Pocket pistol perfection?

Kel-Tec P32

P32

Ladies and gentlehobbits, welcome back. If you've been following along the last few weeks, we've traced the history of the incredible shrinking pistol. I started out with an S&W Model 14, a big, heavy target revolver. Next came a police trade Model 10. That was a couple inches shorter in the barrel, and had a slimmer grip, but it was still a chunk of steel.

I carried that chunk for about a year, but I soon found that a shoulder rig needs to balance to be comfortable, and 12 rounds of .38 in little plastic speedloaders isn't exactly a lot of ballast. As gun guys are wont to do, I started looking for something smaller.

I'd not really been raised to trust auto-loaders. The only one we had was a High Standard Trophymatic .22 target pistol, to which the concept of functioning through an entire magazine without interruption was completely foreign. I'd also never heard anything good about small guns. This was the domain of the Saturday Night Special, the Raven .25s, the Jennings, and a bunch more pieces of pot metal poo. Even the "nice" guns in that range, the baby Brownings and vest pocket specials were no great shakes. Sorry John Moses.

They may have been nicely machined and well finished, but there were no sights to speak of, no safety features beyond an expectation of Condition Three carry, and because they were blowback actions, they recoiled out of all proportion to their mousy calibers and hefty steel weights.

That was the situation, at least, until George Kelgren came on the scene. He started designing lightweight, polymer pistols with true locked breech designs, in the better of the traditional mouse-gun calibers, .32 ACP and .380 ACP.

I have almost never been an early adopter, yet in this instance I was. I bought one of the first generation Kel-Tec P32s. Smaller than a wallet or pack of smokes, and weighing in at a mere 6 oz, this is the easiest of guns to carry. Lots of other guns have come and gone for me, but this one has stuck around.

The locked breech and .32 caliber make it pleasant to shoot, unlike its very slightly larger younger brother, the P3AT in .380. That one may have more power, but it comes at a price. The P32 is a real sweet spot.

Unfortunately, that's not commonly recognized. The second generation, a few years after mine was produced, was not an improvement, in my opinion. Gone was the elegant hexagonal slide, gone the traditional extractor, in favor of a blocky, squared off slide and a piece of sheet metal bolted to the side of it.

I think George got it right the first time.

All this in praise of a mouse-gun, especially from a company with as spotty a QC record as Kel-Tec, is likely to stir the trolls somewhat. Let me try to head that off, if I can.

I can't speak for all Kel-Tec products. I can't even speak for all P32s. All I can say is that this particular example, which has been with me for almost twenty-five years now, has always run well. The only times its given me issues have been when I've let too much pocket lint accumulate, and gum the works. It's surprisingly accurate for a six-oz gun with a twelve lb trigger and hardly any sights to speak of.

Then there's the elephant in the room, when it comes to mouse guns. (Standing on a chair, and shrieking, obviously.) Power.

"Would you like to be carrying that little pea shooter if you knew you were going into a gunfight?" Tactical Timmy asks.

"Well, no," I reply. "If I knew I was going into a gunfight, any pistol would be too small. I'd want an M14, and a whole bunch of friends with long guns."

Unfortunately, the buddy platoon is hard to carry. Even harder to conceal. Thus it is that we make compromises for portability, concealability, and general quality of life.

Would I rather have a big service gun? Yeah. And most of the time I do carry one. But the little Kel-Tec is just such a low-effort carry that it's always with me. A backup, when I'm carrying a "real" gun, or the gun I carry when I'm not carrying a gun.

Speaking of "real guns," the .45s are just around the corner. Check back next week!