Nevertheless, people do frequently choose lesser calibers than 9mm for the smaller gun that comfortably fits in a pocket.
This round, as a pocket gun or back-up, is meant to compete with those lesser calibers: .25ACP, .32ACP, .380ACP.
We all understand that you MEANT for it to compete with the mouse guns. But it has to be too big, putting it firmly in competition with 9mm pistols, not with the 25/32/380 frames.
If people wanted a 9mm sized, but weakling of a pistol, the Bersa Thunder, Walther PPK, and Ruger LC380 would be running their weight class. But they aren’t - they’re an embarrassing footnote not even getting honorable mention among 9mm pistols in their size class.
I'd only counter that, up until recently... with modern pistol designs, powders and metallurgy... what wasn't achievable with those cartridges then very well could be now.
This has been well considered by the professionals who do this type of work EVERY SINGLE DAY. Modern case design and powders have been around for generations, it’s not new. But the modern consumer has realized the pitiful performance of the 25acp and 32acp just isn’t worth the size, both for lacking stopping power, but also for excessive recoil if the power is increased in the mouse gun size class.
Equally, you can’t fight engineering and materials realities - you can’t make a high pressure, high powered pocket pistol. The mechanical integrity of the LCP sized pistols just can’t contain the power of anything more than a 380. But to achieve your goals - your cartridge is much longer and must run higher pressure than 380, again, meaning it’s going to at LEAST be in a 9mm sized gun, at the chamber and recoil assembly, but with a smaller bore, demanding a longer barrel to get to the same performance of the 380. Those old 25 and 32 designs were small because they could be. The inherent case design to these small bores meant they are weak - which I’ve belabored here - so the pistols could be built small. The more powerful you make it, the bigger it has to get, because steel can only hold what steel can hold. Higher tensile alloys are available, but now you’re talking about a pistol costing $1000-1500 in a market tolerance of $250-500.
With concealed carry coming onto the scene strong in the last decade, and with it a tremendous new demand for pocket guns...
And we’ve addressed this as well - the day of the mouse gun has largely passed. When you consider any market and “trend trending,” you have emergence, eruption, and evolution. A good idea peeks it’s head out from the weeds, and if it’s strong enough to survive, it runs. Typically there’s a stagnation period between eruption and evolution - the evolution is forced by the stagnation to sustain the trend. The market trends will change in time, following these patterns. Your idea is in opposition to the existing market trend, even in its emergence phase, let alone now in its new evolution.
When we started the concealed carry boom 15yrs ago, the only small guns on the market became very popular, very quickly - except the market already recognized they didn’t want anything weaker than 380acp. There was a small bump in sales for the existing 32acp models, just as you would expect for any competing product in a major market trend - the products were there and they were inexpensive, so they sold. There were no new 32 or 25 models introduced, there weren’t any new smaller caliber cartridges developed. Just some sales surge for a near-obsolete product line. Then starting 6-8yrs ago, we hit our first evolution for the concealed carry market.early into the concealed carry market life cycle, we hit our first evolution as the trend cycled away micro 380’s to larger, more powerful pistols. Concealed carrying citizens realized they wanted more grip, longer sight radius, and more power. We didn’t see a resurgence for the mid-sized, compact 380’s like the LC380 (largely a swing and a miss by Ruger) or Bersa Thunder/walther PPK/s. We saw a lot of pocket 9’s coming out to meet that desire. Officer 9mm’s started coming out all over, Glock brought out the 43, Sig 938’s started outselling 238’s. Today, we’re living in the age of the single stack 9mm for concealed carry, and the trend is working tighter and tighter toward that every year. Your design didn’t have a place in the market even in 2005 when the pocket 380’s were all the rage, because it would be larger, more expensive, and have less stopping power, and now when larger guns are more popular, your lack of power isn’t compensated by a few rounds in the magazine.
Equally, most of the concealed carry market (saying this in my 11th year as a concealed carry instructor) has gone away from pocket carry, and that portion of the market was always a minority. Largely moot, as compact size and light weight is important even in a bolstered concealed carry piece, but the concealability difference between a single stack “micro 9” and a 380 mouse gun is wholly moot. The market trend in holsters and pistol models has proven this. In the early days of the concealed carry revolution, there was a lot of pocket carry as guys started shoving guns they already had into their pockets (seems like EVERYONE had a S&W 60 back then, for no reason), then realizing they wanted something smaller and lighter... nobody really liked the idea of stepping down in power to a 380, but that’s what was available. The market demanded lighter weight, single stack 9mm’s, so the industry delivered them, and the market demanded good quality, low cost holsters, and the industry delivered that too.
The days of guys running around with “a 32 gun in his pocket for fun” are long over.
So it’s not an issue of modern materials and components. It’s a matter of fitting 10lbs into a 5lb sack, and then living in a market where nobody really wants 5lb sacks any more anyway.
