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Monday, September 27, 2010
An ugly gun. While the P3AT isn’t “knock-a-dog-off-a-gut-wagon” ugly, buying this weapon for its looks would be like marrying Kendra Wilkinson for her intellect. To be charitable, Kel-Tec set out to manufacture the lightest, most concealable .380 Auto in creation—not a beauty queen. Nonetheless, all the old 1911 guys can now forgive Glock for mainstreaming ugly guns and pray that the spirit of John Browning will smote Kel-Tec’s ballistic blasphemy.
Would The Great One really decry the Kel-Tec, given its engineering? He would have marveled at the miniaturization: Kel-Tec ditched the straight blowback design favored by mouse gun manufacturers in favor of a locked breech system. (Just like grown-up pistols!) Consequently, the P3AT doesn’t need a heavy slide to whoa nellie the action’s blowback.
Even though its name sounds like a “strong” password, the P3AT’s real strength is its ergonomic adequacy in the face of such fierce dimensional constraints. A size that was barely do-able as a .25 Auto just a generation ago is now the new .380, as manufacturer after manufacturer has followed Kel-Tec’s pint-sized polymer lead and introduced similar semi-autos of their very own.
Yes, a new niche has definitely formed. Its offerings are starkly different from the mini-nines of just a few years back. Our present subject draws perhaps the starkest contrast from this group. To wit: at café Kel-Tec, de-contenting is the dish du jour. No thumb safety, no trigger safety, no grip safety and no heavy, revolver-like double-action trigger pull (the P3AT is DAO).
True, the six-round, single-stack magazine yields an ultra-narrow grip; but the grip is so short that even in my small hands, only my middle finger and half my ring finger were able to grasp it. Finger extensions and extended, higher-capacity magazines are available from Kel-Tec, but each one makes the gun a little larger than the original design. Which renders the P3AT increasingly pointless.
Another niggling negative: the slide doesn’t lock back after the final shot. And another: the molded plastic grip frame means that you either learn to love the somewhat uncomfortable, hard plastic texture, or wrap it with some home-brew arrangement of soft rubber.
Handicapped thusly, it’s easy to see why someone might prefer something a little more conventional for workaday personal protection. Someone like a friend who owns one, but doesn’t use it as his everyday carry piece. Even before firing the Kel-Tec, I was beginning to understand why he carried a Kahr 9mm instead of the little Kel-Tec. But a funny thing happened on the way to a negative gun review…
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