Davis P380 - Do Not Use

Pictures?

sounds like a good gun for a buyback

Thanks. Looks like you're lucky the slide didn't embed itself in your forehead.

These guns were never really designd to be fired much.They were made for a market where people needed a gun,loaded it and put it away,maybe a few round thru it,thats it.They were not designed for running 500 rounds a week or month.

I have several of these p380's and several p32's

I am firm believer that the 380 slides tend to crack when the buffer springs are compromised. Either by residue in the spring bores or on the springs themselves. I have plenty of BB 380 Auto +P Ammo through several of mine and they all run real well. I have dye checked the slides on occasion to see if they are cracking and haven't seen any.

I have purchased a few of the broken wonders off of gun broker and fitted them with the Much Lighter Cobra arms slide and got them to reliably function and put them back in use. One with the Cobra Slide is used regularly with Corbon Powr ball.

Before you throw away the pistol buy a inexpensive Cobra slide and put the gun back into service as a last resort gun in your stash.
http://www.cobrapistols.net/store/pc/CA-Semi-Auto-Parts-c15.htm

I would absolutely buy a new slide and spare recoil spring. I never had any problems with my old Davis .380, other than the extractor pin coming out while shooting it.
At the time, I was young and impatient. I made a new pin and spring, reinstalled the extractor, and sold it. I lost money. I'd have been better off keeping it and seeing if I could get it to chamber hollowpoints with a fluff 'n buff.

Shouldn't you be saving it for a gun buyback program?

This is unacceptable and dangerous.

Click to expand...

Did you ever wonder why it was so cheap?

Hmmm, maybe I can invent a new saying here that no one has ever heard of before:

"You get what you pay for".

The idea that one person's problems are somehow universal isn't exactly reason to initiate a campaign against anything. I, too, have a Davis P380. I bought it simply because the state that I lived in was going to ban their sales, and not for safety issues.

It's had over a thousand rounds put through it, and , when I put it away, it was still in one piece. To me, it's Curio & Relic, interesting in a technical viewpoint. It's not my carry gun. However, it would certainly beat the heck out of a threatening glance.

That's what becomes of using Zamak for gun manufacture. The real problem is not guns like the Davis, which everyone knows is cheap, it's all the fine old firearms names that used to mean quality materials and workmanship, but now often also means zinc based white metal.

I can google pretty much any make of handgun and find examples (like in a "no shortage" context) of unsafe incidents reported with them.
Glad no one got hurt.

I would never have my kids around a Davis "firearm", or products from the other company iterations (Jimenez).

The Davis P380 does have a habit of the slide failing in that exact spot. My grandad's has so far held together but it has a relatively low round count.

This is not an uncommon issue with that particular gun and a cpuple members of another forum I'm on have had the same thing happen.