Taurus TCP 738 .380 ACP

OK, you might be looking at this and thinking "Hey Joe, in case you haven't noticed it's the middle of winter.  Why are you reviewing a .380 pocket pistol?"  The answer my friend is blowing in the cold wind:  you want to buy it now so that you have several months to practice with it and become proficient before shorts and sandals season is upon us.  Also, you can start carrying it now as a back-up gun.  I believe it was the late, great NYPD gun fighter Jim Cirillo who said "If you need one gun, you probably need two" and this makes a dandy second gun.

Let's delve into the specifications.  With the Taurus 738 TCP here's what you get:

• A 6 + 1 round capacity
• A weight of 10.2 ounces
• A 2.84 inch barrel
• An overall length of 5.25 inches
• A height of 3.25 inches 
• A width of .8 inches
• A smooth double action with a trigger pull of 4.8 pounds.
• Very small fixed sights

Let's start with the sights.  They are very small but they get the job done.  This is not a long distance shooter although at 40 feet it gave me a large grouping that would all be center mass hits.

The front sight blade is angled so that the ambient light shines on it making it a light gray in contrast to the darker rear sights.

There is a nice curvature to the back strap which makes the pistol sit well in your hand and puts the web of your hand underneath the rear of the slide which helps you keep control of the little pistol during recoil.

The magazine and slide releases are very flat.  They are easy to operate while helping to keep the overall package as flat as it can be.  The slim design along with the 10.2 ounces in weight make this pistol very easy to carry all day long in your pant's pocket.  You'll also note that I have opted for two accessories to improve the pistol's shootablilty.  The first is the Pearce finger extension that easily slides onto the 738's magazine.  It still does not allow me to get three fingers on the grip but I can get two on it which makes the pistol more comfortable and accurate to shoot.  The second accessory is a Pachmayr grip glove which gives me a better purchase on the grips and makes accurate follow-up shots faster. 

So, let's take a look at the targets:

Here's 7 rounds of Hornady Critical Defense 90 grain FTX ammo shot at 21 feet.

Here's 13 rounds of Mag Tech 90 FMJ ammo shot at 21 feet.

Here's 17 rounds of Mag Tech ammo shot at 30 feet.

And here's 20 rounds of Mag Tech ammunition fired at 40 feet.  Certainly a larger group but they all would have been solid hits.

When I went to the gun shop looking for a pocket carry micro .380 ACP I was looking for three qualities: light weight, value for my money, and a good trigger pull. There were plenty of micro .380's on display but the smooth 4.8 pound trigger pull on the 738 TCP along with it's lower price sold me.  It's not too early to think of what you might want to carry in the Spring and Summer and I would urge you to take a look at the Taurus 738 TCP.

Taurus 24/7 9mm

I love writing about Taurus handguns because it brings the Taurus haters out in full gale force.  One of the things I love is that most of the haters have never fired one, held one, or even seen one in-person.  Granted, pre 1980's their models were not quite up to their level of their competition but that was over 40 years ago.  In the mid-1980's the shooting public began to notice that their revolvers were looking a lot like Smith & Wesson models and their semi-automatic pistols began to look like the venerable Beretta 92 (there are reasons for that but you can find that information on the internet, I'll not go into it here).  I was living in Los Angeles at the time and if you could find a Beretta 92 they were going for $800-$900 bucks which was two rent payments for me at the time (remember this is in 1987 dollars).  However, Turner's Outdoorsman had plenty of the Taurus 92s in both blue and stainless steel (which was something Beretta did not offer).  They flew off the shelves and for good reason; they provided value, reliability and accuracy.  To overcome the perception of the products that they produced in prior decades Taurus provided a lifetime warrantee.

Today Taurus continues to provide the same value, reliability and accuracy but they have added innovation to the mix.  While their small frame revolvers still bear a resemblance to Smith and Wesson products their larger frame revolvers have a distinct look all their own.  Similarly, their model 92BB and 92SS still look like Beretta pistols but they also turned their engineers loose and begun bringing out some marvelous pistols of their own design.  

On May 23, 2008 I reviewed the Taurus OSS .45 ACP which Taurus produced for the U.S. Military's .45 ACP pistol trials to replace the Beretta 9mms they were currently using.  At that time I stated that the troops would be better off with the Taurus pistol because it offered reliability and accuracy along with the power of the .45 ACP cartridge.  Fast forward to July 19, 2009 and I reviewed the Taurus 709 slim which has become the most read posting on my blog with 94,506 page views, 246 of those occurring in the last 7 days.  The posting also generated 95 comments.

So let's turn our attention back to the Taurus 24/7 and start with the specifications:

Caliber:	9mm	Weight:	28 oz.	OAL:	7.28”
Finish:	Blue	Action:	DA/SA	Sights:	Adjustable Rear
Capacity:	17 + 1	Barrel Length:	4.20”	MSRP:	$539.00

The 24/7 is everything I have come to expect from Taurus starting with excellent ergonomics.

The grip of the 24/7 is nicely curved and comes with a larger back strap should that be a better fit for you.  The front strap has generously applied finger groves that actually fit my hand rather than squishing my fingers together to make my hand fit the grip as happens on other pistols.  The pattern molded into the grip allowed me to get a good purchase on the Taurus without shredding my palm to pieces or leaving the imprint of the grip in my hand once the evaluation was complete.  The safety, slide release and magazine release are all in easy reach of your thumb.  A couple of features that I like are the contoured thumb rest and the trigger finger indent on the frame about the trigger housing.  There are a currently a variety of schools of thought about the placement of your thumbs when shooting and if you prefer the thumbs up or thumbs forward method then the thumb rest will be of no moment to you, but if you place them down or as I do which is strong hand down and support hand up then you will appreciate the thumb rest.  The index finger indent is really a passive safety feature because once you place your trigger finger on the indent and you finger will naturally begin to find the indent which helps keep the finger off the trigger.  This may be especially important for new shooters who need to develop muscle memory and safety habit of removing their finger from the trigger when not firing.  

This leads us to the trigger.  The 24/7 has the "Glock" style "trigger within a trigger" trigger safety.  The pistol is listed, right on the frame as being DA/SA DS meaning Double Action/Single Action with Double Strike capability.  While technically correct this is a little bit confusing so let me break this down.  When the slide retracts, whether through recoil or whether it retracted due to you chambering a round, it presets the striker making it ready to fire in single action mode.  Even though my sample sported a 7.5 pound trigger pull it was more like 5 plus 2.5.  What I mean by that is it took 5 pounds of pull to engage the sear and get the pull to the breaking point and 2.5 pounds for the break to occur at that point.  The pull was smooth, the break was clean and all of this means that the manual safety must be engaged if you are carrying with a round in the chamber.

The Double Strike capability is a neat feature in my opinion.  If the cartridge in the chamber had a hard primer and doesn't fire upon the first hit you can pull the trigger again, in double action mode, and strike the primer once more.   In my experience, most of the time the round fires on the second strike.  Now we have all been taught to tap and rack if a round does not fire but in the heat of a shooting situation (or stressful training) most people will invariably attempt to pull that trigger a second time and that is when they realize that the round did not go off initially.  The Double Strike feature will probably fire the round without the shooter realizing that it did not fire the first time around.  Also, considering the 24/7's 17 + 1 round capacity it is pretty certain that you will lose your count on how many rounds you have fired (remember Dirty Harry..."I know what you thinking punk.  You're thinking "did he fire six shots or only five? Now to tell you the truth I forgot myself in all this excitement").   Again, I am talking about during the heat of battle, not when you are casually shooting at the range.  If you have ever read Jim Cirillo's book about being on the NYPD stake-out squad he tells us that when firing in the line of duty auditory exclusion took over and he did not hear his revolver actually firing.  Again, one more reason you may not realize that your pistol did not fire.

It's Target Time

Due to our current ammunition drought all ammo fired was Magtech 115 grain FMJ.

This was the first round I fired with the 24/7 and it, again was another one of my famous "near perfect-one shot groups".  I hastily set the pistol down and reeled the target in for posterity.

Here's 18 rounds at 25 feet.

17 rounds at 31 feet

15 rounds at 40 feet.

15 rounds at 50 feet

As you'll note the pistol shot a little low for me.  The 24/7 does sport adjustable sights...

...and if this were my pistol, which is wasn't, I would move the sights up and just a tad to the right so that I could punch out the orange bullseye every time.  

The 24/7 is ergonomic, reliable and affordable.  The MSRP is $539.00 and I'm guessing that you'll find one for less than $500.00.  At most shooting distances it is surgically accurate and it is easily man-sized accurate out to 25 yards.  In these economic times this pistol makes a lot of sense for a lot of reasons.