25acp....Viable SD round...Well

I carried the Bauer 25 back in the late 1970's. At the time that was the smallest. That is Until Seecamp came out with their 32 in the late 1980's. However there are Much better guns out there now than the Bauer IMHO. I no longer carry either. The KelTec PT32 i got in 1999 is light weight, easy recoil and hold more rounds. I carry that with shorts n no shirt.
The bauer is a Good gun for ones collection.
 
A .25 worked for Bond for years, until Maj. Boothroyd mandated the PPK. That is all _I_ need to know.

Now, if I could find a Burns-Martin holster......
 
Ian Fleming got it wrong. Berns-Martin holsters were made only for revolvers, and had to start marking their literature as such.

I thought a Berns-Martin would be neat. Until I tried one. It took me less than 15 minutes to figure out I HATED it.
 
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I've have a F.I.E. Titan like this one which fits anywhere. It's surprisingly accurate inside the 10 yards that I use it and has been completely reliable. Not bad for such a cheap little mouse gun. It's not the ideal self defense caliber, but I wouldn't want to get shot with it either.
 
Because the conventional wisdom has erroneously deemed the .25 Auto as worthless.
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That's because it reality it is, conparatively speaking.
Pretending it's a good choice because of some repetitive Youtube videos is silly.

Anything a 25 will do , a larger caliber will do better
 
Anything a 25 will do , a larger caliber will do better
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Except hide. "Vest pocket" has been used to describe the little buggers in the past. There are some very puny .25 ACP pistols, and that is why they are being discussed.
 
This is actually a very timely discussion. Owing to wearing an ostomy bad, it doesn't work for me to wear an IWB holster...a bound-up ostomy bag due to a snugged belt is not a good thing.

So I have been considering a shoulder rig, possibly for an inverted carry J-frame. But maybe my Seecamp .25 or .32 will fill my need, aside from the difficulty in quickly accessing the weapon from a pocket. But, I could really Bond-out and have a mousegun in a shoulder rig... ???

Bummer about the Berns-Martin being for revolvers, but best I learn now before some eBayer fleeces me ...
 
snyper said:
I really don't know why this discussion even keeps coming up other than boredom
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We do it just to suck people like you into clicking on the thread. ;)

snyper said:
Anything a 25 will do , a larger caliber will do better
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I agree! And anything a larger caliber will do, an even larger caliber will do better!

Unfortunately, back in my days as an artilleryman, I found it extremely difficult to pocket carry an M110 (8" howitzer, biggest gun in the Army). Those 203mm diameter bullets instead of these laughable low double digit or even single digit diameter bullets (9mm or 11.43mm (.45ACP)) would have sure been handy if I had ever needed them for self defense! And that little bitty stuff doesn't even explode (except for some 10mm loads that are almost nuclear based on what I read on internet forums).
 
This is actually a very timely discussion. Owing to wearing an ostomy bad, it doesn't work for me to wear an IWB holster...a bound-up ostomy bag due to a snugged belt is not a good thing.

So I have been considering a shoulder rig, possibly for an inverted carry J-frame. But maybe my Seecamp .25 or .32 will fill my need, aside from the difficulty in quickly accessing the weapon from a pocket. But, I could really Bond-out and have a mousegun in a shoulder rig... ???
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I used to carry a single-stack IWB, just behind the hip. A serious car accident ruined that for me. It also put a serious damper on how much and what kind of recreational shooting I can enjoy. Pocket carry took over for about a year following the accident. I'm better than I was but I've still got a ways to go.

People tend to forget that all of us are different. Our size, shape, profession, mode of dress, health, location, and more influence our needs and interests. I thank God that we still have a modicum of market freedom so that all these options exist. I also encourage my fellow gun owners to be ambassadors and activists in furtherance of it. The diversity of our defense options maximizes our defensive capability. Without life, there are no rights.
 
In late 1970's When I wore suit and tie :rolleyes: and worked downtown in evening . I carried a Bauer with empty chamber around my neck on kite string . Left a button on done. My tie covered the button. I got pretty good at snapping the string on drawing and cambering a round . Still have the Bauer.
 
^How did you tie the string to the gun?

There's a market for fixed-blade neck knives and neck sheaths. Perhaps you could successfully market neck holsters?
 
The polymer-framed Taurus .25 Auto, a DAO clone of the Beretta Bobcat, is not much bigger and has I think two more shots.
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I have the .22 version and it is indeed a neat gun. But OAL is still 4,9" and especially the beefy grip doesn't qualify it as a real "micro" gun (Not to mention that this very grip size, considering other aspects than concealment, offers a HUGE advantage as well - it's still a very small gun but feels like a full size in your hand which makes shooting very comfortable....)
 
The Taurus and the Beretta 21 are quite a bit bigger than the "real" pocket guns like the Browning/Bauer/PSP, the Bernardelli, or the Beretta 950.
 
A Seecamp is comparable in size to a Bauer. My Seecamp is only a 32 and 380's are out there. I have found with the tiny Seecamp even in 32 one must not limp wrist it or you will have FTF.
 
The quote below is from an Indianapolis cop who posted about this subject on a different forum. I will take his real world experience over internet conjecture any day of the week.
BehindBlueI's -
We've got a cop who was shot in the back of the head at contact distance wirh a .25 and thought he was punched. He killed the guy. A .25 isn't even a reliable suicide gun. We've had a case where it pierced the tongue and stuck in the palette. Too many quality .380 and 9mm out there for me to even consider a .25. A starter pistol will work if the sight is all it takes to end the confrontation, but I'd rather have more oomph at my disposal if it goes further.
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BehindBlueI's -
I don't know how the math works out, but they make a lot more mess in suicides. The .25 often doesn't exit the skull even on a temple to temple shot and I've never seen an under the chin shot exit. We've seen under the chin shots fail to penetrate to the brain and fail to incapacitate the person. The .32 doesn't always exit, but generally does if temple to temple and routinely fractures the skull if under the chin. The skin may hold it together, but its in pieces when the autopsy is done. The .380 is a fairly popular suicide gun for some reason, and the one I've seen the most of. I've never seen a temple shot that didn't come out the other side. I've seen some under the chin shots that stayed in or were stuck in the skull but visible, but generally there is some noticeable defect in the skull where the bullet at least hit it.
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Like the author's opinion above, I too think that if all else is comparable such as size and weight of a firearm, I would choose the one with a bigger bang. Why would anyone choose a .25acp over at least a .380acp if both firearms are pocket sized and 8 to 10oz?
 
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I know a guy who went through an industrial meat grinder, was thrown into a vat of acid, and was blown up with 1 million pounds of TNT...

It's obvious that NONE of those things provide any stopping power at all... :D

Anyway...

One incident doesn't prove or disprove anything about a handgun/cartridge/etc. overall abilities.

It only proves that it worked/failed in that discrete instance.

I, too, know of a man who was shot in the throat with a .25 and survived it handily.

Then again, I know of another man who was shot with a .25 and never moved again. The bullet went in his right eye and came out the back of his head, taking an impressive amount of cranial material with it.

Based on those two instances, we either have a gun that's so puny and weak that it can't be depended on for anything, or we have an incredibly lethal combination.

Neither is the truth.


As a counter to the Indianapolis cop's recommendation of a 9mm...

Gabby Giffords.

She's living proof that the 9mm isn't worth a damn, so his recommendation obviously isn't worth the electroncs it flowed in on, right?



For me, at least, the most pressing requirement is the most obvious -- have a gun.

The old saying a mouse gun is still better than throwing rocks is trite and tired, but there's a lot of truth behind it.

Almost as important (or maybe even more important) is to have a gun that you trust to work when the chips are down and that you know you can shoot well.

If that's a .22 or a .25, then that's not a really that bad a choice. I've seen FAR too many people at the range with small guns in larger calibers that simply ate them alive to the point where they couldn't shoot them worth a damn.

My preferred carry gun is a J frame .38. I shoot it well, it conceals well, and the rounds perform well.

But there are times when I've not carried it because it's not convenient to do so, and have chosen my Taurus TP-22 instead. That gun has been 100% reliable for me, and I shoot it well, at least as well as my 042, so I don't feel in the least undergunned.

And finally, this emphasis on head shots with the .25 in the post above is a little misleading too, I think. If you have to shoot, in my opinion you shouldn't be trying to hit the head. Compared to the torso, it's far too small a target, and too mobile and easy to miss.

The skull is also one of the toughest bone structures in the human body, as it's intended to be. That's why people have survived being shot in the head at close range with far heavier rounds, even the vaunted .45, and lived to tell about it because the bullet simply didn't penetrate the tough, curved structure of the skull.
 
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Like the author's opinion above, I too think that if all else is comparable such as size and weight of a firearm, I would choose the one with a bigger bang. Why would anyone choose a .25acp over at least a .380acp if both firearms are pocket sized and 8 to 10oz?
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For my personal choice I fully agree. The smallest I carry, and it's carried always, is a 380 LCP. Either as a BUG, or my only CCW due to weather, or situation.
But as I have read many, many times on TFL, and other places, there are a lot of people much more sensitive to recoil than I. In many cases their answer is a larger, heavier firearm in mouse gun calibers. If they have the ability to properly conceal it fine. But if they are in a situation where the utmost concealment is in order, the really tiny Baby Browning type 25acp may be the only option to at least have some kind of firearm concealed.
 
Why would anyone choose a .25acp over at least a .380acp if both firearms are pocket sized and 8 to 10oz?
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I'd opt for a 7+1 .32 Beretta Tomcat over an 8+1 .25 Beretta Bobcat. The Tomcat is not unpleasant to shoot, and is the same size, albeit a few ounces heavier, than the Bobcat. However, I'd take a 6+1 .32 North American Arms Guardian over its 6+1 .380 sibling, because the free recoil energy of the latter is 80% greater, which is a lot for a pistol with a 1-finger grip.

I don't know of any .380 that is as small as a Baby Browning. The Kel-Tec P-3AT is the smallest I'm aware of, it is 35% bulkier (estimated as LHW/2) than the BB, and it is widely regarded as unpleasant to shoot with 15% more free recoil energy than a Glock 19.
 
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