LITMIR.BIZ

       The rear sight on Tomcat is better than those on most guns its size …

      But I won’t make any mouse gun jibes here. I won’t ...

      The tradition is to test pocket pistols at no farther than 7 yards, the theory being that this is the greatest distance at which you’ll have employ one. I’m sorry, but I can’t buy that. I’ll go with Affirmative Action hiring so long as it’s enlightened Affirmative Action hiring.

      What that means is, Affirmative Action hiring does no one any good if it’s construed as lowering the standards to let in people who otherwise wouldn’t qualify for the job. Enlightened Affirmative Action hiring is, you let people of every size, color, gender, and belief system compete and the ones who can do the job better are the ones you put to work. The history of it is, if you hire people who can’t do the job because it seems politically correct or convenient, the job doesn’t get done and people who needed the job done right end up suffering. But if you throw out height and weight and color and similar requirements and hire people who can do the job well however they do it, you end up getting the job done.

      When cops were whining in the 1970s and 1980s about having to be backed up by women and small-statured men, they shut up after the new hires showed they could do the job.

      With this in mind, I test even pocket guns the way I test service pistols, including 25-yard shootability tests. If the bad guy doesn’t cooperate with your game plan of being in close when the fight starts (and, let’s face it, he didn’t cooperate with your game plan when he started the fight in the first place), you need equipment that will allow you to engage successfully at parking lot distance. My Tomcat .32 shot so low that with a 12 o’clock hold on a piece of 8½- by 11-inch typing paper, Federal 71-grain ball put five rounds in 5 inches, the best three in 2; Winchester ball put the five in 7 inches, the best three in 3. Some people find that acceptable. I find it beyond the edge of acceptability, having perhaps been spoiled by the exquisite accuracy of Beretta’s .380, 9mm, and .40 pistols.

      Yet all is relative. Its group is enough to shoot a 300 out of 300 on the police qualification course’s generous B-27 target, assuming you have your Kentucky windage right. While I’ve qualified with the sightless Seecamp on that course, I wouldn’t bet my life on shooting a 300 with one.

       Feedback From Others

      One career cop I know bought two Tomcats and carries one in each front pocket. He likes the portability, hates the trigger pull, and doesn’t find the gun hurts his hand. Neither of his Tomcats shoot where they look.

      A male civilian I know liked the grouping capability but didn’t like it being someplace other than where he was aiming, and found the sharp edge of the safety catch painful. A female civilian noted similar concerns and found the slide and the barrel tip-up lever difficult to operate. Both of them found the gun hurt their hands.

      Another woman found the gun too weak in output, too inaccurate, and painful to shoot due to sharp edges. A large male cop found its slide bit his hand when he shot it and went back to a .38 snub for his second gun. A large male civilian fell in love with it, finding it easier to shoot every shot in the same place than his Seecamp .32, even though his Beretta didn’t shoot spot on.

      Personally, I found hand bite – a common thing with pocket autos and male hands – to be minor. Like the other users, I was disconcerted that the gun was not sighted in at the factory. The other Tomcat users, like me, carried the gun off safe because its sharp-edged safety worked too stiffly to rely on in a crisis.