Handguns

Kahr's product was by "fahr" a better carry gun than Rohrbaugh's R9s, in our estimation.

The $1,560 Springfield Armory TRP and the $1,495 Colt Gunsite 1911 45s prove to be "pro tools" worth the extra investment.

Playing G.I. with the Springfield Parkerized Mil-Spec, $559, was more fun than with the Auto Ordnance 1911, $515.

Taurus's latest $406 .17 HMR revolvers shoot accurately but cannot overcome cartridge-related problems.

Glock's new $640 Model 37 excels with a brand-new round. Smith & Wesson's titanium $812 4040PD opens new doors, but the $550 FN P9 comes up short.

For some people all that a gun needs is charisma, mainly due to its appearance in a number of Hollywood movies. If the Minneapolis-based firm of Magnum Research has achieved nothing else, then the Desert Eagle's place in history has been assured by its striking profile and big hole in the muzzle.

Taurus's new Model 24/7, $594, is a pretty good polymer pistol, but the pricey $830 Sigarms P226 shoots better. In comparison, the $450 FN 49 RSS is appealing on price, but it's average fare.

Smith & Wesson's $833 Model 610 10mm/.40 S&W is a slick shooter, but the $1000 Colt Anaconda in .44 Special/.44 Magnum is better than ever, in our estimation.

But we would advise you to leave the Mak P-64 9x18 alone. Though it looked new, we found substantial workmanship and function problems in our sample.

We pit a trio of custom production guns and learn a lot about what makes a topnotch .45 ACP. But did we like Kimber's LTP II, the Lone Star Lawman Match, or Wilson's CQB best?

In the fall of 2003, Earnest Langdon captured the Custom Defensive Pistol Division (CDP) at the annual International Defensive Pistol Association (IDPA) championship match held in Little Rock, Arkansas. That Langdon, a top competitor in the Practical Shooting ranks, was victorious is not news. What was news is that he did it competing with a traditional double action Sigarms P220ST pistol rather than a custom 1911, the type of pistol for which the CDP division was founded upon. Naturally, we wanted to know what was so special about this gun. Taking a quick look at it, we immediately recognized that another pistol, the Smith & Wesson 4566TSW, was similar.

We couldn't wait to strip these guns down and see if they differed radically on the inside, and then take them to the range. Keeping in mind that an IDPA Custom Defensive Pistol was allowed plenty of leeway in terms of modification we also wanted to find out if these pistols could be "hot-rodded" with aftermarket parts. What we found impressed us.

In this test we look at semi-automatic pistols that are small enough to fit into one's pocket and avoid detection. One such pistol is the proven Kel-Tec P32. Because that gun fared well in a previous test of pocket pistols (October 2001), we wanted to see how the parent company's slightly larger model in .380 ACP, the Kel-Tec P3AT, fared against the .32. To round out the field, we also tested another .32, this one a pistol from Guardian North American Arms in a proprietary cartridge, the .32NAA.

Naturally, we wanted to find out how reliable these guns were. We also wondered how much difference the round would make in this specific application, and we had questions about concealment and deployment. Is pocket carry safe? Under what conditions would these guns likely prove to be a valuable asset? Would these pistols convince us to buy into the concept of pocket pistols, or would we find too many liabilities for their owners to live with?

Here's what we learned: