Glock 42: Initial Impressions, Review, Long Term Durability

The .380 is my only setback on owning one. It may be a great round for the platform but I'm pretty against stocking multiple calibers at this point. I'll be reluctantly buying a Glock 22 soon, but that is nothing more than prep against 9mm going kaput again despite nicely stocked .40 at the stores.

That said, if what Lenny Mctool claims is true, that a G42 sized 9mm is coming soon, I'll be all over that shit so fast. Cheetah on an antelope fast. I'll hate having a 9mm Glock that won't fit my G17 mags, but it'll see a ton of use. I have redundancy in all my carry items except the gun. Carrying two guns to go with two knives, two flashlights and so on would complete me as a person.

Yes, the shining part of this gun isn't it's caliber. It excels in it's design envelope of light weight, reliability and shootability while maintaing the small size. This is more to be compared to a snubby yet the shootability of a Glock. This gun sports real Glock sights. It carries 2 more rounds than a snubby and shoots circles around and snubby I've ever shot.
I hate appendix carry. this gun is small and light enough that I can appendix carry with pretty good comfort and I can do it while wearing elastic banded jogging short.

This gun has solved home carry and wearing nylon shorts thus ending a good amount of swamp ass for myself. I hate swamp ass.

Put another couple mags through the 42. No more malfunctions, accuracy is on par with the Glock 26. I pulled 1.86s draw from appendix carry. The small rip requires a moment more to get a good grip. I'm now convinced this gun is a keeper.

Does anybody have experience with the XDs in 9mm and also the G42? I'm not dead set against a low cap .380, I do carry a 20lb 6 shot all steel .38 spl at times, but I do think the .38 is a good bit more potent than .380, especially considering you get an extra 50% projectile weight and hot +P loadings.

I guess I just don't want to stock .380..that shit is expensive. Im ok-ish with it ballistically.

Nope, no experience with the XDs.

Might be able to help with the ammo though. If you look on ammoseek.com or some of the other ammo search engines you're looking at 0.26 cents a round for remanufactured .380 ACP JHP and 0.28 cents a rd for some .380 FMJ fodder from Freedom Munitions.

ammoseek.com/ammo/380-auto

That's a couple cents more a rd than 9mil when you buy it that way and I know it's a little weird to buy .380 in bulk, but at least that way you aren't getting it in the ass ungreased on price and it's nearer to the price of 9mm. My wife has a pistol in .380 that she likes so it's something we already have to stock. That's how we've been doing it.

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I've seen a few gunshot wounds of both .380 and .38 Special before and on the surface they didn't really look that different. I obviously don't know what the wound channel looked like inside as far as tissue damage went and I haven't done much handgun hunting period (much less with a .380 ACP), but it wasn't like the difference between .380 and something like a .40 S&W or a .45 ACP. Those last two made some big freaking holes with JHP and it was obvious that it was something larger.

.380 and .38 Spl also have basically the same penetration as well in this unscientific test.



According to brass fetcher there is a bit more energy transfer with the .38 Spl over the .380 ACP though.



www.brassfetcher.com/380ACP/380%20ACP.htm

In looking at the cases it seems like the .38 Spl would have quite a bit more power vs the .380 because of the longer case/increased capacity. Much of that room isn't used though and it's just a carry over from when the .38 Spl was a black powder cartridge. With BP the .38 Spl case was almost filled to capacity.

The designers at the time were just making sure that .38 Spl cartridges couldn't be loaded into the .38 Short Colt and .38 Long Colt, in much the same way they did later with the .357 Mag by making the case longer.

.38 Spl has a bit more pop than the .380 ACP, but it's not really *that* much more. Their ballistics are actually roughly the same if you're looking at the 110 gr. .38 Spl loads and comparing them to the .380 ACP.

.380 ACP Ballistics (*Click*)

.38 Special Ballistics (*Click*)

[Not trying to start a caliber war or anything. Just trying to say in comparison the .380 isn't looking as bad in comparison with the .38 Special as some might think at first glance]

I actually like snubbie revolvers, but given the tendency of criminals towards rat-packing and possibly having to deal with multiple threats in an already lower capacity handgun I'm generally going to opt towards having a few more rds on tap vs having a bit more 'Bang!!!'.

Yeah, I mean the .38 Special does have a bit more behind it ballistically than a .380 and there are heavier grain weights available for it that just aren't there for the .380. I'm sure not saying that it doesn't, the numbers are right there.

The Buffalo Bore that you're talking about though is rated to do that out of a 4 inch barrel though, not a 3 inch. So unless you've chrono'd it personally I'd be leery about thinking it's going to do that out of a shorter barrel. If you look at the .38 snubbie loads most of them are giving around 250 ft-lbs which is basically the same as what the hot .380 defensive ammo is giving while giving you a couple extra rounds plus a quicker mag change.

That was pretty much my only point.

Plus a lot of people aren't buying quality .38 Special loads, they're just buying whatever, stuffing it in their revolver and assuming that because the .38 Spl case is larger that it's automatically going way faster and giving out more ft-lbs than the .380.

See what I mean? I'm just pointing out that the .38 Spl's ballistics aren't exactly all that great out of a shorter barrel and that the .380's ballistics aren't that great either, but it buys you a couple extra rds on tap in the mag and offers a quicker mag change than most can get out of a revolver.

If the revolver suits you though it's not worth changing anything out over and buying a whole new gun or anything like that. I've just looked at the ballistics of .380 and .38 Special snubs side-by-side before and thought that it was interesting. :Shrug

My mistake, it was a 125gr GDHP doing 386lbs out of a 3" SP101. Based on what I hear about their true velocity figures I imagine its a whole lot lower than that. Definitely on the same page about the reloads, quality of sights, extra rounds and better trigger. Those are all significant advantages over the revolver.
Thanks for taking the time to dig up that ballistics info, Browning. Looks like they're closer in power than I have the .380 credit for. I think the illusion of extra power due to long case length is an interesting observation, yet another case of n00b gun owners not having the slightest clue about what's going on inside their weapon. The 129gr +P Hydra Shoks I have list 255ftlbs at the muzzle, so you are spot on there. If Buffalo Bore's numbers are accurate though that Gold Dot load is easily giving the 9mm 124gr standard pressure a run for its money.