As write this I am in yet another hotel room, one of hundreds, possibly thousands, over the years. We just finished up the three day Big 3 Media event near Daytona Beach Florida.
It’s been three days of tactical guns and OPA (Other People’s Ammo) which is never a bad thing. I fired everything from a fully suppressed, ultra-short barrel machine gun to a Russian Dragunov sniper rifle. I also shot lots of ARs, AKs, handguns and badass, magazine fed semiauto shotguns. I even used an ahtlatl (a prehistoric spear throwing device) and I shot a handmade long bow, as well as spent some time throwing knives and tomahawks. Which, when you think about it, are tactical survival weapons at the most primitive level.
I’ll have a lot more on those things later, here in Towsley on Tactical, in several magazines and in my new book Survival Guns for Preppers that will be out later this year. But for now I want to dial it down just a little and tell you about an interesting little carry gun that was hiding out in all this carnage.
I wandered over to a pistol range that was a bit off the beaten path. The first thing I noticed was the colorful selection of handguns made by a company named SCCY lying on the shooting line. There were pink guns, purple guns and later I even saw a white gun. Of course there were also plenty of “tactical” guns in black, brown (or coyote, or dark earth or whatever name trips your trigger) some with matt finished stainless, but they didn’t catch the eye like the bright colors. The polymer framed guns were rather small and as my wife would say, “cute.” I picked up one that looked “tactical” with black and brown and tested the trigger. Rather than the expected striker fired action it had a double action trigger pull. At nine pounds the trigger was a little stiff for my taste in a small gun, but it was smooth and showed little stacking. I picked up a magazine and noticed it was a double stack filled with ten 9mm cartridges. So of course I shoved it into the gun, racked the slide and lined the three-dot sights on the plate rack about 20 yards down range. Twenty yards is a bit on the long side for a little mini-pistol so I didn’t expect much. I was surprised when I ran the six plate rack with seven shots. For the record, I owned the miss free and clear as the sights were nowhere near the target when the gun went bang.
I put down that gun and picked up another, a pink one as I am very secure in my manhood, and because it was the next one in line. Again I ran the plate rack, this time with eight shots and both misses were all me. I was getting the feel of the trigger down when I loaded the purple gun and ran six plates straight.
A smart man would have quit there, but nobody ever accused me of being smart. The next series had a miss. But, then again, I miss on my plate rack even with my competition guns now and then. Considering that I was shooting at targets much further away and much smaller than this gun was intended to be shot at, I was very impressed.
By the end I had fired about 150 shots from five or six different guns. I had one failure to feed. That gun had been subjected to a lot of shooting by a lot of people including some YouTube Heroes who believed that a “Gun Test” means to blast as much ammo as fast as possible while hitting the berm only on occasion. The gun was cruddy dirty and sizzling hot when I shot it, so I didn’t give that one jam much thought at all. I only mention it because my concept of a gun test includes honesty. (For the record, this was not a gun test, I was just shooting the gun. A gun test includes specific parameters, procedures and protocols. It’s not how fast you can rip off half the ammo they brought for everybody to use that week. I have a pistol on the way and I’ll do a proper gun test at a later date.)
That evening I was treated to a tour of the manufacturing plant by the owner, Mr. Joe Roebuck. He is a tool maker by trade and a very smart guy with a can do attitude. I have toured most of the major gun factories in the U. S. as well as several in Russia and in Europe. I know a little about manufacturing as I also have worked in a couple of factories. My point is I don’t impress easily. This place impressed me.
While Joe has owned manufacturing companies including one that made heart stents, he had never made a gun before so he didn’t have any bad habits to unlearn. This is a brand new company and I have never seen so many new, state of the art machines in one place. Most gun makers are doing at least some of their manufacturing on machines that are older than me and I was whelped when Eisenhower was in the White House. I think that the oldest machine in this plant was younger than the underwear I was wearing that day.
What that means is that all the manufacturing processes are state of the art with computer controlled machines. That equates to efficiency and precision. Rather than “this is how we have always done it,” this place is more about, “this is the best way possible to do it.”
On another note, one of the factories I worked in made feminine hygiene products and I think this gun factory was cleaner. That speaks well for management and tells me that everybody there has pride in what they do.
For now they are making one gun only; a double stack 9mm double action. But I saw parts for the prototype of a smaller .380 ACP which will be announced soon. They are also planning on introducing a line of slim, single stack guns and eventually a line of full sized pistols. The original CPX-1 design includes a manual safety, while the much more popular CPX-2 eliminates the manual safety. We don’t have safeties on DA revolvers right? No need on this gun either. I ordered mine without.
While I want to do a lot more shooting with the gun, right now I think that it may well be the best kept secret in concealed carry guns!
Barrel Length: 3.1-inches
Height: 4-inches
Length: 5.7-inches
Width: 1-inch
Weight: 15-oz
MSRP $314.00
www.sccy.com
