imported post
bobernet wrote:
I've been thinking about the need for a pocketable pistol for a while to augment other full size guns I carry CC and OC. My brother's outdoor Texas wedding next month gave me the final nudge. I don't want to keep my tux jacket on the whole time and roast, and there's no recognition of the right to OC in Texas, so tonight I bought a Kel-Tec P3AT.
380 would not be my first choice for a defensive firearm, but it seems like the best possible compromise of size, capacity and caliber. Anyone else own/carry the P3AT or P32?
I considered a Seecamp and a Ruger LCP, but the Kel-Tec literally disappears in a pocket. It's even thinner than I expected before I had handled one.
They apparently make them blued, hard chrome and parkerized. Mine is the OD green frame with parkerized slide. It was the only parked model they had in stock.
I just sold my Kel Tec P3AT to a guy at a local gun show. I bought mine new and took it to the gun range with some federal hydroshocks and it jammed every round. I went to the store and bought a few other hollow points and it jammed everyone of them when trying to feed them up the feed ramp, with the exception of some remington hollow points that came in a box of 50. They were rounded at the tip and had a much smaller cavity, giving them the ability to feed. Any regular round nose ball ammo I used fed properly. I did have some feeding problems with some winchester .380 target ammo that had a flat nose, but was not a hollow point.
Then after about 200 rounds through it, while carrying it for protection, a friend and me had a run in with a stray pitbull on his land. The dog was acting aggressive so I pulled the Kel-Tec P3AT from my pocket and pointed it at the dog. It came a little closer growling and all around acting threatning so I sqeezed the trigger and it went all the way back to the back of the trigger guard, fully depressed (plastic hitting plastic) but failed to drop the hammer. I was shocked and tried to sqeeze it off multiple times quickly but each time the hammer came back like it was going to fire, but the trigger wouldn't squeeze back far enough to drop the hammer because it was hitting the back of the trigger guard. Now I am a big guy (6'2", 300 lbs) and I lift weights on a regular basis and I was sqeezing this thing hard enough that if I was shaking another average guys hand it would have put him on his knees. Needless to say, we ran for his Jeep Wrangler. Luckly the dog didn't give chase because it was about 40 feet away and when we ran, the dog was about 15 feet away.
I took home and played with it, and was unable to make it fire (drop the hammer). Its like it needed another 1/8 of a inch of travel but was just hitting the back of the trigger guard. I sold it at the very next gun show for fairly close to what I paid for it new.
I know they have a life time warranty, and I could have sent it in to Kel-Tec and had them mess with it, but a new gun pulling something like that, especially in a situation like that... well I was done with it.
My first concealed carry here in Texas was a glock 27 (subcompact .40) and it has never failed me. I have tried a couple different smaller guns to try to get something I can carry in my pocket with no printing and it just seems like nothing smaller functions like a glock, or at least not well enough to bet my life on. I'll stick with glock, or a good j-frame in .38.
