I've always been fond of pocket pistols and small revolvers and over the years I've had quite a few , but the ones that stand out have been the S&W 36 and 60 , lovely little revolvers , of the centre fire pocket pistols I've owned or shot the very best for reliability has been the Browning 1910 in .32ACP and my standard of reliability is very high but I put through over 2000 rounds of mixed factory and reloads in that little gun in a one week period with out cleaning and with out a single problem of any kind
The great bulk of that ammunition was ex-bank ammo well over 40 years old and had been set aside to be dumped , luckily the guy set to dump it was a keen shooter and a friend of mine , the only drawback with the Browning 1910 is that it's relatively heavy for it's size , the sights are quite small and hard to use but made that way as not to snag up on clothing , if you can master the heavy trigger the pistol is capable of extremely good accuracy [ 1 1/2" at 25 metres ] with practice keeping all your shots in the A zone at 60 metres was quite possible , although unless you were keen enough to do that level of practice most people found it hard to keep all their shots on a IPSC target at 12 metres
But the very best pocket pistol I've had was a Beretta 71 in .22 Long Rifle , I bought that gun second hand in 1997 for $75 and it come with the box and the original box of ammo the guy had bought with it , he had shot 8 rounds from that gun in 20 years , it was perfect in every way , alloy frame , slim , with a pancake holster it just moulded against you , strong side carry , small of back , cross draw , I made my holster so it was fine for all those positions and the little pistol was invisible under a tee shirt , it was also fine just stuck in the pocket of a pair of jeans , I made a pocket holster that broke up the outline of the gun and made it look like a wallet or some such ,
Now concealed carry is illegal here and I don't do any thing illegal but I also had a side line making holsters for pistol competition , NRA match , IPSC , Service Pistol , Western Action and such but I also did a lot of concealment holsters for police and security guards , actually one of my cheekiest acts was to walk up to a plainclothes policeman and say " your printing , inside , left ankle " and then hand him my business card , got a lot of work from that
But getting back to the Beretta 71 , I put through well over 10,000 rounds in that gun with out a single problem , in the two weeks before the so called pistol buy back I put through over 2000 rounds , it was a lovely little gun , not as accurate as the Browning but a delight to use and easily able to put all 8 rounds into a A zone of a IPSC target at 25 metres , even with my rather large hands it was comfortable to hold , it is definitely my favourite pistol and the one I'd most like to have back , it was just so much fun , I used to put a few hundred rounds through it every week
David
