60By Sydney Tanner and Jim Nosker

A self-defense weapon’s purpose is topromptly stop a threat, when that threat is anindividual capable of causing you death or greatbodily harm. As such, the ultimate self-defenseweapon would be a long gun – neither a 12-gauge shotgun nor a .30 caliber rifle is toomuch. But since theydon’t work well for dis-creet carry, we generallyrely on handguns,despite their markedlyreduced power.

It would seem to standto reason then – all thingsbeing equal – that whenwe select a handgun forself defense, we want onewith plenty of power. Butall things are NOT equal,and that’s precisely whyplenty of downright smallhandguns are finding theirway into people’s pocketsand purses.

People’s physical limi-tations often affect theirchoice of firearms. Yearsof going to public rangeshave led us to suspect that such limitations shouldbe taken into account even more than they are.We’ve witnessed people trying to master firearmsthat were just too much for them. No weapondoes any good if it’s not with you when you needit, or if you can’t accurately deliver its firepowerwhen the chips are down.

With those thoughts in mind, several concernsquickly became apparent when Sydney beganshopping for a personalhandgun. On bad days, herarthritis, shoulder injury andan improperly healed oldfracture of her forearm limithow much she can lift morethan any doctor ever will.She’s also limited to howlong and how heavy of a trig-ger pull she can manage.Trigger pulls need to be lightenough and short enough forher to accomplish even ondays when her hands don’t want to work.

It didn’t take more than a couple of trips todealers’ gun counters for the majority of thehandguns in stock to be eliminated. Revolverswere mostly too heavy and their trigger pulls toolong. Most available metal-framed autoloaderswere too heavy. Notable readily available excep-tions were Baby Brownings in .25 ACP; Berettaand Taurus .22s, .25s, and .32s; Ruger’s LCP; andKel-Tec’s P32 and P3AT.

While even a .25 ACP or .22 LR is better thanno firearm at all, there’s no reason to settle for acaliber so small when anything more powerful isavailable. That focused our attention on Beretta’s.32 Tomcat, Kel-Tec’s P32 and P3AT, and Ruger’sLCP. A couple of rounds of .380 ACP downrangeeliminated the P3AT and Ruger LCP from the run-

ning, leaving the P32 andthe Tomcat. Due to itssmaller size and lighterweight, the P32 was thefront-runner.

According to Kel-Tec,the P32 is the smallestand lightest .32 ACP pis-tol ever made. We couldfind nothing that contra-dicted that. Empty, thepistol weighs six and ahalf ounces, or about 44percent of what theBeretta 3032 Tomcat tipsthe scales at. A loadedseven-round magazineadds another 2.8ounces. Carry the pistolwith one in the chamberand a full magazine, fora total of eight rounds,

and you’re still only lugging about nine and halfounces. That’s just two-thirds of what the Tom-cat weighs empty.

Roughly, the P32 weighs about a third of whata steel-framed snubby .38 Special revolver or aWalther PPK/S .32 ACP pistol does, while onlybeing about half as thick as the wheelgun. Itweighs less than a North American Arms mini-revolver or the discontinued Walther TPH, both

chambered in .22 LR.In every dimension, it’s

considerably smaller thancommon .32 autoloaders,such as the PPK/S andMauser HSC and it alsocomes out on top when com-pared to other tiny .32s suchas the Seecamp LWS, NAAGuardian and Cobra CA 32.The Seecamp and NAAGuardian are a little shorter,but the Kel-Tec is thinner,

weighs less and costs considerably less, plus itcarries one more round. While the Cobra costseven less than the Kel-Tec, it’s larger in everydimension and it’s alloy frame makes it the heavi-est of the group of tiny .32s.

With perhaps the exception of the Walther andMauser, none of these pocket guns have sightsanyone would really be happy about. Therefore,the Kel-Tec’s notch on the rear of the slide and lit-tle bump on the front is neither a surprise nor

A Kel-Tec P32…for Self Defense?

Kel-Tec’s P32 with pocket clip compared to a GerberATS E-Z Out, which is 4.5 inches long.

When carried in a frontjeans pocket by its clip,Kel-Tec’s P32 looks likea common pocketknife.

March 10 Blue Press Section 3 1/13/10 1:01 PM Page 60