Me and the new lil’ mouse gun went for a trip up the street after court yesterday to blow off a few rounds in the sanctity that is my friend’s private underground range. My buddy, like most normal people works during the day so with a spare key I let myself into his shop and tiptoed down the warped stairs. There, in the sound proofed and mildewy Eden that we call “Tenis’ Range” (pronounced “Tee-nis”: but don’t ask, often the origin of nicknames is worse than the name itself) I unholstered the little gun and admired its, well, daintiness. There is nothing macho about the little Kel Tec P3AT. It has not a sharp angular corner, nor a bore big enough to pick with your pinky finger. It doesn’t really fit in an adult’s hand, nor does it possess the threatening heft of most handguns designed for social applications. It has a sliver and a slight cut where sights should be and a mag release that takes up literally 9% of the gun’s mass. The thing is a stripped down, anorexic coke-rattled hipster of a gun. And I love it.
Being a reclusive genius and a rather lackluster member of a local law enforcement agency with a nice pension and lots of overtime hours, Tenis has accumulated an underground range that may have well been dreamed up by some 9th grade farm kid. Aside from pillaged blocks of ballistic gelatin and your standard assortment of targets featuring menacing looking bad guys or ominous looking sillhuettes, he also has a small pile of neat and interesting things to shoot. Old toasters. A betamax VCR. Some sort of home stereo component. A guest could shoot whatever she wanted that didn’t smell or drip so long as she used the strategically located broom and snowshovel to sequester the mess into a 75 gallon Portland Trash and Recycling can.
Being the conscious earth lover I am, I selected a trio of outdated Qwest yellow pages from the heap on the far wall and duct taped them together with a cumberbund of packing tape. After all: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. We all must do our part to better the world. Blue Heron Pulp would love the fact I did some pre-emptory shredding of these notoriously hard to digest yellow pages. I then lowered the DON’T FIRE plates in front of the lane and headed out 15′ to set up my target on a well abused sawhorse draped with sand saddlebags. I returned back with glee in my heart for the maiden voyage that was about to be.
I put a pair of foamy plugs in my ears, a pair of muffs around my noggin and a pair of yellowed shooting specs over my eyes. After all, safety is of the utmost importance for any act of recycling. Then I clicked on the range lights, raised the DON’T FIRE plates, and point shot out a quick double tap.
The yellow page bundle danced respectfully, but when I went to arrest its merriment with a third shot, I pulled the hammer and nothing happened. In proper Charlton Heston form, I took my finger off the trigger and kept the barrel pointed downrange for 45 seconds before it was certain there had been no misfire. I then tried to eject the magazine but to no avail. It was wedged tighter than an American president in a guerilla war. Keeping the weapon pointed in a safe direction I worked the slide only to realize that of all my dear little pistol’s virtues, I had overlooked her lack of a slide stop. Slide stops, like a good sense of humor in a lover, are imperative when it comes time to correct an error or omission. And just as my sarcastic self loves a good dark humor looming over my lover, so do I love a slide stop when it comes time to blow off a few thousand rounds of corrosive subgrade surplus ammo from the Eastern Bloc. Missing that intricate little nob of steal that opens up healing space for the clearing of a jam, I racked the slide a few more times before realizing that the dimunitive little tweaker gun had failed to eject the spent casing which was being lodged in by another anxious Federal hollow point. By pushing down on the top magazine cartridge with one thumb while precariously holding the slide open with an improvised Bruce Lee grip, I managed to push the mag free and eject the spent casing with a final pull of the slide.
Damn. Two rounds through the gun and I’d already hung up. Things made in Florida, like Intratecs in the 1980s and elections in 2000, had a tendency to bungle. In fact, this wasn’t my first Kel Tec adventure.
A few years ago I bought a P11 off a Jackson County cop who had carried it every day for a year and a half. He put somewhere in the vicinity of 2,000 rounds of +P cop rounds through it and gave it to me for a pittance. I carried it for two years and put another 2,500 rounds through it without a problem so long as the gun was clean. But boy, get a little dirt in those babies (at least the early serial numbered ones) and you’d better be quick at clearing empties ‘cuz they sure as heck won’t eject ‘em. Realizing that I was too busy or slack to spitshine my guns every other day, the P11 got hawked on Craigslist for $150 before the nerds who watch for gun posts to report could even hit “flag” with their soft little fingers.
But that was then, this is now and needless to say, I was a bit miffed by the whole deal. I squeezed off another round and the same jam occurred. And again. And again. And again until all 7 rounds had been used. I ain’t super quick at math, but that little hipster cannon misfired 85% of the time. Who knew, maybe it was the rounds? A small polish issue? In any event, having had some contact with the Kel Tec folks back in the days of the P11, I knew them have top notch customer service and didn’t worry about it much as I picked apart my 100% post-consumer carnage. The little rounds didn’t expand, but tumbled their way through the front phonebook before coming to rest between the “Attorney” and “Dentist” sections of the second. Though a couple of old phone books are anything but a reliable indicator of wound channels and other such ballistic divining, it sure is nice to see what your rounds do inside of something else. In this case, at 15′, they put pinky to middle finger-sized holes in dense, heavy targets. The little .380 Auto cartridge suddenly seemed more than sufficient for my urban needs.
Tags: concealed carry, Kel Tec, Oregon, P3At, Portland, vegetarian
