Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns AMT 380 Backup...questions?

My wife wanted a small pocket semi-auto as she was not comfortable carrying her full size Springfield XD 40. A couple of days ago, we were in a gun store and found an AMT 380 Backup made in Covina, CA. It is a single action with a grip safety similar to a 1911 and a very short trigger pull albeit heavy. She liked the trigger pull much more than several others which were double action only. I faintly remembered AMT and thought they were decent firearms. Upon getting it home, I cleaned it and we ran about 25 rounds through it, 20 rounds being Blazer and 5 rounds being Remington Golden Saber's. We had a couple of glitches with the Blazer ammo.
We did a little research and found quite a bit of negative commments on the little pistol. Do any of you folks have any personal knowledge of this gun? What are your opinions? Should we run more rounds through it before making a decision or should we just dump it and look for something else? Thanks in advance for any of your input. - memtb

When I was at G&A back in the 70s then editor Howard French carried an AMT Backup, and never complained about any deficiencies. I think that guns either work, or they don't. Probably something in the realm of 98% of most handguns work perfect well. That said, they can be picky about the sort of ammo they like-- as you discovered with the Blazer ammo in your AMT. Since your wife likes the AMT, my advice would be to find the ammo it likes, and stick with that.

I had one way back in the day. Never could get it to function reliably enough to be trustworthy.

AMT did not have a good batting average. Sometimes they work. As Old Writer said, try other ammo until you find some it likes...

For 250 bucks one can get a brand new Kel Tech P3AT 380 that will work with about any ammo and wieghs about 1/3 as much as the AMT pistol. Don't know why anyone would now buy the old AMT's with such vastly superior choicies out there these days.

they are reasonably well made, but in my experience, not real reliable...

a real problem is the single action--if carried with a round up the spout--as they should be--the safety must be on--a real negative for a pocket piece, and just as important, many women would likely forget to disengage the safety in a critical moment...

one the other hand, the other negative is that "if it is carried without a round in the chamber", many women do not have the strength to easily rack the slide on that little pistol--even in casual drills on the range--it will almost always be more difficult to do in a time of sudden need...

a good choice for her could be a kel tec p3at, or a ruger lcp. both of these are great pistols.

if she can afford to carry a slightly larger gun, a kel tec pf9, kel tec p11, or ruger lc9 are also very good. have her carry it with a round in the chamber. almost all women do well with double action only pistols--just like they typically do well with da revolvers.

when recommending a carry piece for women, i almost always recommend the revolver--but the flatter profile of the auto is better in pocket concealment, and when combined with dao, it can be good medicine indeed. go for the pistols that do not have a safety, as it's one less thing to confuse her, and one less thing that is "needed". the kel tec p11 is my favorite of these i've mentioned, as it has second strike capabilty--but it may be bigger than she may want to carry...

Some of those negative comments might have been mine.

I had one, and only one. I didn't like it for most of the negative reasons you've already come across.

But if your lady likes hers and it's reliable, I guess it'll do.

I had the DAO version of the AMT .380. It was reliable - and accurate enough for it's use. But I after comparing it in a side-by-side shoot with a Keltec P3AT, I decided the little AMT had been rendered obsolete. The Keltec was just as reliable, at least as accurate - and even though it was lighter than the AMT, it was easier on the hand to shoot. Probably because the AMT is a blowback design and the K-T has the Browning recoil system.

If the little AMT works for you, that's okay. But you may want to do the same comparison when you get the chance.