NRA Shooting Illustrated 4/30/2019 by Tamara Keel
So, I was giving some thought the other day to the most-significant CCW handgun of the last 20 years.
“Oh, Lord,†I can hear someone thinking, “she’s about to go on and on about the Glock G19 again.†But, nope, that’s not it.
“Then the 1911, because TWO WORLD WARS!†Nah, I’m not referring to the venerable 1911, either.
You have to cast your mind back to the handgun scene of the mid-1990s. Led by the NRA, the whole Shall-Issue movement was gathering steam, and concealed-carry reform was sweeping the country. While in the perfect, ideal CCW world that existed largely in the pages of gun magazines, everyone was carrying a service-size semi-automatic, a pair of spare mags, a backup gun (and a partridge in a pear tree), the reality was very different.
The average carrier—heck, I’d be comfortable stating the statistical majority of carriers—just doesn’t want to put up with the hassle of getting strapped up with all that gear in the mornings. Instead, they want a gun that solves the First Rule of Gunfighting (“Have a gun.â€) while impacting their normal, daily existence as little as possible.
The thing was, back in the 1990s, that really limited a person’s choices in CCW handguns. Pleated pants were still sort of a thing, and AirLite revolvers had just come into play, at least for people who could drop $700 (about a 1,000 bucks in 2018 dollars) on a five-shot snubbie, so there was kind of a pocket solution there, but really unobtrusive, micro-size concealed-carry guns were few and pretty suboptimal.
More:
https://www.shootingillustrated.com/articles/2019/4/30/kel-tec-p-32-the-most-influential-handgun-in-the-last-20-years/
