Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Rat Gun review

Just upgraded from a Kel-Tec P32 to a Ruger LCP .380 yesterday. If the K-T is a mouse gun then this one at least deserves to be called a rat gun.

Local store had them for $199, they were supposed to call me when they got this shipment in but I kind of figured they wouldn't. Anyway, stopped by yesterday and they had one left, so I grabbed it. Also got a box of whatever they had for cheap ammo, which was Aguila 95 FMJ. Took the new pistol out this morning to function test and see where it was hitting. Bottom line is - I like it.

Didn't do any prep or cleaning prior to shooting, just took it out of the box, ran a patch of lighter fluid down the bore to remove any oil and went shooting.

The top target shows the very first 12 rounds through the brand new pistol, fired two handed offhand from 7 yards, 6:00 o'clock hold. Even though I was "aiming", that group was fired without aid of my eyeglasses so the sights were just a blur. I put the middle blur in between the two outer blurs and squeezed. POI is just a wee bit right but elevation is spot on. Probably could tighten that up with a clear sight picture and resting on bags but for the intended use of the pistol I wanted to see how well I could hit without artificial aids, like say I wasn't wearing glasses or they got knocked off somehow. As it is, give me a second to find the front and rear sights and it shoots just where it should.

Functioning was perfect through these first 50 rounds, no failures to feed, fire, extract or eject at all. Recoil was obviously snappier than the little .32 K-T but not harsh at all. Trigger pull is nice for a pistol of this type, long and clean but not as long as the K-T. Ejected cases went everywhere, up, right, left, front, back, a couple even went straight up and hit me on the head. I found most of them in a 180 degree semi-circle to my right but some were to the rear and left. Oh, well.

After a few rounds to familiarize myself with the trigger pull I tried really fast shooting, the results are shown on the bottom target here. Didn't prep the gun position, it was picked up fast from the bench or plucked out of various pockets, no aiming at all since my eyes were on the "threat", not the sights. Just grab it as fast as (safely) possible and bangbang! double tap. Again, no eyeglasses except the plastic shooting glasses.

The first thing I found was using two hands put most shots way right, a couple even missed the target backer. But shooting one handed put the shots straight out and dead on for elevation or just a tad low. Started by looking at the 6:00 o'clock position again and those are the shots in the white below the bullseye. After a few of those I figured it's probably better to look at the center of the round blur and those are mostly the shots in the black.

Not going to win any alphabet matches with this, but that's not its use. As long as I can keep my eyes on someone's chest it will keep all shots in a kill zone at 7 yards when drawing from various locations and shooting as fast as I can and that's all it needs to do.

Even taking a half second to see the front blur (aka front sight) somewhere in relation to the round blur out there helped immensely for accuracy, but it's good to know it shoots where I'm looking whether I use the sights or not.

Nothing special about this, certainly not a pretty firearm by any means, just a plain jane Ruger LCP. I can only speak for this one example, but for the use such a firearm might be put to, this one is definitely a good'un.