Guns: Glock 42 review (The .380 Throne, Part 4 of 5)

[I'm clearing out a bunch of my .380 pistols, so I thought it'd be fun to do a C/D-style comparison test to see which one is king of the hill...]

2. Glock 42 - The Single-Stack Study

Like a demented Deep Thought experiment, the G42 is an answer to a question no one asked - the pistol just doesn't measure up to the size/capacity of other .380s on the market. Actually, I've always suspected that Glock devoted the entire gun to troubleshooting the design of its real cash cow, last year's Glock 43 9mm. In relative terms, the G43 completely obsoletes its little brother; it's only slightly larger, yet still holds 6+1 rounds of a much more powerful cartridge.

So, in the Glock 42, we are left with a curious package that is both more and less than the sum of its parts. It has the same terrible plastic "sights" and the same mushy trigger found on every stock Glock, yet it also shares the family's shootability and trigger reset, too. In fact, this was actually the softest-recoiling, fastest-shooting pistol of the group, and it was almost as accurate as the Bersa.

PMC Bronze at 7 yards:

Of course, one well-documented issue with the G42 is its ammo sensitivity. Some brands will work flawlessly, others will give you jams. These problems tend to go away after break-in, but it is something to look out for:

S&B at 10 yards:

S&B at 15 yards: