Jinx
03-14-2011, 04:23 AM
Hey guys! I finally received the P380 from the auction! And i'd like to relay my first time out with the gun.
If I may, I'd like to give a tiny overview of my thoughts on purchasing this pistol. I'm not a large sized guy, and I was always hesitant of getting a .380 for a pocket sized pistol, after having only ever firing a Walther PPK .380, which was natoriously uncomfortable to shoot (walther bite). I feared the 380 caliber becuase it was painful to shoot, and that hurt my confidence in a pocket carry. So i was using the Keltec P32 as my pocket carry. I wanted a Kahr P380 pretty bad for the past 2 years but could never find anyone with one to test fire it before purchasing. After finding it on gunbroker for an acceptably low price (sub 500) new in the box, I bit. What follows is my range report!
IT just so happens my friend had also purchased himself a .380 pocket pistol for pocket carry also, it was, I believe, a smith and wesson bodyguard?. So there might be a little bit of comparison to fit and feel here as well!
http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn35/castoffreview/2011-03-12184806.jpg
The test ammo consisted of what i bought (cuz i'm broke and unemployed) which is that orange box HSM crap, which i knew was reloaded at the time of purchase, but was told it was only reloaded once, and it was only 11.99 a box no tax. and a box of Winchest white box .380 my friend had purchased becuase working at microsoft makes more money than being unemployed, go figure! :)
Anyways I started out with shooting my Kahr p380 before touching his pistol. I used my HSM ammo, and loaded up a mag, And the first thing i noticed was that when i pulled the slide back and let go, it immediately jammed up on the first round, it actually didnt even seem to slide the round forward at all! ACk! first jam? I spose...? So after a little pushing it slammed the first round home. My first shot I was unsure what to expect recoil wise from such a small pistol in a larger caliber than i was used to (.32 is what i used to use in small pocket pistol) but the first shot surprised me how absorbed and almost spongy the recoil was, it was PLEASANT! I was extremely pleased, but, the slide locked back again, stuck on the next bullet. yet again. okay.. This was a bit frustrating, I pushed the slide forward and shot again..
At this point my friend said "use some of my winchester white box , its okay, its probably better quality". So i took the current mag out, and loaded up the other mag and pushed it up into the gun, hit the mag release. It went forward just fine, bam bam bam bam bam bam! all six shots fired perfectly. No surprise that the Winchest White box was better quality than the HSM. These first few shots weren't really for accuracy but more so to get aquanted with how the gun handled and how i wanted to hold it.
After a few test shots I was extremely pleased! I am not target shooter professional, I just like to shoot and try to do so to the best of my ability (I still have problems with larger calibers for some reason,) But at 15 feet taking my time with each shot ( about 1-3 seconds per a shot) i was fairly happy for an up close type of gun..... But would it hold up at further distances?
http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn35/castoffreview/2011-03-12185116.jpg
Being extremely pleased with my top target, and a little less satisifed with my lower one, I was still EXTREMELY pleased with the accuracy of this pistol! It might be the most accurate pistol i own!
So i loaded up a few more mags and sent the target out to 21 feet now. Becuase 21 feet is probably a little more realistic distance to just a pocket carry pistol at, at least for needed accuracy.... The results were as follows:
http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn35/castoffreview/2011-03-12201543.jpg
And
http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn35/castoffreview/2011-03-12201549.jpg
I believe this was 2 mags per a target. Very extremely pleased with the insane accuracy this baby has at 21 feet!
So at this point most of the rounds have ran through the pistol smoothly and I decide to change back to the HMS stuff.. It did now start to feed much better. I was not getting any more slide 'locking back' on any rounds. And let me clarify this wasn't the slick lock catching on the lock lever, it was hitting the back of the round previously and just didn't have enough force to drive it home into the chamber. I believe this probably had to do with 2 things. 1. The HSM being reloaded had dingy and dirty cases and 2. the tip of the ears on the mags were probably a little rough untill a couple dozen rounds were fed through them to smooth out the metal. I may even hit these edges with a tiny bit of polish just to smoothen it out. But at this point in the shooting session, the hang-ups were not happening anymore.
There were 1 or 2 random situations where the pistol did not full eject a shell which got caught in the ejection port. But this happened even with the winchest white box. All told i probably only put about 100 to 150 rounds through it, but only had 2 or 3 of the shells not get ejected fully out. from probably both ammo types.
I decided to try at 30 feet now to see how well the accuracy held up. I was still pleasant pleased! Even in my not perfect hands at 30 feet I did OK with this little tiny pistol!
http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn35/castoffreview/2011-03-12201836.jpg
It's not as tight of a grouping as my 15 and 21 foot distances, but i'm still fairly pleased. IF it was a person i could keep em inside important areas. and 30 feet isn't too shabby!
Lastly we wanted to try the pistol at 15 feet with 1 handed shooting, becuase i'm not a one handed shooter, i've only done it about 5 or 6 times in my life, just kind of toying around, I've never trained my hands or body stance or anything like that, i was fairly pleased when i took my time between each shot (1-2 seconds per shot) , my friend also performed admirably!
http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn35/castoffreview/2011-03-12203759.jpg
and my friends
http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn35/castoffreview/2011-03-12203810.jpg
The only incident i had was when pushing a mag up into the pistol, it did snag a peice of flabby skin on my pinky and clicked into place in the pistol and pinched my skin causing a little internal bleeding, nothing seriously, i just need to be safe when putting in a mag that has such a slim baseplate.
Lastly I also want to briefly speak about the bodyguard pistol i shot with this.. As both pistols are roughly the same size and shoot the same caliber it was really great to try another brand to see how it compared to the kahr. The most noticible thing immediately was the the kahr's trigger is insanely nicer.
The Kahr's trigger is beautiful. It's smooth and controlled and actually helps you maintain that 'squeeze don't pull 'aspect of shooting. It has a nice crisp break and i like WHERE the break is, Its soon, and not late. I'm not sure what this termonolgy is called exactly, but vs his Bodyguard, which was a pain in the butt, the kahr EASILY Trumps it. The body guard had a very long pull that almost didnt break untill the trigger was hitting the back frame of the trigger area. It was really annoying becuase it made you have to hold the gun more inside to your palm and further away from your thumb, and when holding it in this position, the recoil was more harsh than the p380. It dug into your soft middle webbing of your hand, and if i push on my hand there today even, i can feel a slight agitation/pain of a bruise, although i see no bruise. My friend had this issue more so since he had fired his body guard alot more than i did. But the kahr sits perfectly in your your hand where you want it to.
I want to again state how very subdued the recoil is for the p380. I was so worried about this to start, and i was really really pleasantly surprised. nearly blown away, by how absorbed the recoil is. You still feel the recoil it still there and appropriate for 380, but the gun is not snappy or flippy. It smooth and soft. I absolutely love the recoil price i have to pay for the sizze of this pistol becuase it's entirely manageable for my small hands. Rapid fire i dont do quite so well , but up close rapid fire will probably get the job done.
In the end we couldn't do a fair accuracy comparison to the bodyguard pistol because his iron sights were off, the laser that was built in was dead on accurate , but the sights were off and comparing a laser to a non laser wasn't really fair, but in terms of size, recoil, fit and finish, and comfort. the kahr wins on all catagories, no real contest. (This is not a rag on the bodyguard in anyway, just a prefernce of mine).
at the end of the night my friend looked at the kahr and said "I really like that, the trigger is sooo much nicer" I cant say he was regretting his purchase as i think he still likes what he got, but there was definately envy in his voice..
Untill I put a full 200-300 through my kahr I'm not going to judge it. In my opinion it worked fairly smooth for a first time run with just FMJ bullets. And the 2-3 ejection issues (what are those called, stovepipes? i'm not sure) wasn't too worrysome as it is still so early on, and it really was only 3-4% of the time.
I love this pistol! It increases my confidence to carry it over the old keltec p32. And at the end of the day that is important to me, I feel a confident shooter will be a more accurate shooter. I will do a side by side comparison review with the kahr, P32, Bodyguard, Sig P238 (they had one for rent at the range) and Ruger LPC, as soon as the Keltec returns (they've only had it 1 one week, cracked slide.).
If I may, I'd like to give a tiny overview of my thoughts on purchasing this pistol. I'm not a large sized guy, and I was always hesitant of getting a .380 for a pocket sized pistol, after having only ever firing a Walther PPK .380, which was natoriously uncomfortable to shoot (walther bite). I feared the 380 caliber becuase it was painful to shoot, and that hurt my confidence in a pocket carry. So i was using the Keltec P32 as my pocket carry. I wanted a Kahr P380 pretty bad for the past 2 years but could never find anyone with one to test fire it before purchasing. After finding it on gunbroker for an acceptably low price (sub 500) new in the box, I bit. What follows is my range report!
IT just so happens my friend had also purchased himself a .380 pocket pistol for pocket carry also, it was, I believe, a smith and wesson bodyguard?. So there might be a little bit of comparison to fit and feel here as well!
http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn35/castoffreview/2011-03-12184806.jpg
The test ammo consisted of what i bought (cuz i'm broke and unemployed) which is that orange box HSM crap, which i knew was reloaded at the time of purchase, but was told it was only reloaded once, and it was only 11.99 a box no tax. and a box of Winchest white box .380 my friend had purchased becuase working at microsoft makes more money than being unemployed, go figure! :)
Anyways I started out with shooting my Kahr p380 before touching his pistol. I used my HSM ammo, and loaded up a mag, And the first thing i noticed was that when i pulled the slide back and let go, it immediately jammed up on the first round, it actually didnt even seem to slide the round forward at all! ACk! first jam? I spose...? So after a little pushing it slammed the first round home. My first shot I was unsure what to expect recoil wise from such a small pistol in a larger caliber than i was used to (.32 is what i used to use in small pocket pistol) but the first shot surprised me how absorbed and almost spongy the recoil was, it was PLEASANT! I was extremely pleased, but, the slide locked back again, stuck on the next bullet. yet again. okay.. This was a bit frustrating, I pushed the slide forward and shot again..
At this point my friend said "use some of my winchester white box , its okay, its probably better quality". So i took the current mag out, and loaded up the other mag and pushed it up into the gun, hit the mag release. It went forward just fine, bam bam bam bam bam bam! all six shots fired perfectly. No surprise that the Winchest White box was better quality than the HSM. These first few shots weren't really for accuracy but more so to get aquanted with how the gun handled and how i wanted to hold it.
After a few test shots I was extremely pleased! I am not target shooter professional, I just like to shoot and try to do so to the best of my ability (I still have problems with larger calibers for some reason,) But at 15 feet taking my time with each shot ( about 1-3 seconds per a shot) i was fairly happy for an up close type of gun..... But would it hold up at further distances?
http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn35/castoffreview/2011-03-12185116.jpg
Being extremely pleased with my top target, and a little less satisifed with my lower one, I was still EXTREMELY pleased with the accuracy of this pistol! It might be the most accurate pistol i own!
So i loaded up a few more mags and sent the target out to 21 feet now. Becuase 21 feet is probably a little more realistic distance to just a pocket carry pistol at, at least for needed accuracy.... The results were as follows:
http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn35/castoffreview/2011-03-12201543.jpg
And
http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn35/castoffreview/2011-03-12201549.jpg
I believe this was 2 mags per a target. Very extremely pleased with the insane accuracy this baby has at 21 feet!
So at this point most of the rounds have ran through the pistol smoothly and I decide to change back to the HMS stuff.. It did now start to feed much better. I was not getting any more slide 'locking back' on any rounds. And let me clarify this wasn't the slick lock catching on the lock lever, it was hitting the back of the round previously and just didn't have enough force to drive it home into the chamber. I believe this probably had to do with 2 things. 1. The HSM being reloaded had dingy and dirty cases and 2. the tip of the ears on the mags were probably a little rough untill a couple dozen rounds were fed through them to smooth out the metal. I may even hit these edges with a tiny bit of polish just to smoothen it out. But at this point in the shooting session, the hang-ups were not happening anymore.
There were 1 or 2 random situations where the pistol did not full eject a shell which got caught in the ejection port. But this happened even with the winchest white box. All told i probably only put about 100 to 150 rounds through it, but only had 2 or 3 of the shells not get ejected fully out. from probably both ammo types.
I decided to try at 30 feet now to see how well the accuracy held up. I was still pleasant pleased! Even in my not perfect hands at 30 feet I did OK with this little tiny pistol!
http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn35/castoffreview/2011-03-12201836.jpg
It's not as tight of a grouping as my 15 and 21 foot distances, but i'm still fairly pleased. IF it was a person i could keep em inside important areas. and 30 feet isn't too shabby!
Lastly we wanted to try the pistol at 15 feet with 1 handed shooting, becuase i'm not a one handed shooter, i've only done it about 5 or 6 times in my life, just kind of toying around, I've never trained my hands or body stance or anything like that, i was fairly pleased when i took my time between each shot (1-2 seconds per shot) , my friend also performed admirably!
http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn35/castoffreview/2011-03-12203759.jpg
and my friends
http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn35/castoffreview/2011-03-12203810.jpg
The only incident i had was when pushing a mag up into the pistol, it did snag a peice of flabby skin on my pinky and clicked into place in the pistol and pinched my skin causing a little internal bleeding, nothing seriously, i just need to be safe when putting in a mag that has such a slim baseplate.
Lastly I also want to briefly speak about the bodyguard pistol i shot with this.. As both pistols are roughly the same size and shoot the same caliber it was really great to try another brand to see how it compared to the kahr. The most noticible thing immediately was the the kahr's trigger is insanely nicer.
The Kahr's trigger is beautiful. It's smooth and controlled and actually helps you maintain that 'squeeze don't pull 'aspect of shooting. It has a nice crisp break and i like WHERE the break is, Its soon, and not late. I'm not sure what this termonolgy is called exactly, but vs his Bodyguard, which was a pain in the butt, the kahr EASILY Trumps it. The body guard had a very long pull that almost didnt break untill the trigger was hitting the back frame of the trigger area. It was really annoying becuase it made you have to hold the gun more inside to your palm and further away from your thumb, and when holding it in this position, the recoil was more harsh than the p380. It dug into your soft middle webbing of your hand, and if i push on my hand there today even, i can feel a slight agitation/pain of a bruise, although i see no bruise. My friend had this issue more so since he had fired his body guard alot more than i did. But the kahr sits perfectly in your your hand where you want it to.
I want to again state how very subdued the recoil is for the p380. I was so worried about this to start, and i was really really pleasantly surprised. nearly blown away, by how absorbed the recoil is. You still feel the recoil it still there and appropriate for 380, but the gun is not snappy or flippy. It smooth and soft. I absolutely love the recoil price i have to pay for the sizze of this pistol becuase it's entirely manageable for my small hands. Rapid fire i dont do quite so well , but up close rapid fire will probably get the job done.
In the end we couldn't do a fair accuracy comparison to the bodyguard pistol because his iron sights were off, the laser that was built in was dead on accurate , but the sights were off and comparing a laser to a non laser wasn't really fair, but in terms of size, recoil, fit and finish, and comfort. the kahr wins on all catagories, no real contest. (This is not a rag on the bodyguard in anyway, just a prefernce of mine).
at the end of the night my friend looked at the kahr and said "I really like that, the trigger is sooo much nicer" I cant say he was regretting his purchase as i think he still likes what he got, but there was definately envy in his voice..
Untill I put a full 200-300 through my kahr I'm not going to judge it. In my opinion it worked fairly smooth for a first time run with just FMJ bullets. And the 2-3 ejection issues (what are those called, stovepipes? i'm not sure) wasn't too worrysome as it is still so early on, and it really was only 3-4% of the time.
I love this pistol! It increases my confidence to carry it over the old keltec p32. And at the end of the day that is important to me, I feel a confident shooter will be a more accurate shooter. I will do a side by side comparison review with the kahr, P32, Bodyguard, Sig P238 (they had one for rent at the range) and Ruger LPC, as soon as the Keltec returns (they've only had it 1 one week, cracked slide.).