Buick
Member
I only recommend the Kahr or Bersa as those are the small handguns that my wife enjoys shooting and carries. Of course she likes to shoot my 1911s as well. But the Kahr and the Bersa are reliable, accurate, and affordable.
Tomcat
- Thread starter Mustang51
- Start date
I only recommend the Kahr or Bersa as those are the small handguns that my wife enjoys shooting and carries. Of course she likes to shoot my 1911s as well. But the Kahr and the Bersa are reliable, accurate, and affordable.
That’s what I’m hoping. We shall soon know. She owned several handguns when we met, but she only carries sporadically. She never took to the 642 I bought her. If she likes this, as I mentioned on the front end, it beats the zero penetration and expansion she would get now from an empty purse.
Jessie
US Veteran
I think the full metal jacket works best in the Tomcat and penetration is better. If it doesn’t hit something expansion won’t help much. If you get any.
At times, I use my Bobcat as a BUG to a 45 ACP. The idea of a BUG or NY reload is; When you are down to all that's left is the 32, the bad guys are very close!
I knew a bodyguard for beauty pageants, that carried 3 guns, (in this order: Hi cap 9mm Glock, 45 ACP Glock, and alloy S&W 22 revolver) the last ditch gun was a 22LR. He never lost a client, but had been hit 4 or 5 times himself! My question was never the need for all these guns, But: Where do all these nut jobs come from?
Ivan
Lucky gunners testing is better than most, but I started doing my own a few years ago.
As noted above, with my slightly longer 2.9” barrel Tomcat Covert, I get 950 fps on average and good expansion as well as 12-13” penetration with the 60 gr XTP.
Lucky gunner averaged 929 fps with the Fiocchi load and got very poor expansion in the 2.7” barrel pistol they used. The pretty anemic Hornady load averaged 755 fps and gave them nothing.
We both use the same 10% clear ballistics gel.
But…let’s talk about what it means and doesn’t mean.
First, a 4 layer denim test is more or less standard on these kinds of unofficial testa but it is not the same as the FBI heavy clothing test. The FBI doesn’t use 4 layers of denim. It uses a layer of cotton tee shirt material, a layer of cotton dress shirt material, a layer of 200 gram polartec fleece and a layer of 14 oz. denim.
Four layers of 14 oz denim plugs small hollow points worse than the FBI protocol and inhibits expansion. It’s also tougher to penetrate than the FBI heavy clothing barrier.
Second, unless it’s winter and in the frozen north, how many people do you see wearing heavy clothing? Well..to be fair, you probably see a lot more wearing the FBI version than you do someone wearing a denim jacket with denim lining, a denim shirt and a denim tee shirt. Not many denim fetishized types running around out there, especially in warm weather.
Third, in .32 ACP the heavier 73 gr FMJ will probably penetrate farther than a poorly expanded hollow point. Looking at the Lucky Gunner data for the Fiocchi 60 gr XTP and 73 gr FMJ the average was 12.3” and 16.8” respectively. In the pokey Hornady 60 gr XTP load, where there was no expansion, the average was 12.6 and they were all pretty close to that mark.
16.8” is better but 12.3” and 12.6” is still “good enough”.
Four, despite the villagers grabbing pitchforks and torches over that last sentence, 12” is a pretty arbitrary minimum. It is intended to represent a minimum penetration in ballistic gel that was consistent with acceptable results law enforcement shoots. However law enforcement requirements include shooting subjects from all aspects and the 12” is needed to penetrate an arm and then the chest from the side.
For armed citizen self defense shoots you will nearly always be shooting an assailant in a face to face engagement. If you are shooting people who are turning and running, you’re more likely to need a really good attorney.
That’s the long intro to “I wouldn’t thumb my nose at 10 inches of expanded hollow point performance”.
Five, so you used a hollow point and it didn’t expand. So what? When they don’t expand, they act like FMJs. The larger question is bullet weight. 73 grains arguably will do a little better than 60 grains.
On the other hand, working with a 130 ft pound limit a 60 gr bullet can be driven to 990 fps before it exceeds 130 ft pounds. The 60 gr XTP at 950 fps in my Tomcat is 120 ft pounds. In contrast a 73 gr bullet can be driven at 900 fps before it exceeds 130 ft pounds. You won’t find a single .32 ACP 73 gr load that comes close to that in the 2.9” Tomcat Covert and certainly not in the regular 2.5” Tomcat.
In other words when you see that 21” average for the 73 gr Fiocchi FMJ from a 4” barrel, you’re not going to get that in a Tomcat.
——-
Personally, I’m happy with the 60 gr XTP at 950 fps in my Tomcat, as it’s giving me reliable expansion and 12-13” penetration in my testing.
Your mileage may vary but thing long and hard before you pass on hollow points that might only expand half the time in favor of FMJs that are guaranteed to fails to expand 100% of the time.
I'll chime in on this thread...I really do like my Tomcat..I've got a IWB holster for it, which I use most of the time, but when I have a light jacket, I sometimes just put it in the pocket...With my hands in my pockets, I'm always ready...
One thing I do with mine though,, I only load 6 bullets at a time, one in the barrel, and 5 in the clip...Easier for me to keep track of how many I have used or have left...Six matches my S & W 65-3...Six...
No it's not going to be much help shooting bears at 50 yards, but at 15 I'm good with it...(not bears)...I haven't noticed any overtly kick backs with it, but I do like the double action first shot, visable hammer, as well as the safety.
WuzzFuzz
One thing I do with mine though,, I only load 6 bullets at a time, one in the barrel, and 5 in the clip...Easier for me to keep track of how many I have used or have left...Six matches my S & W 65-3...Six...
No it's not going to be much help shooting bears at 50 yards, but at 15 I'm good with it...(not bears)...I haven't noticed any overtly kick backs with it, but I do like the double action first shot, visable hammer, as well as the safety.
WuzzFuzz
Bill Lear
Member
Actually the Walther PPK is the larger pistol in all dimensions, (save for 0.1" width) including weight, both unloaded and loaded.
Length Height Width Weight
Beretta Tomcat 4.92 in 3.7 in 1.1 in 14.5 oz
Walther PPK/s 6.1 in 4.7 in 1 in 19 oz
The PPK is a much larger weapon in profile, but that doesn't automatically disqualify it. The Tomcat is quite short and squat, and is one of the smallest pistol profiles even with today's much lighter polymer frame pistols.
Both guns have longish DA trigger pulls with the Walther feeling much stiffer at the start. Ideally, they should be carried with the hammer at the safety cock which significantly lowers pull weight and length. The Beretta of course can be carried "cocked & locked" and it's tiny thumb safety is well located for the average hand.
Both designs suffer from slides that ride very close above the web of the shooting hand depending on grip style. The modern trend to grip as high as possible isn't ideal on either gun unless you want to have slide tracks through the web of your hand.
To me the upside to the Tomcat is it's simple, blow-back action and fixed barrel. This allows the weapon to be fired in contact without pushing the action out of battery. Blow-back is highly reliable in low power calibers and though the Tomcat lacks an extractor, I've never experienced a single issue with the gun cycling and ejecting. Because the gun lacks an extractor (being a scaled up .25), Beretta used a tip-up barrel to allow cartridges to be removed from the chamber, and this makes a really convenient feature because it's so easy check the weapon's loaded status as well as drop the chambered round out without cycling the gun. Personally, I like the heft and hand-filling qualities of the Beretta, but by today's standards it's on the heavy side - around 16 ounces fully loaded with 8 rounds of .32 auto.
Far too much is made of the "frame cracking issue" by an internet that spins and gins everything into an overblown catastrophe just waiting to happen. First, very FEW shoot small "pocket pistols" more than a few hundred rounds in an entire lifetime of ownership. Any time I read someone claiming they're dumping a thousand rounds down range through their small autos my BS radar lights up. While I am sure there are those who will deliver such abuse just to prove they can, such is NOT the normal wear and stress on most small handguns.
Having said THAT, the frame cracking issue is overblown. Specifically, the area on the right side where the trigger draw bar communicates through the frame opening to the trigger, there is an oval shaped cut out. The top side of the oval is a super-thin "sliver" of alloy that by design creates a stress point. Over time, this sliver of metal can/might fracture at one end due to the vibration frequency of the slide making hard contact with the frame during cycling. Once that "crack" has formed, the frame has essentially "self-corrected" the stress point and will have no further issues. In fact, one of the best "fixes" is to have a knowledgeable gunsmith excise that thin sliver of frame over the oval cut out! IF/when the frame cracks, simply grinding away the strip of material resolves the issue. That skinny little band of metal is incapable of carrying ANY support loads and is simply cosmetic. Whether it's there or not doesn't not in any way impede the function of the gun. One would THINK Beretta would have done a recall and corrected all frames to having the oval top strip cut away, or at the very least corrected it somewhere during production about a million pistols ago, but the fact that they haven't speaks volumes as to how often they receive a Tomcat back for a "cracked frame"!
The situation is analogous to the 1911 frame. On the left side there is a half-square, half-round hole through the frame just below the frame rail to allow the slide stop to protrude into the magazine well. A stead diet of heavy loads can cause the frame to crack above the hole - though it is rare. When Colt introduced the Delta Elite 10mm, they experienced a wave of "frame cracks" at that location due to much hotter cartridge, and the "fix" they implemented was to simply cut out that section of rail, creating a rectangular opening!
Thanks to the internet, a FEW cracks in a FEW frames rapidly convert into a thousand photos plastered all over the web with the inevitable parade of doom-sayers avoid these "defective" guns. I've owned a Tomcat for over 15 years and this same issue revolves around and around. I have no idea how many rounds I've put through my Tomcat, but so far the frame has never cracked, and IF/when it does I'll just cut away that little strip and keep on going.
Attachments
Funflyer
Member
Bill, I thought the exact same thing about frame cracks when I first got my Tomcat and started reading about them. That thin strip of material couldn't possibly add much to the integrity of the frame. If mine ever decides to crack I'm simply going to remove that strip of material and press on.
Not that it matters much, but why I believe there are still some reported frame cracks is because shooters/reloaders are misinterpreting Beretta's 130 ft-lb max recommendation. I reload and shoot lots of 32 auto and follow a few forums on the subject. What I've read about are many that believe they can reliably fire ammo that produces up 130 ft-lbs based solely on bullet weight/velocity through the Tomcat, and not what the manufacturers rate their ammo at.
For example, Fiocchi 73 grain FMJ that's rated at 1000fps or 162 ft-lb energy is only capable of about 850fps through the Tomcat. Since 850fps calculates to 117 ft-lb energy, many Tomcat owners believe it's perfectly okay to use and it shouldn't cause their frames to crack.
Beretta recommends not to exceed 130lb-ft rated by the ammo manufacturer. I've tested all the 130ft-lb rated ammo I could get a hold of and it averages around 110ft-lb through my Tomcat, so that's the number I keep my reloads at or under.
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