Review: Taurus PT938

I don't claim to be an expert on everything, everywhere. There are a great deal of firearms I have no shooting experience with, and others that I haven't even ever had in my hands. But, being a gun dealer for two and a half years, at the time of this writing, has exposed me to a great deal of what is out there. Since it is, as one might expect, often a "kid in a candy shop" sort of situation for a gun enthusiast to be surrounded by hundreds of firearms day in and day out, I have a bit of a collection, myself, now. So, while I may not have the ability to recall the days when they introduced the .44 Magnum to compare it with the introduction of whatever new cartridge that's been produced, I am, in my humble opinion, far from ignorant or inexperienced when it comes to firearms. Thus, while this is not the writing of a Gun Guru, it is based upon experience.

Whether it was so that I could have practical, hands-on experience with the most well- known handgun cartridges, or just because I liked guns and wanted a fair number of them, early on in my time as a gun enthusiast, I decided I was going to get a handgun in every major cartridge produced.

When it came to selecting a .380 ACP, I found that there really wasn't that much support for the cartridge. There are, of course, pretty simple reasons for this. Amongst those is that it's old. If it isn't a hundred years old yet, it's darn close. This doesn't, by itself, mean much. The .45 ACP is about as old, and it's still going strong. But, the .45 ACP hasn't been supplanted with anything practical for the roles that the cartridge performs well in. The .380 ACP has. 9mm Luger is the same caliber and produces greater velocity with heavier bullets. If not for the pocket gun, and the difficulties of putting 9mm Luger into them, the .380 ACP would be one of those cartridges that only collectors of antiques would really care about.

However, at the time, I didn't want a .380 ACP pocket gun. What I wanted was a full- size, or maybe a slightly compact pistol, preferably with a double-stack magazine. At the time I bought my first .380 ACP, there really weren't many guns of that type out there. I had even settled on which .380 ACP gun I wanted before I started working at the shop: the Taurus PT938.

It seemed that fate had some tricks in store for me, for Taurus announced that it was discontinued, rather shortly after it was released! This is, I've come to find, not terribly uncommon for Taurus. They weren't even to be found on Gun Broker.

So, while I mused over what it would be that I would get instead, I got a job at Saint Louis Arms. I spent a bit of time just fiddling with guns and seeing what all we had available. After all, if I'm going to sell these things, I should be familiar with them, right? At least that's the story I used to explain all the happy fiddling I did for months.

But, lo and behold, sitting in the safe was a pair of Taurus PT938s!