

Next came the even smaller Glock 19 with its 4-inch barrel. The 16-shot 9mm was roughly the overall dimensions and weight of a Colt Detective Special with 2-inch barrel that held only six rounds of .38 Special. At the other end of the size spectrum, Glock introduced a target model in the late 1980s, the 17L with 6-inch barrel. This gun had a light 3.5-pound trigger pull, a pound and a half lighter than the standard gun. Other trigger options were also made available. New York State Police said they’d adopt the gun, but only if Glock made it with a heavier trigger. Thus was born the New York Trigger, which brought the pull weight up to roughly 8 pounds. NYSP adopted the Glock 17 so equipped, and their troopers carry it to this day.

1990 was a pivotal year for Glock. They announced their big-frame model, the Glock 20 in 10mm, the caliber expected to sweep law enforcement after the FBI’s recent announcement of adopting the S&W Model 1076 in that caliber. The gun was quickly adapted to .45 ACP. In January of that same year at the SHOT Show in Las Vegas, Smith & Wesson and Winchester jointly announced the development of the .40 S&W cartridge. Gaston Glock returned home with ammo samples and very quickly the standard Glock was reinforced to handle the more powerful cartridge with its faster slide velocity. Within the year, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division had adopted the full size Glock 22 in that caliber and proven it on the street, and others were ordering the compact Glock 23.

Different magazines add to the Glock’s versatility. Left, a short-bottom nine round magazine for maximum concealment; right, 10-round mag with little finger placement support. Both are for the Glock 30 .45 auto.

In 1993, after a gunman with a 9mm murdered a young NYC cop while he was reloading his mandated six-shot revolver, the Patrolman’s Benevolent Association at last prevailed over management and NYPD reluctantly went to the auto. All new recruits would have to purchase a 9mm instead of a .38, and in-service officers could buy one if they wanted. NYPD had always required their personnel to buy their own guns. Three double-action-only 16-shooters were authorized: the SIG P226 DAO, the S&W Model 5946, and the Glock 19. The Glock was by far the lightest and most compact for off duty and plainclothes carry, and by far the least expensive; it became first choice by such an overwhelming margin that many observers around the country thought NYPD had standardized on the Glock.

In the mid-1990s, the company found another huge success with their baby Glocks. The size of snubby .38s with twice the firepower and more controllability, the babies shot as well as the big ones. They were dubbed G26 in 9mm and G27 in .40 caliber. Slightly larger compacts were offered in 10mm Auto and .45 Auto, the Glocks 29 and 30 respectively. When a groundswell of popularity emerged in police circles for the powerful and accurate .357 SIG cartridge, Glock offered that chambering through the line as Model 31 (full size), Model 32 (compact) and Model 33 (subcompact).

The company didn’t stop there. Integral recoil reduction ports were offered, creating a factory compensated gun in either compact or full size. These kept the same model numbers as the base guns, but with the suffix “C”. The firm also introduced the “Tactical/Practical” series. Midway in length between full size and long-slide, they were exactly the length of the old Colt Government Model. This suited the .40 caliber G35 well for the Production class in IPSC shooting (where that caliber barely “made major”), and the 9mm G34 perfectly for Stock Service Pistol class in IDPA, where Dave Sevigny has used one to win repeated national championships. A number of departments from Nashua, NH to Kerrville, TX have made the Glock 35 the standard issue duty pistol, usually with a retrofit of a New York trigger.

By the turn of the 21st century, the Glock pistol dominated the American law enforcement market to the tune of roughly 65 percent.

Top, the Glock 27 holds 10 rounds of .40 S&W ammo; bottom, NAA Guardian holds 7 rounds of .380 ACP. Which would you choose?

Modifying the Glock

The pistol comes from the factory with what the company calls a “standard” trigger, which uses an S-shaped spring to connect the trigger to the unique cruciform sear plate. (The “Tactical/Practical” comes with a 3.5-pound trigger, like the long-slide 9mm 17L and .40 G24 models.) Supposedly delivering 5 pounds of pull, the standard trigger generally weighs out to about 5.5 pounds. Most civilian shooters leave it as is, as do many police departments including Washington, D.C. Metro, the Illinois State Police, and the FBI.

Many, including this writer, have followed the lead of the NYSP and gone with the original weight New York Trigger, now known as the NY-1. The intention of this design was to mitigate accidental discharges caused by human error. There is some three-eighths of an inch of travel from when the Glock trigger is at rest and ready to when it reaches its rearmost point and discharges the pistol. On the standard set-up, it feels like a Mauser military rifle trigger with a long, light take-up and then about a tenth of an inch of firm resistance before the shot is fired. When human beings are in danger, their inborn survival mechanism triggers a number of physiological changes, one of which is vasoconstriction. That is, blood flow is shunted away from the extremities and into the body’s core and the major muscle groups. This is why frightened Caucasians are seen to turn ghostly pale, and it is why frightened people become clumsy and lose tactile sensation in their fingers under stress. In such a situation, it is feared that if the finger has erroneously strayed to the trigger prematurely, the shooter won’t be able to feel it taking up trigger slack until too late.

The advantage of the NY-1 trigger is that it offers a very firm resistance to the trigger finger from the very beginning of the pull, a resistance so strong it probably will be palpable to the shooter even in a vasoconstricted state. This means a lot more than merely 3 pounds additional pull weight. (The NY-1 increases the pull to a nominal 8 pounds, which usually measures out to more like 7.75 pounds.) This, plus excellent training, allows NYSP and other departments to have an excellent safety record with these guns.

New York City Police Department initially put some 600 Glocks in the field among specially assigned personnel, ranging from Homicide detectives to the Missing Persons unit. These first guns had the standard 5-pound triggers, and after a spate of accidental discharges, the Firearms Training Unit mandated an even heavier trigger than the State Police had. Thus was born the NY-2 trigger module, also called the New York Plus. This brought the pull up to a stated 12 pounds, which usually measures about 11.5 pounds on a well broken-in Glock.

This writer personally thinks the NY-2 passes the point of diminishing returns by making the trigger harder to control in rapid fire. Like many, I actually shoot better with the NY-1 at 8 pounds than with the standard pull.

The reason is that the different design gives a cleaner “trigger break” as the shot goes off, and the heavier spring better resists “backlash.”

Finally, I’ve found as an instructor that the little S-spring on the standard trigger system is the one weak link in an otherwise ingenious and robust mechanism. I see several break a year. The NY module that replaces that spring is much sturdier and I’ve personally never seen one break. For all these reasons, I have the NY-1 in every Glock that I carry, and strongly recommend it for any Glock carried for duty or defense.

Atop some models sits the other weak link: plastic sights. Retrofit steel sights (the Heinie unit is particularly good) or metal night sights with Tritium inserts that can be ordered on the gun from the factory solve this problem. There is the rare breakage of locking blocks, but that is no more common than cracked locking blocks on Berettas or cracked frames on SIGs, Colts, etc. The finest machines can break when they are used hard and long, and it is no reflection on the product. Outfit your Glock with an NY-1 trigger and good steel sights, and there’s nothing left on it that’s likely to break.

The Appeal of the Glock

This gun is simple. Most armorer’s courses (in which you are taught by the factory to repair the guns) take a week. Glock’s takes one day. The pistol has only 30- some components. Almost all armorer’s operations can be done with a 3/32-inch punch. You do need a screwdriver to remove the magazine release button.

There is no easier pistol to learn to shoot well! No decocking lever to remember; that’s done automatically. No manual safety to manipulate; the safeties are all internal and passive. If your gun was made prior to 1990, call the factory with the serial number and see if it should have the no-charge new-parts update. Then, like every Glock produced for more than a decade, it will be totally impact resistant and “drop-safe.”

Contrary to popular belief, Glock was not the first auto pistol with a polymer frame. This Heckler & Koch P9S which pre-dated the Glock considerably with a “plastic frame,” was not a huge marketing success.

Insert magazine. Rack slide. That’s it. Now shoot it like you would a revolver, taking care to keep your thumb away from the slide and your firing wrist locked, as you would with any semiautomatic pistol.

If you want a manual safety for weapon retention purposes, or because it just gives you peace of mind after a lifetime with some other brand of pistol carried on-safe, an excellent right-hander’s thumb safety can be installed at very reasonable cost by Joe Cominolli, PO Box 911, Solvay, NY 13209.

The Glock is an extraordinarily reliable and long-lived pistol. It is light, fast-handling, and very controllable. The polymer frame can be seen to flex in high-speed photography as it fires, and this seems to provide a recoil-cushioning effect that is enhanced by the natural “locked wrist” angle of its grip-frame. The Hybrid Porting conversion, which reduces recoil by sending several gas jets up through the top of what used to be the slide, will vampire as much as 100 feet per second of velocity and create a louder report, but allows amazing shot-to-shot control. While it seems to take a master gunsmith to make Hybrid-porting work reliably on a 1911, the Glock seems to function perfectly with it installed.

The Glock is southpaw-friendly and lends itself to ambidextrous shooting. A growing cottage industry offers useful accessories for it. Laser sights are available from Laser-Max and Crimson Trace. Models made in the last few years, compact size and larger, have an accessory rail that will accommodate a flashlight. The company has always been scrupulously good about customer service in terms of parts and repairs.

Accuracy is adequate at worst and excellent at best. The only Glocks that seemed to be really inaccurate were the very first runs of the Glock 22, and the company squared that away quickly. I have a Glock 22 that, out of the box, will stay in 2.5 inches at 25 yards with good ammunition; this specimen was produced in 2001. The baby Glocks are famous for their accuracy. This is because the barrels and slides are proportionally thicker and more rigid on these short guns, and also because the double captive recoil spring that softens kick so effectively also guarantees that the bullet is out of the barrel before the mechanism begins to unlock. Modifying a Smith & Wesson auto to have that same accuracy-enhancing feature costs big bucks when done by the factory’s Performance Center; it comes on the smallest Glocks at no charge.

The .45 caliber Glocks also seem to be particularly accurate. First, the .45 ACP has always been a more inherently accurate cartridge than the 9mm Luger and particularly the .40 S&W. Second, the .45 barrels are made on different machinery than the other calibers at Glock, and seem to be particularly accurate. The “baby .45,” the Glock 30, combines both of these worlds and may be the most accurate pistol Glock makes. My Glock 30, factory stock with NY-1 trigger and Trijicon sights, has given me five-shot, 1-inch groups at 25 yards with Federal Hydra-Shok and Remington Match ammunition.

There is a good reason for the Glock pistol’s predominance in the American law enforcement sector and, to a slightly lesser extent, the armed citizen sector. Quite simply, the product has earned it.

Today’s Double-Action Autos

Walther popularized the double-action auto with a de-cocking feature in the 1930s. It was seen at the time as a “faster” auto, the theory being that with a single-action auto like the Colt or Browning, you had to either move a safety lever, or cock a hammer, or jack a slide before firing. With the DA auto, it was thought, one could just carry it off safe and pull the trigger when needed, like a revolver.

At the time, most of America felt that if they wanted an auto that worked like a revolver, they would just carry one of their fine made-in-USA revolvers, thank you very much. In the middle of the 20th century, 1911 flag-bearer Jeff Cooper applied an engineer’s phrase that would stick to the double-action auto forever after. The concept was, he said, “an ingenious solution to a non-existent problem.”

Whether or not that was true at the time, a problem later came up to fit the solution. America had become, by the latter 20th century, the most litigious country in the world. With more lawyers per capita than any other nation, the United States became famous for tolerating utterly ridiculous lawsuits that, had they been brought in a country that followed the Napoleonic Code, would probably have ended up penalizing the plaintiff for having brought an unmeritorious case. Two elements of this would have impact on handgun selection in both police and private citizen sectors.

Gun control had joined abortion as one of the two most polarized debates in the land. Prosecutors were either elected by the same folks who elected the politicians, or appointed by elected politicians. Some of them found it expedient to “make examples” of politically incorrect shootings of bad guys by good guys. For this, they needed a hook.

Contrary to popular belief, prosecutors don’t get big occupation bonus points for winning a conviction for murder instead of manslaughter. If they get a conviction, they get credit, period. If they bring a case and lose, they lose credibility and political capital. This is why a good chance of a win on a lower charge beats a poor chance of conviction on a higher charge. To convince a dozen people with common sense sitting in a jury box that a good cop or a decent citizen has suddenly become a monstrous murderer is a pretty tough sell. But to convince them that a good person could have been careless for one second and made a mistake is an easy job, because every adult has done exactly that at some time. A murder conviction requires proving the element of malice, but a manslaughter conviction requires only proving that someone did something stupid. Thus, it came into vogue to attack politically incorrect justifiable homicide incidents with a charge of manslaughter.

A relic of the early 20th Century, the slide-mounted safety/de-cock lever of Walther PPK inspired designs of S&W, Beretta, and others much later in the “wondernine” period.

Ruger’s P90 beat every other double-action .45 tested and became the issue weapon for author’s police department in 1993, along with Safariland SS-III security holster.

It is common knowledge that a light trigger pull – what a lay person would call a “hair trigger” – is more conducive to the accidental discharge of a firearm than a long, heavy trigger pull that requires a deliberate action. Cocking a gun, or pointing an already cocked gun at a suspect, could therefore be seen as negligence. Now, the key ingredient of a manslaughter conviction was in place.

It reached a point where prosecutors would actually manufacture a “negligent hair trigger argument” even in cases where the gun was never cocked. One such case, State of Florida v. Officer Luis Alvarez, is mentioned elsewhere in this book. Alvarez’ department responded by rendering all the issue service revolvers double-action-only. Some saw this as a weak concession to political correctness. It must be pointed out, however, that if the double-action-only policy had been in place before the shooting, the prosecution never would have had that false hook on which to hang the case, to begin with.

And that was just in criminal courts. On the civil lawsuit side, something similar was happening. Plaintiffs’ lawyers realized that the deep pockets they were after belonged to insurance companies, not individual citizens who got involved in self-defense shootings. Almost everyone who shot an intruder had homeowner liability insurance, but such policies specifically exempt the underwriter from liability for a willful tort, that is, a deliberately inflicted act of harm. The lawyers could only collect if the homeowner shot the burglar by accident. Thus was born the heavy thrust of attacking guns with easy trigger pulls, and of literally fabricating the “cocked gun theory of the case.” Private citizens who kept guns for self-protection and were aware of these things began to see the advisability of double-action-only autos as well as revolvers for home defense and personal carry.

A two-pronged concern was now in place. Fear of accidental discharges of weapons with short trigger pulls, and fear of false accusation of the same. Police chiefs who had once authorized cocked and locked Colts and Brownings for officers now banned those guns. Detroit PD and Chicago PD are two examples. Many private citizens who carried guns and followed these matters saw the trend, and decided that a design that was double-action at least for the first shot might have an advantage.

Thus was born the interest in DA pistols. The compactness of the Walther .380 had already made it a popular concealed carry handgun. Smith & Wesson’s double-action Model 39, introduced in the mid-50s, had captured the attention of gun buffs. It was a good looking gun, slim and flat to carry in the waistband, with a beautiful feel in the hand, and it was endorsed by such top gun writers of the time as Col. Charles Askins, Jr., George Nonte, and Jan Stevenson.

The 1970s saw the development of high-capacity 9mm double-action designs, and of hollow-point 9mm ammo that got the caliber up off its knees. With expanding bullets, the 9mm Luger’s reputation as an impotent man-stopper in two world wars was rehabilitated to a significant degree.

These guns became known as “wondernines,” a term that was coined, I believe, by the late Robert Shimek. Known to gun magazine readers as an expert on handgun hunting and classic military-style small arms, Shimek was known only to a few as a career law enforcement officer who wore a 9mm SIG P226 to work every day.

These “wondernines” worked. In the late 70s and early 80s, the manufacturers refined the designs to meet the virtually 100 percent reliability requirements in the JSSAP (Joint Services Small Arms Project) tests that would determine the service pistol that would replace the ancient 1911 as the U.S. military sidearm. As a result, they were thoroughly “de-bugged.” The prospect of a giant, lucrative government contract proved to be a powerful incentive to “get the guns right.”

They would become the platforms of the .40 S&W cartridge in 1990, and of the subsequent .357 SIG cartridge. They would be enlarged, keeping the same key design features, to handle the .45 ACP and the 10mm Auto.

These were the guns that would change the face of the handgun America carried.

Beretta

Beretta snatched the gold ring when the ride on the JSSAP merry-go-round was over, winning the contract as the new primary service pistol of the U.S. armed forces. There were a few broken locking blocks and separated slides. Though some of these involved over-pressure lots of ammo that would have broken any gun, and others involved sound suppressors whose forward-levering weight didn’t allow the locking blocks to work correctly, jealous manufacturers who lost the bid amplified the “problem” to more than it was. Almost without exception, military armorers and trainers who monitor small arms performance in actual conflicts have given the Beretta extremely high marks for its performance in U.S. military service.

It has also stood up nobly in the U.S. police service. For many years now the issue weapon of LAPD (almost 10,000 officers) and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (some 7,000 deputies), the Beretta 92, 9mm has given yeoman’s service. Thanks to its open-top slide design, it is virtually jam-free, and one of the very few pistols that can equal or exceed the Glock in terms of reliability.

The glass-smooth feel of the action as you hand-cycle the Beretta is the standard by which others are judged. The 92F series, with combination manual safety/decocking lever, may have the single easiest slide-mounted safety to operate. Two large departments, one East Coast and one West, mandate that their personnel carry the Beretta on-safe. Each department has logged numerous cases in which the wearers’ lives were saved by this feature when someone got the gun away from an officer, tried to shoot him or her, and couldn’t because the safety was engaged.

The Beretta is also a very accurate pistol. Five rounds of 9mm commonly go into 1-1/2 inches at 25 yards from the standard Model 92. The Model 96, chambered for .40 S&W, passed the demanding accuracy tests of the Indiana State Police and was adopted as that agency’s standard issue sidearm. The state troopers of Rhode Island, Florida, and Pennsylvania joined Indiana and issue the 96 at this writing. The city police of San Francisco and Providence also issue the 96.

A new wave classic, to mix a metaphor, the Beretta 92 proved to be an utterly reliable 16-shot 9mm, winning the U.S. Government contract and arming countless U.S. police agencies. This is a G-model, customized by Ernest Langdon, who won national championships with such guns.

Colt’s Pocket Nine, a 9mm Parabellum the size of a Walther PPK but lighter, was the company’s high point in double-action auto manufacture. For reasons explained in the text, it is no longer produced at this writing.

In .40 S&W, my experience has been that the Beretta is a notch below its 9mm cousin in reliability. For this reason, Ohio state troopers dumped the 96 for the SIG equivalent.

Beretta’s updated Cougar is a good gun. It is the issue weapon of the North Carolina Highway Patrol (in caliber .357 SIG) among others. The latest version, the polymer-frame 9000 series, is not particularly ergonomic and has not been so well received.

Colt

America’s most famous producer of single-action autos has not fared well on the double-action side of that table. Their first, the Double Eagle, misfired constantly in its original incarnation. When I broke the story on that, Colt was gracious enough to recognize the problem and correct it. The pistol, however, still looked like what it was: a Government Model with a double-action mechanism cobbled together in a fragile way to get past the Seecamp Conversion patent. It did not fare well and is no longer in production.

Colt’s All-American 2000 was a sad and ugly thing. Jams. Misfires. Pathetic accuracy and a horrible trigger pull. Heralded by the newsstand gun magazines as a great leap forward in technology, it soon died a well-deserved death.

Colt’s only good double-actions were their last, both DAOs. The little Pony .380 worked, and the Pocket Nine 9mm was a breakthrough: a full power, seven-shot 9mm Luger exactly the size of a Walther PPK .380 but 5 ounces lighter, utterly reliable, and capable of 2-inch, five-shot groups at 25 yards. While the triggers were heavy, they were controllable. Alas, only about 7,000 Pocket Nines were produced before a patent infringement suit by Kahr Arms shut down production.

Heckler & Koch

HK’s 1970s entries in the double-action auto market, the VP70Z and the P9S, did not succeed. The former worked well as a machine pistol and poorly as a semiautomatic. The latter, exquisitely accurate, was before its time. It needed its chamber throated to feed hollow-points reliably, and its decocking mechanism, which involved pulling the trigger, was enough to make police firearms instructors wake up in the middle of the night screaming.

HK’s ergonomic P7 shows off its “guaranteed head-shot accuracy” at 25 yards with two of the most accurate 9mm rounds available, 115-grain Federal 9BP and Winchester’s Olin Super Match 147-grain, both with JHP projectiles.

The P7 was much more successful. With an ingenious combination of gas operation and a squeeze-cocking fire control system that the company called Continuous Action, it created a cult following among handgunners. The gun was either loved or hated with no middle ground. A fixed barrel made it deadly accurate, with sub-2-inch groups at 25 yards more the rule than the exception. The squeeze-cocking came naturally and the pistol was super-fast to draw and fire. A low bore axis, plus the gas bleed mechanism, made it the lightest-kicking of 9mm combat pistols. Widely adopted in Germany, it became the issue service pistol of the New Jersey State Police in 1984 as the P7M8, with American style mag release and eight-round magazine. The double-stack P7M13 was subsequently adopted by Utah state police.

Its strength was that it was easy to shoot; its weakness was that it was easy to shoot. Many instructors associated the design with a likelihood of accidental discharge. Cost of manufacturing plus the changing balance of dollar and Deutschmark soon rendered it unaffordable for most civilians and almost all police. Still produced in the M8 format, this unique and excellent pistol is fading from the scene, but still cherished by a handful of serious aficionados, all of whom seem able to shoot it extremely well.

HK tried to get back into the police service pistol market with the gun they sold to the German armed forces, the USP. A rugged polymer-framed gun, it is available in several variants: lefty, righty, double-action-only, single-action-only, safety/decock or decock-only lever, and assorted combinations of the same. Available calibers are 9mm, .40, .357 SIG, and .45 ACP. It was the USP that introduced the now widely copied concept of the dust cover portion of the frame being moulded as a rail to accept a flashlight attachment.

I’ve found the USP conspicuously reliable, except for occasional jams in the 9mm version. It is also extremely accurate. Though competition versions are available, the standard models, particularly in .45, are tight shooters in their own right. Starting with probably the heaviest and “roughest” double-action only trigger option in the industry, they now have one of the best in their LE module, developed in 2000 for a Federal agency and offered to the civilian public in 2002. The HK USP is approved for private purchase by Border Patrol, and is the standard issue service pistol of departments ranging from San Bernardino PD to the Maine State Police.

Kahr

Brilliantly designed by Justin Moon, the Kahr pistol is slim and flat, comparable in size to most .380s, and utterly reliable with factory 9mm or .40 S&W ammo. The double-action-only trigger is smooth and sweet, and the guns have surprising inherent accuracy. My K9 once gave me a 1-3/8-inch group at 25 yards with Federal 9BP ammo.

The only real complaint shooters had about the Kahr was that, being all steel, it seemed heavy for its size. This was answered with the polymer-framed, P-series guns. Whether the polymer-framed P9 and P40 will last as long as the rugged little K9 or K40, or their even smaller MK (Micro Kahr) siblings, is not yet known. NYPD has approved the K9 as an off-duty weapon for their officers, and Kahrs sell quite well in the armed citizen sector.

The Kahr’s controls are so close together, given the small size of the pistol, that a big man’s fingers can get in the way a little. By the same token, the gun tends to be an excellent fit in petite female hands.

Improving on the Kahr is gilding the lily, but a few gunsmiths can actually make it even better. One such is Al Greco at Al’s Custom, 1701 Conway Wallrose Rd., PO Box 205, Freedom, PA 15042.

Kel-Tec

In the early 90s, noted gun designer George Kehlgren pulled off a coup: the Kel-Tec P-11. With heavy use of polymer and a simple but heavy double-action-only, hammer-fired design, he was able to create a pocket-size 9mm that could retail for $300. At 14-1/2 ounces it was the weight, and also roughly the overall size, of an Airweight snubby revolver, but instead of five .38 Specials it held 10 9mm cartridges. One California law enforcement agency hammered more than 10,000 rounds of Winchester 115-grain +P+ through it with very few malfunctions and no breakage during testing.

The magazine is a shortened version of the S&W 59 series. This means that hundreds of thousands of pre-ban, “grandfathered” 14- and 15-round S&W 9mm magazines exist to feed it. This is handy for spare ammo carry and for home defense use where concealment is irrelevant.

Kel-Tec has made the same gun in .40, but not enough are in circulation for the author to have a feel of how they work. Numerous Kel-Tec P-11s have been through our classes, and the only problem with them is that the heavy trigger pull becomes fatiguing during long days of shooting. However, any competent pistolsmith can give you a better pull for only a small portion of the money you save buying a P-11. Early problems with misfires in the first production runs were quickly squared away.

Perhaps Kehlgren’s most fascinating design is his tiny P-32, which will be discussed two chapters subsequent.

ParaOrdnance

When the sharp Canadians who popularized the high-capacity 1911 brought out their double-action-only model, they called in the LDA. The shooting public automatically assumed it stood for Light Double-Action, even though ParaOrdnance never called in that per se. They didn’t have to. The assumption was correct. The pull stroke feels so light that your first thought is, “Will this thing even go off?”

It will. There were some minor problems with the very first LDAs, but the company got them squared away in a hurry. The ones we’ve seen since, in all sizes, have worked great. Factory throated with ramped barrels and fully supported chambers, they have the slimness and quick safety manipulation of the standard 1911, and in the single-stack models take the same magazines. This .45 is an excellent choice for the 1911 devotee who thinks it’s time to go to something in a double-action.

Ruger

Ruger’s P-series of combat auto pistols, scheduled to debut in 1985, did not hit the marketplace until 1988. Bill Ruger had shown me the blueprints and rough castings of his original design, an affordable 9mm auto, in the early 1980s and had sworn me to secrecy. Early tests showed some jamming problems with some departments, though the ones we tested were perfectly reliable, but accuracy was sloppy with 4-inch to 5-inch groups being common at 25 yards. The P85 was not a success.

Stung by this, one of the few failures in the history of his company, Bill Ruger and his engineers set to work with a vengeance to correct the problems. The P85 Mark II and later the P89 had total reliability and better accuracy. There would be excellent medium- to service-size .40s and more compact 9mms to come. For my money, though, the triumph of the P-series was the P90 in .45 ACP.

Accuracy is a hallmark of the Ruger .45. The author’s department-issue P90 has just scored 597 out of 600 points on a PPC course.

Unlike most 1911s, the “new wave” Ruger P90 feeds reliably with everything from light target loads (bottom) through standard .45 ACP (center) to the hottest +P with 10mm auto power level (top).

Designed at a time when it looked as if the 10mm would be the best-selling law enforcement round, the P90 was engineered to take a lifetime supply of that powerful ammo. Ironically, it was never chambered for that cartridge commercially, but in .45 the gun was “over-engineered,” meaning it could take unlimited amounts of hot +P ammo with impunity. Moreover, thanks to some input from Irv Stone at BarSto, the P90 was the most accurate duty auto Ruger ever produced. One and a half inches for five shots at 25 yards is typical, and with the best ammo, I’ve seen these guns produce groups under an inch at that distance. There is no more accurate “modern style” .45 auto, though the Glock, SIG, and HK USP may equal, but not exceed, the Ruger in this respect.

The P90 is also extraordinarily reliable. In testing for the 1993 adoption of a duty auto, my department found that the Ruger P90 outperformed two more famous big-name double-action .45s, and adopted the P90. It has been in service ever since and has worked fine. Gun expert Clay Harvey tracked .45 autos of all brands used intensively for rental at shooting ranges, and found the Ruger undisputedly held the top spot in terms of reliability. In the latter half of the 1990s, Ruger introduced the P95 9mm and P97 .45 with polymer frames. These allowed production economy that made these guns super-good buys at retail, and both had superb state of the art ergonomics and fit to the hand.

San Diego PD bought large numbers of Ruger 9mm autos and reported excellent results. Ditto the Wisconsin State Patrol, which issued Ruger 9mm autos exclusively for many years.

SIG-Sauer

Originally imported to the U.S. long ago as the Browning BDA, the SIG P220 .45 was adopted by the Huntington Beach, CA PD. Numerous other agencies followed after learning of HBPD’s excellent experience with the gun. And, after decades of ignoring their homegrown 1911 pistol, numerous police departments looked at swapping .38 revolvers for .45 autos. A trend was emerging. When the P226 16-shot 9mm didn’t make it out of the finals for the military contract, the police community welcomed the pistol with open arms.

Adopted and proven by Huntington Beach (CA) PD, the SIG P220 popularized the double-action .45 auto among America’s police and armed citizenry. This is the latest version, all stainless, with 9-round total capacity.

The SIG fits most hands well, and soon there was a short-reach trigger available for those with smaller fingers. The trigger action was deliciously smooth, and the SIG was easy to shoot well. Straight-line feed meant that it fed hollow-points from the beginning. Texas and Arizona troopers went from revolvers to SIGs early, and though both have changed calibers since, neither has changed brand. One of the first auto pistols approved for wear by rank and file agents, the SIG has been a popular FBI gun ever since. It has long been the weapon of Secret Service and Air Marshals. The troopers of Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Michigan, Vermont, and Virginia have joined Texas and Aarizona troopers in adopting the SIG. This writer has carried the P226 and P220 on patrol for many a shift and always felt totally confident in the weapons.

“New wave” combat handguns deliver accuracy users of some of the classics could only dream about. Here are three five-shot groups at 25 yards with different .45 ACP rounds from SIG P220 stainless double-action.

With the early P226 and P220, the springs on the side-mounted magazine release tended to be too light, resulting in an occasional unintended drop of a magazine. This was fixed some time ago. One runs across the occasional cracked frame, but SIG is good about fixing them, and the guns are so well designed they keep running even if the frame is cracked. The most annoying problem is a tendency for the grip screws to work loose.

SIGs tend to be very accurate pistols. I’ve seen more than one P220 group five shots inside an inch at 25 yards with Federal Match 185-grain .45 JHP, and the P226 will go around 1-1/2 inches with Federal 9BP or Winchester’s OSM (Olin Super Match) 147-grain subsonic. The side-mounted decocking lever is easy to manipulate, and the SIG-Sauer design is more southpaw-friendly than a lot of shooters realize. Your experience, if you buy a SIG, is unlikely to be sour.

Smith & Wesson

The company that introduced the American-made “double-action automatic” took a while to get it right. There were a lot of feed failures and breakages in early Model 39, 39-2, and 59 pistols. Moreover, those guns were not drop-safe unless the thumb safety was engaged. Illinois State Police made them work by having their Ordnance Unit throat the feed ramp areas of all 1,700 or so pistols in inventory.

The second generation was drop-safe, and designed to feed hollow-points. These were characterized by three-digit model numbers without hyphens: the 9mm Model 459, for example, the Model 469 compact 9mm that the company called the “Mini-Gun,” and the first of the long-awaited S&W .45 autos, the Model 645.

Ergonomics, however, still weren’t great. The trigger pull suffered by comparison to the SIG, and the grips felt boxy and square. The introduction in 1988 of the third-generation guns with four-digit model numbers (5906, 4506, etc.) cured those problems. The only remaining source of irritation on S&W’s “conventional style” defense autos is the occasional badly placed sharp edge.

From CHP to the Alaska Highway Patrol, S&W’s 12-shot .40 caliber Model 4006 is the choice. S&W .40s are also worn by the troopers of Iowa, Michigan and Mississippi, while Idaho has the double-action only S&W .45 and Kentucky State Police issue the 10mm S&W Model 1076. A number of S&W autos are found in the holsters of FBI agents and Chicago and New York coppers, and S&W 9mm and .45 pistols are the only approved brand in addition to the Beretta for LAPD officers. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police use the S&W 9mm auto exclusively, in DAO models.

In concealed carry, two S&W autos stand out above all others. One is the accurate, super-compact, utterly reliable Model 3913 9mm. Endorsed by every leading female firearms instructor from Lyn Bates to Gila Hayes to Paxton Quigley, the 3913 works well in small hands and its safety features, like those of its big brother, make it ideal for those at risk of disarming attempts. Not only does the standard 3913 have a slide-mounted manual safety, but like the Browning Hi-Power and its own traditional siblings, it has a magazine-disconnector safety. This means that if someone is getting the gun away from you, you can press the release button and drop the magazine; this will render the cartridge in the chamber “unshootable” unless pressure was consistently applied to the trigger from before the magazine was dropped. This feature has saved a number of police officers in struggles over service pistols. It makes sense to security-minded private citizens, too.

The double-action-only version of SIG P226 (note absence of de-cocking lever) is in wide use by Chicago PD, NYPD, and numerous other agencies.

The other standout, a genuine “best buy” in the compact .45 auto class, is the Model 457. Compact and light in weight, this 8-shot .45 auto has controllable recoil, delivers every shot into about 2.5 inches at 25 yards, and is a stone bargain because it has S&W’s economy-grade flat gray finish. The action is as smooth as that of its pricier big brothers. A whole run of these were made in DAO for the Chicago cops, and they were snapped up immediately. Cops know bargains.

Taurus

In the last two decades of the 20th Century, the Brazilian gunmaker Forjas Taurus doggedly rose from an also-ran maker of cheap guns to establish a well-earned reputation in the upper tiers of reliability and quality. Much of the credit belongs to their PT series of auto pistols. Originally these were simply licensed copies of the early model Beretta 9mm. Over the years, Taurus brought in some design features of their own, notably a frame-mounted combination safety catch and de-cocking lever similar to the one that would later be employed on the HK USP.

John Hall, right, then head of the Firearms Training Unit of FBI, shows the author the Bureau’s new S&W Model 1076 10mm in Hall’s office at the FBI Academy, Quantico. The year is 1990. Photo courtesy Federal Bureau of Investigation.

We see a lot of Taurus pistols at Lethal Force Institute. The PT-92 through PT-100 models in 9mm and .40 S&W come in, shoot several hundred rounds, and leave without a malfunction or a breakage. Accuracy is comparable to the Beretta, but cost is hundreds of dollars less. Finish may not be quite so nice, nor double-action pull quite so smooth, but these guns are definitely good values. Some find the frame-mounted safety of the Taurus easier and faster to use than the slide mounted lever of the modern Beretta, particularly shooters who come to the double-action gun after long experience with Colt/Browning pattern single-action autos whose thumb safeties are mounted at the same point on the frame.

Taurus has also introduced a high-tech polymer series called the Millennium, aimed at the concealed carry market. This gun has not yet established the excellent and enviable reputation for reliability that the Taurus PT series has earned.

There are many other double-action autos on the market. These listed above, however, constitute the great majority of what American armed citizens carry, and almost the totality of what American police carry. These were the guns that shaped the double-action auto cornerstone of the new combat handgun paradigm.

Super-Light Revolvers

Combat handguns with lightweight aluminum frames have been with us for more than half a century. Smith & Wesson’s Airweights immediately followed the introduction, circa 1950, of the Colt Cobra and lightweight Commander. The aluminum frame became standard a few years later on S&W’s 9mm. The 1970s would see Beretta and SIG follow S&W’s lead with aluminum-framed duty autos, and of course, Glock popularized the polymer frame in the 1980s.

Great leaps were made in the latter 1990s, however, as Smith & Wesson introduced Titanium and then, at the turn of the century, Scandium to create a generation of light and strong revolvers unseen until this time. Taurus followed immediately with their Ultra-Lite and Total Titanium series. Today, we have medium-sized revolvers in easy-to-carry weights that fire .38 Special, .357 Magnum, .44 Special, .45 Colt, and even the mighty .41 Magnum.

For each such gun that finds its way into the field, there are several small-frame “super-lights” that are being carried in .22 Long Rifle, .32 Magnum, .38 Special, and even .357 Mag. The majority of these are .38s.

The reason the little super-lights are so much more popular than the big ones doesn’t have much to do with the fact that they’ve been around just a little bit longer. It’s a convenience thing. There is a huge market among civilians with CCWs and cops already overburdened with equipment. People want small, powerful handguns that don’t drag and sag when worn on the body. Let’s examine some of the weight standards we’re talking about.

A seven-shot L-frame snubby is a good “envelope” for the ultra-light .357 concept.

Smith & Wesson’s Centennial “hammerless” revolver is a case in point. I own them in all four of the different weight configurations. It’s interesting to see how they “weigh in,” in more ways than one.

Model 640 all-steel

This is one of the first of the re-issued Centennials, produced circa 1990 with the frame stamped +P+. I’ve always carried mine with the 158-grain +P FBI loads. It shoots exactly where the sight picture looks. It is very accurate, and head-shots at 25 yards are guaranteed if I do my part. Recoil with the +P is stiff; not fun, but not hard to handle either. Shooting a 50-round qualification course with it is no problem. It weighs 19.5 ounces unloaded.

Model 442 Airweight aluminum-frame

As with the 640, this gun’s barrel and cylinder are machined entirely from solid ordnance steel. This gun shoots where it is aimed. It is reasonably accurate. A perfect score on the 50-round “qual” course may not be fun with the now distinctly sharper recoil, but it is not my idea of torture, either. A perfect score on the qualification isn’t that much harder to achieve. The more visible sight configuration on the newest Airweights helps here. Weight is 15.8 ounces unloaded.

A recoil-absorption glove is a most useful accessory when shooting the lightest, smallest-frame revolvers!

Here are the four S&W Centennials discussed in this chapter. From top: all-steel, Airweight, AirLite Ti, and AirLite Sc.

Top, a factory brushed nickel Model 442 Airweight, and below, an AirLite Ti. Both have Crimson Trace LaserGrips. The lower gun is one third lighter, but feels twice as vicious in recoil. The author prefers the Airweight for his own needs.

Model 342 AirLite Ti

This gun’s barrel is a thin steel liner wrapped inside an aluminum shroud, and its cylinder is made of Titanium. Like most such guns I’ve seen, it hits way low from where its fixed sights are aimed. I cannot shoot +P lead bullets (the “FBI Load”) in it because the recoil is so violent it pulls them loose. Jacketed +P is the preferred load. The one qualification I shot with this was with jacketed CCI 158-grain +P. Recoil was so vicious I was glad I had a shooting glove in the car. When it was over, I was down two points. Rather than try again for a perfect score, I took what I had. It was hurting to shoot the thing. This gun is not as accurate as the all-steel or Airweight, putting most .38 Special loads in 3-inch to 7-inch groups at 25 yards. Weight, unloaded, is 11.3 ounces.

Model 340 Sc Scandium

Chambered for .357 Magnum, this gun manages not to tear up the FBI load in the gun’s chambers, but doesn’t shoot it worth a damn for accuracy. Admittedly, this isn’t the most accurate .38 Special cartridge made, but the load gives me about 5 inches at 25 yards in my Airweight, versus 15 inches of what I can only call spray out of this gun, with bullets showing signs of beginning to keyhole. This gun also shot way low. Recoil with Magnum loads was nothing less than savage. The little Scandium beast was somewhat more accurate with other rounds, but not impressively so. After five rounds, the hands were giving off that tingling sensation that says to the brain, “WARNING! POTENTIAL NERVE DAMAGE.” When passed among several people who shoot .44 Magnum and .480 Ruger revolvers for fun, the response was invariably, “Those five shots were enough, thanks.” I didn’t even try to shoot a 50-shot qualification with it. Unloaded weight is 12.0 ounces.

The little notch at the tip of ramped front sight is an improvement on current S&W J-frame snubbies with all-steel barrels. This is the LadySmith Airweight.

Accuracy is in the barrel assembly. The 342 AirLite Ti, left, has a thin barrel within a shroud, and a too-high sight that makes shots print low. The conventional one-piece steel barrel of Airweight LadySmith, right, delivers better groups and proper sight height puts shots “on the money.”

The thin steel barrel sleeves of the Ti and Sc guns just don’t seem to deliver the accuracy of the all-steel barrels of the Airweight and all steel models. All four guns are DAO, so it wasn’t the trigger. The same relatively deteriorating accuracy was seen in the super-lights with mild .38 wadcutter ammo and big Pachmayr grips, so it wasn’t the recoil. To what degree this is important to you is a decision only you can make.

Now, let’s put all that in perspective. In the 1950s when all this ultra-light gun stuff started, Jeff Cooper defined the genre as meant to be “carried much and shot seldom.” Alas, the days when we can do that are over, at least in law enforcement. Any gun we carry on the job is a gun we are required to qualify with repeatedly. As I look at my 340 Sc and 342 AirLite Ti, it occurs to me that if I’m deliberately going to do something that hurts like hell, I should go to Mistress Fifi’s House of Pain and at least get an orgasm out of the deal.

The Model 340 Sc 12-ounce “baby Magnum” was among the first S&Ws to receive integral lock treatment; note keyway above cylinder latch.

A warning on the barrel shroud of AirLite Sc: it reads, 357 S&W MAG/NO LESS THAN 120 GR BULLET.

This is why, for my own small backup revolver needs, I tend toward either the Model 442 or the Ruger SP-101. While the latter gun is even heavier than the Model 640, it fires the .357 Magnum round with very controllable recoil. A qualification with the SP-101 using full power 125-grain Magnum ammo could be called “exhilarating.” The same qualification with the same ammo in the baby Scandium .357 qualifies absolutely as torture, at least in my hands.

Different people have different abilities and needs. My fellow gunwriter Wiley Clapp admits that the 342 Sc kicks like hell, but it’s his favorite pocket gun nonetheless, even when stoked with Elmer Keith Memorial Magnum ammo. As you look at our differing preferences, note two things. First, Wiley is a big, strong guy. I, on the other hand, resemble the “before” picture in the Charles Atlas ads. Second, Wiley is retired from law enforcement and no longer required to qualify at regular intervals with backup guns and their carry ammo. Those repeated qualifications are something I’m still stuck with.

The Scandium J-frame gave 100 percent reliability with Golden Saber medium-velocity .357 Magnum, but uninspiring accuracy.

The grimace on the face of this shooter after firing his first full Magnum round from the Scandium J-frame says it all.

For me, the balance of the super-light versus the Airweight comes out in favor of the Airweight for two reasons. At least in .38 Special, I can use my favorite load, that +P lead hollow-point that would pull loose in the chambers of the lighter guns. Moreover, in my career as an instructor I’ve seen a whole lot of people conditioned to flinch and jerk their shots because their gun hurt their hand when it went off. I don’t want that situation to develop with me especially when I’m into the last layer of my safety net, the backup gun in my pocket. That’s why, since I have to shoot a lot with any gun I carry, I want to carry a gun I’m comfortable shooting a lot.

We have more choices than ever, choices that fit some of us better than others. That’s a good thing.

There are a great many people who can benefit from the super-light small-frame revolvers. Before you choose, check out the Taurus line. Some are equipped with integral recoil compensators that make them distinctly easier to shoot than a Smith & Wesson of equivalent weight with the same ammo. In fact, the comps take enough oomph out of the kick that the lead bullet +P rounds don’t start to disassemble themselves in the chambers of Taurus guns so outfitted.

Another option is caliber change. My colleague Charlie Petty recommends the .32 Magnum in these guns. The recoil is much more controllable and the power level will still be more debilitating to an opponent than a mouse-gun. And, speaking of mouse-guns, a considerable number of the AirLite Ti revolvers have been sold as the Model 317, an eight-shot .22 that weighs only 9.9 ounces unloaded.

Let’s think about that last concept. No, I’m not recommending a .22 for self-defense. But if the person is only going to carry a 10-ounce .25 auto anyway, they’re far better served with a top quality eight-shot, 10-ounce .22 revolver. The Model 317 will go off every time you pull the trigger, which is more than you can say for most .25 autos. Unlike most small auto pistols in .22 Long Rifle, this revolver will work 100 percent with the hot, hypervelocity .22 rimfire ammo typified by CCI's Stinger, the cartridge that began that concept long ago. Perhaps because the .22 doesn’t generate enough heat to affect the thin steel barrel sleeve, the AirLite .22 will generally group better than the .38 and .357 versions. It will outshoot most any .25 auto going.

Here’s what happens when you use full-power lead bullets in a Ti or Sc S&W. Inertia from the violent recoil pulled the bullet nose of the 158-grain Magnum forward, “prairie-dogging” out of the chamber and preventing rotation.

The Model 340 Sc jammed after the third shot. Note how the bullets of Remington 158-grain SWC .357 cartridges have pulled forward from recoil inertia. At right is a properly sized round from same box for comparison.

More Wattage for the Lite

The super-light revolver comes into a different perspective when you look at the larger models. In the Taurus line, I’ve found all the Ultra-Lites and Total Titanium models I’ve fired to be good shooters. The larger frame models come with the company’s unique Ribber grips, for which I give great thanks. They soak up recoil better than anything S&W currently offers. Add to that the option of the integral recoil compensator, and you have a much more shootable gun.

Alas, as with the Smiths, all is not perfect with these guns, either. I’ve run across several Taurus revolvers of this genre whose cylinders were simply too tight and were rubbing against the forcing cone of the barrel, mucking up the trigger pull and binding the action. A quick trip back to the plant to widen the barrel cylinder gap fixes this, however. I’ve also seen several that didn’t shoot to point of aim.

Groups, however, were consistently good. I recall one snubby .41 Magnum Taurus that put five shots into 2-5/16 inches at 25 yards. The ammo was PMC 41A, a full power 170-grain .41 Magnum hollow-point. If the late, great Elmer Keith, the father of the .44 Magnum and co-parent of the .41 Mag, still walked among us, I suspect this little Taurus is what he’d carry for backup.

Both S&W and Taurus have produced L-frame .357 Magnum super-lights. They weigh in the range of 18 ounces, which is about the heft of the old six-shot K-frame Model 12 Airweight .38 snubby. But instead of six .38s, these sleek shooters give you seven rounds of .357 Magnum. Recoil can be snappy, but nothing you can’t handle. Use the Ribber grips on the Taurus, and get a pair of K-frame round-butt Pachmayr Decelerator Compac grips for the S&W to take the sting out. These are comfortable holster guns and conceal well under a light jacket, or in a good inside-the-waistband holster under a “tails-out” shirt.

S&W has also sold a number of their Model 396 revolvers, hump-backed L-frames that hold five rounds of .44 Special. The shape of the grip-frame forces you to have your hand low on the gun, and this puts the bore at such a high axis that the gun has a nasty upward muzzle whip. Personally, I can’t warm up to this gun. Accuracy is mediocre, in a world where even short-barreled Smith & Wesson .44 Specials have historically shot with noble precision. I tested one next to a Glock 27 on one occasion. The auto pistol was smaller, roughly the same weight, and held 10 rounds compared to the wheelgun’s five, in roughly the same power range. The Glock shot tighter groups faster and was actually easier to conceal.

All these guns have a place. The light .357s and the little Taurus .41 make good sense when you’re in dangerous animal country and want something very powerful for up-close-and-personal defense, but want to keep the backpack as light as you can.

The big contribution of the super-lights to combat handgunnery is found, nonetheless, in the smallest ones. Easier to conceal on an ankle or snake out of a pocket than a square-backed auto pistol, easy to load and unload and utterly reliable, these little revolvers make up for their vicious recoil with their reassuring presence: being so easy to carry and to access, they’re always there.

At 7 yards, the J-frame Scandium .357 gave this acceptable head-shot group.

The finger points to where sights were aimed at 25 yards. The 340 Sc hit far below that, with a poor group.

This federal agent experiences the recoil of a .357 Mag round in S&W 340 Sc.

Here is the Taurus CIA (Carry It Anywhere), that firm’s answer to the S&W Centennial.

Trainer Michael de Bethancourt shows the aggressive stance required to control “baby Magnums” such as this 340 Sc.

When Bert DuVernay was director of Smith & Wesson Academy, he made the very good point that while revolvers were indeed becoming a thing of the past as mainstream police service weapons, the small-framed revolver with a 2-inch barrel seemed assured a spot in the law enforcement armory as a backup and off-duty weapon. He seems to have called it right.

In states where “shall-issue” concealed carry has only recently been instituted, armed citizens are learning all over again how handy the “snub-nose .38” is as a personal protection sidearm. Many of the permits are going to law-abiding civilians who use these as their primary carry guns. For many of them, the option of the super-light models makes carrying a gun easier. For some, the super-light guns make carrying a gun possible. For that reason alone, I am grateful that these good guns exist.

The five gut-shots were aimed at the center of the chest from 25 yards. Ammo was medium-velocity Remington Magnum fired from the 340 Sc. The author is about as pleased as he looks.

Micro Handguns

First, let’s define our terms. How small is small? Smith & Wesson dubbed their 13-shot 9mm pistols of the 1980s, the Model 469 (blue) and 669 (stainless), “Mini-Guns,” but they were substantial enough that a number of cops wound up wearing them as uniform holster weapons. Glock’s smallest models have been known as the “mini-Glocks” and the “baby Glocks.” Kahr Arms dubbed their smallest series with an MK prefix, for “Micro Kahr.”

How small is mini, baby, or micro? We can start smaller than that in the world of the combat handgun.

For many years, the tiny .25 auto was considered the quintessential “ladies’ gun” and the “gentlemen’s vest pocket pistol.” There has been the occasional save of a good person with one of these guns because they simply had a gun, and might not have had anything bigger when the attack came. However, we’ll never know how many people have been killed or crippled by attackers who weren’t stopped in time by the feeble bite of these tiny sub-caliber guns. As the streetwise martial artist Bill Aguiar put it, “A .25 auto is something you carry when you’re not carrying a gun.”

Sometimes a .25 is all you can handle. A psycho was beating a single mom in California to death when her little boy, pre-school age, grabbed her Raven .25 auto and screamed, “Get away from my mommy!” When the man did not, the child carefully shot him in the head, killing him instantly and saving his mother’s life. I doubt he’ll grow up troubled by the act. In Washington, an elderly man with an invalid wife fended off the attackers with the only weapon available, his wife’s little .25 auto. As the attackers broke down the door and came at him, he fired once and the men fled. One died a few steps from the back door from a tiny bullet wound in the carotid artery. The other was captured within a few blocks. The grand jury almost instantly exonerated the old gentleman, and probably considered chipping in to buy him a bigger gun.

Comparable in size are the Colt Pony Pocketlite .380 (left), Beretta Tomcat .32 (center) and Seecamp LWS –32, (right). Author picks the .380 for deep concealment.

Since the 1970s we’ve had tiny, single-action, spur-trigger revolvers that harken back to S&W’s No. 1 revolver of Civil War vintage, only smaller. They range in caliber from .22 Short through .22 Long Rifle to .22 Magnum. These guns are so tiny they are awkward to manipulate. A fellow on the range recently handed me one to fire. I pointed it downrange too casually, and when I triggered a shot, the gun jumped right out of my hand. I had only been holding it with part of one finger. Embarrassing? Yes, but not nearly so embarrassing as if it had happened in a fight.

Let me be the first to say that there are people who owe their lives to these little guns. In Los Angeles, a woman carrying one was savagely attacked. She pressed the muzzle into her assailant’s chest, pulled the trigger, got him just right, and killed him where he stood. The slaying was ruled justifiable. In the south, a police officer was disarmed of his .41 Magnum revolver. The resolute lawman drew his mini-revolver from his pocket and laid into the attacker, who decided that rather than be shot with anything, he would give the revolver back. In South Africa, a gang of armed thugs set upon a man outside his suburban house. Rather than let them get in to attack his family, he drew his miniature single-action .22 revolver and opened fire on them. It was rather like sending a Chihuahua to attack a wolf pack, but he pulled it off. He managed to wound one or two of them. Deciding that being shot even with tiny bullets was not nearly as much fun for them as terrorizing helpless people, the attackers fled.

Yes, there are people who have used tiny guns with tiny bullets successfully for self-defense. There are also people who have jumped out of airplanes with nonfunctional parachutes and survived. It is respectfully submitted that neither is a promising model for the rest of us to follow.

Next up on the handgun ballistics food chain is the humble .32 ACP cartridge. There is no credible authority who will recommend this gun as a primary weapon, but everyone in the business admits that it’s a quantum leap beyond .22 or .25 caliber. Evan Marshall’s research into actual shootings indicates a significant number of one-shot stops with this cartridge. However, a review of the cases synopsized in his books shows a disproportionate number of these were either gun-against-knife or disparity of force cases. Disparity of force is the legal term for when one or more unarmed men attack someone with such force that likelihood of death or great bodily harm becomes imminent. The attacker’s greater size, strength, skill, or force of numbers is treated as the equivalent of a deadly weapon that warrants the use of a genuine deadly weapon in lawful self-defense.

Both at 14.5 ounces, S&W Airweight .38 Special at left is only slightly larger than Beretta Tomcat .32, right. Author chooses the .38 hands down.

The Winchester Silvertip, the CCI Gold Dot, and the Federal Hydra-Shok are hollow-point .32 rounds developed in hopes of getting the .32 caliber up off its knees. They get all the power out of the round that is probably possible. The problem is, there isn’t that much there to start with. We’ve tested these in the slaughterhouse on smaller hogs and goats. The bullets usually deform. Sometimes they expand and sometimes they don’t and sometimes the hollow cavity just turns into a little fish-mouth shape. However, unlike some .380 rounds, they don’t seem prone to ricochet. If they don’t get the caliber up off its knees, they at least get it up off its belly and onto its knees, and that’s something.

Tomcat with tomcat, Beretta on left and Scottish Fold on right. Some have job descriptions more suitable for “mouse-guns” than others.

Jeff Cooper once said that people buy .45s for the powerful cartridge, and buy 9mms because they like the design features of the guns. It follows that people buy tiny guns so they can have some sort of firearm without being inconvenienced by a significant weight in the pocket or by wearing a concealing garment.

The brilliance of the Seecamp design, the pistol that re-popularized the .32 auto in our time, was that Louis Seecamp was able to conceive a pistol the size and shape of a Czech .25 auto that would fire the larger cartridge. The Seecamp is all the more brilliant in that it works. Now, this is the gun of Jeff Cooper’s nightmares: double-action for every shot, no sights, and only a .32. The mission parameter was for a pistol that would be used at arm’s length. Famed officer survival instructor and gunfight survivor Terry Campbell used to call these little pistols “nose guns,” because the only way you could count on stopping the fight was to screw the muzzle up the attacker’s nose and then immediately pull the trigger.

The supply of Seecamp pistols has never caught up with the huge demand in the marketplace. Other companies entered the field with “Seecamp clones”: Autauga Arms, and North American Arms with their Guardian pistol. I never did test the former. The latter wasn’t quite as reliable as the Seecamp but was easier to hit with because it had at least vestigial gunsights.

Next up was the gun that quickly became the best seller of its genre, the Kel-Tec P-32. One of several ingenious designs from the fertile brain of George Kehlgren, the P-32 weighs an incredible 6.6 ounces unloaded. No bigger than the average .25-auto and almost wafer-thin, it has tiny little sights that you can more or less aim with, and a surprisingly nice double-action-only trigger pull. Polymer construction is what reduces the weight. By contrast, the NAA Guardian 13.5, and the Seecamp, 10.5 ounces. Each of these guns holds six rounds in the magazine, and a seventh in the firing chamber. All are DAO. The Kel-Tec is the lightest, the least expensive, and has the easiest trigger pull.

I have seen the occasional Kel-Tec that malfunctioned, usually when it was dirty or had at least gone a lot of rounds between cleanings. I’ve also shot some whose owners swore they had never jammed. Kel-Tec takes good care of their customers if they have a problem.

Perspectives

The young lady in Los Angeles who killed the rapist was in a situation where she simply could not afford for it to be known that she was armed. From undercover cops to private citizens with gun permits who work in antigun environments, the same holds true for a lot of people. Yeah, I know, I’m the guy who said “Friends don’t let friends carry mouse-guns.” But for some people it’s that or nothing.

Let me tell you about one of my clients. He was a hunter and target shooter who owned some fine rifles and shotguns. The only handgun he owned was a gift from a friend, a Smith & Wesson .22 Kit Gun. He took it on hunting trips. He would while away the slow times plinking at tin cans from the porch of the hunting cabin, and the little .22 also allowed him to quickly dispatch a downed deer without damaging the skull for mounting. The night came when a burglar alarm went off in his home, telling him a flower shop he owned was being broken into for the umpteenth time.

If he had gone intending to kill someone, he would have loaded his .30/06 auto rifle or one of his 12-gauge shotguns. Thinking about protection, he grabbed his only handgun, the little .22, and loaded it on the way to the shop. Given the lateness of past police responses in this community in which the cops were heavily burdened with calls, it was his intent to frighten away the intruders. But when he got to the scene he was attacked. He fired two shots and the attacker fled.

Relative sizes, different power levels. Clockwise from noon, S&W Model 3913 9mm, Kahr K9 9mm, S&W Sigma .380, S&W M/640 .38 Special. In the center is Walther PPK .380.

The NAA Guardian .380, center, is barely larger than FN .25 auto, above, or Beretta Jetfire .25 ACP, below. The .380 would be the definite choice here; the Guardian is among the smallest available.

It reinforced both sides of the issue. If the guy ran, he wasn’t incapacitated. Yes. I know. That’s why I don’t recommend .22s. That guy ran a mile before he bled to death! Yes. I know. That’s why I don’t recommend .22s. If that guy had gone into fight mode instead of flight mode he could have still killed your client! Yes. I know. That’s why I don’t recommend .22s. Then why are you talking about this as if his having a .22 was a good thing? Because the circumstances were such that a .22 was the only gun he would have had with him…and it saved his life. End of story.

Perspectives

It’s all well and good to say, “If you don’t carry a .45 or a Magnum, you’re a wimp.” But there is idealism, and there is what Richard Nixon called realpolitik. We have to face reality. I’m fortunate enough that my job, the place I live, and my dress code allow me to carry a full-size fighting handgun almost all the time. Not everyone is that fortunate.

There’s another argument in this vein that goes one tier up. I know a lot of cops who are proud of how they look in their tailored uniforms, and don’t want the unsightly bulge of a big gun for backup. Shall I tell them if they don’t carry a chopped and channeled .45, they deserve to have no backup at all?

The finger touches the point of aim. A decent group from the Beretta Tomcat .32 went extremely low at only 7 yards.

The Guardian .380 is a late-arriving “hide-in-your-hand” pistol barely larger than some .25 autos. A definite “new paradigm” combat handgun.

I know a lot of armed citizens who already realize what a commitment it is to carry a gun all the time, period. If they’re going to carry a second gun – a good idea for civilians, too – their wardrobe may not allow the small revolver or baby Glock I favor. For them, the backup weapon might be a Kel-Tec .32, or nothing at all.

When you demand all or nothing, history shows us, you’re generally likely to end up with nothing. A tiny, small-caliber handgun is not what you’d want to have in your hand if you knew you were going to get into a fight to the death with an armed felon. But it’s at least something. And something is better than nothing.

The Guardian .380, top, is only the tiniest bit larger than the .32 version (below) that preceded it. Nod goes to the .380.