Best .25 ACP Pistols?

Bill DeShivs said:
Keltec's DA triggers are lighter than most DA revolvers.
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Yeah, but if you have it in such a light gun and the tiny sights Kel Tec loves to put on their .32 and .380 it would be extremely hard to be accurate with.

I know, belly gun philosophy, but I view .25's and .32's as head/face/neck area shot guns and if it's a 5 yards shot, having sights you can see helps a lot.
 
I wonder if firing more than one round with a single pull of the trigger ran afoul of ATF regulations?
 
.25 for defense? I guess I can imagine a case, but a KelTec .380 is lighter, or seems so, and much more capable, plus (A big point for me) if something happens to it I couldn't care less as they are ugly and have no class.

But none of that changes my love for the .25 ACP, the cartridge was designed to be reliably functional in a semi automatic role, I imagine a 2/3 Thompson with a drum, yahoo!
The many .25 ACP's I own are fun shooting, much more stimulating than TV and more worthy of remembrance. I load .25 ACP in my RCBS Pro2000 even though RCBS didn't see the need to make a shell plate, I altered one made for a large rifle cartridge and pressed in altered .25 ACP shell holders, it works great!
Yes you have to watch the powder flow but that's an easy obstacle to hop, plus an RCBS lockout die insures that the powder load is correct. It's not as fast loading as .45 ACP because it's hard to manipulate the tiny cases and the bullets. Loading 35 grain HP's I can get up to, well, I don't want to say how fast, and I do NOT advocate that as it's hard on the little frames.

Anyone experimenting with overloads is on their own.

I like the Budischowski, a beautiful little gun, but the Astra Cub is far away my favorite .25'.

I'd love to find a TPH in .25 ACP and have considered what it would take to make a .25 ACP barrel for my .22 TPH as magazines are available and should fit the same frame. The TPH is about as flat as a handgun can be.
I also have a Walther Model 9 project gun and I believe it's about as small a production gun as was ever made in .25ACP. It's just a few thousandths smaller than a Baby Browning. The trouble with mine is that it's missing parts, and they are not commonly available.
 
JN01 said:
I wonder if firing more than one round with a single pull of the trigger ran afoul of ATF regulations?
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I've seen in the past an adapter for 40mm grenade launchers that allowed one to put in a bunch of .22 LR and shoot it so that it fired all the round with one trigger pull. They called it a "beehive" adapter.

A 40mm is a Destructive Device, but they're not in the same classification as machine gun and I never heard of anything being illegal about shooting a "beehive" round. They're not cheap though, $600 per adapter.

Here's what they look like:

beehive-300x225.jpg
 
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You would need a TPH slide to go with the barrel. The firing pin is in the wrong place.

Your .25 acp Thompson has been done.

Shooting simultaneous rounds in a destructive device would not make it a machine gun-it's already a destructive device!
 
I wonder if firing more than one round with a single pull of the trigger ran afoul of ATF regulations?
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That was discussed last year when Standard Manufacturing first came up with the Volley Fire.They said it was all cleared by BATF, and good to go. Something about not firing consecutive multiple rounds with one trigger pull.
 
Colt Junior/Astra Cub

These are the .25s that I've carried. If I'm going to carry one of the tip up Taurus pistols, I may as well carry a .32 - maybe a Tomcat Inox (the non-inox regular width slides have a nasty tendency to crack) although I carry a Kel Tec P32.

I've always classified these mini mouse pistols as "get off me" guns.

The nice thing about the Colt Jr./Astra Cub .25s (Astra made the Jr. for Colt) is that they are very discrete. I don't think that they're that much more discrete than a P32, but they do have a smaller profile. I do not like having to pull back the hammer (I'm not going to pocket carry in cocked and locked condition). I don't mind the P32 trigger.
 
I have owned both. The Beretta 950BS.25 has a home with me. The baby Browning is long gone. I still have a spare set of grips for the Browning. One day a swap will come along and I will be totally divested of the Browning.
 
FotoTomas said:
I have owned both. The Beretta 950BS.25 has a home with me. The baby Browning is long gone. I still have a spare set of grips for the Browning. One day a swap will come along and I will be totally divested of the Browning.
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What did you not like about the Baby Browning?
 
I''d say the Seecamp is one of the best .25acp's but then why have a .25 when you can have a .32 in the same size pistol. You can also get it in .380 but .32 is as big as I'd go. YMMV
 
1MoreFord said:
I''d say the Seecamp is one of the best .25acp's but then why have a .25 when you can have a .32 in the same size pistol. You can also get it in .380 but .32 is as big as I'd go. YMMV
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The reason I wanted to focus on .25's is because they're generally going to be the smallest and lightest pistol and, as previously stated, I don't think a shot in the head/face/neck area is going to be any less effective with a .25 than a .32.

The .25 bullet weighs about 20 grains less, again, meaning the .32 is not that much bigger to be that much more effective.
 
Actually, the all steel .25's are little porkers. At 13 oz unloaded for a Vest Pocket, that's slightly more than a loaded LCP, a hair more than an unloaded DB9, or half an ounce less than an unloaded LCR.

A P32 is lighter and shorter in height, although the slide is half an inch longer. How thick is something like a Vest Pocket? The P32 is 3/4" thick.

The .32 offers generally at least twice the muzzle energy of a .25.
 
kozak6 said:
Actually, the all steel .25's are little porkers. At 13 oz unloaded for a Vest Pocket, that's slightly more than a loaded LCP, a hair more than an unloaded DB9, or half an ounce less than an unloaded LCR.

A P32 is lighter and shorter in height, although the slide is half an inch longer. How thick is something like a Vest Pocket? The P32 is 3/4" thick.

The .32 offers generally at least twice the muzzle energy of a .25.
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Twice the muzzle energy is not much when you go from about 60 ft-lbs to 130. The .32's power really only translates to penetration, but again, for the head/neck/face, the depths required to be effective don't require the extra penetration.

And besides the P-32 and the Seecamp, most .32's are thicker than .25's.

But that just highlights how innovative the P-32 and Seecamp's were.
 
The Colt Vest Pocket .25 and the early Browning are first-generation .25s.
Later models like the Walther Model 9 and the Bernardelli copy are extremely small and light weight. The lightweight Baby Browning is pretty small and light, too.
The Keltec P32 is certainly one of the most innovative pocket pistols ever made. It weighs less than the LW Browning.
 
You would need a TPH slide to go with the barrel. The firing pin is in the wrong place.
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Hadn't thought about that, but that's been done before, moving from rimfire to centerfire I mean. I'm not sure I could do it as it may be full of challenges. At my age it's all I can do to chip away at the projects before me without adding others, but the way to do it would be to buy a .22 slide that's in poor shape and do it there first I think. Do it in the computer screen first too.
hmmm.
 
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