Likes & Dislikes
I've been around firearms most of my life and have carried a weapon almost every day for the last 30 years. Twice, it's been out and in my hand, with intent, but never actually fired except in practice. I've never found the perfect pocket .380, everything has trade offs and I've definitely got some preferences, pro & con.
My weapon of choice for the last 26 years has been an AMT DAO Backup .380. Until the latest rash of small, light weight .380s came to light I'd never even considered anything else on the market. I still don't with any seriousness, this works just fine for me. The ONLY downside to this weapon for me is it's weight since it's all stainless steel, but that also minimizes recoil. I LIKE the European-style magazine catch on the bottom and the absence of any controls on it's slick sides. I LIKE the small sights, and the long, heavy trigger pull. Nothing to get snagged and as fool-proof as possible, bearing in mind that none of these are target pistols. My son was 8 years old before he could pull it's trigger at the range, with pointer and middle fingers of BOTH hands required. He didn't hit much but it went bang. I've always kept it locked up, or up high, or on my person but there were inevitably a couple of lapses, on my part, over the years. I never particularly worried about MY kids getting their hands on it, by the time they COULD successfully pull the trigger they had been shooting for years and were pretty much negligent-discharge-proof and muzzle aware. The only problem I've EVER had with it, after breaking it in, was a broken firing pin at about 500 rounds, a couple of months after I bought it. I drove 20 miles over to El Monte, CA and the factory foreman installed the new version, with rounded corners & shoulders, in about two minutes, while I watched. Of course that was a different era. The predecessor of this piece was the single action Backup, which I also owned, and the only gripe I had about it at the time was that the safety lever got moved to Fire in my pocket a couple of times. Never had an actual discharge but it was worrisome to me. When AMT brought out the DAO I jumped all over it. Both are available, today, on Gunbroker for less than $300.
The biggest flaw IMO of all of the recent additions to this class is too many buttons to push or levers to operate, mostly residing on the side of the pistol likely to be carried against the body of a right handed person. The worst offender, from pictures online, looks to be the S & W...GEEZ, mag release, slide stop, safety, and take down(?) all on the left side within an inch or so of each other. If you put this thing, and many of it's modern competitors, in your hip pocket and sit on it the most likely result will be the mag release getting pushed and dropping the mag upon drawing. Put them in your front pocket, specially with anything else, and any control on them can get operated inadvertently.
If you've got the money, considering that the first time you actually shoot someone you're likely to lose the use of it for years or forever, the Seecamp or the Rohrbaugh are perhaps the perfect pocket .380s but at $800++ they are out of my league.
JR
