Review of the Kahr P380
By Frank Caltabiano
State of Jefferson Firearms Training
Photos By John Platt

I recently purchased a new Kahr P380 pistol and decided to write this review, as the pistol is rather new and there aren’t many out there in the hands of shooters, at least locally.

Opening the protective case, you will find the gun, owner’s manual, one magazine and the orange “magazine” which is used in the facility of taking the gun down for cleaning and inspection

First off, the P380 is small. It is every bit as small in size as my former Keltec P32, even a bit shorter in length. It is slightly thicker to accommodate the slightly larger .380acp round. It has a polymer frame and a stainless slide, and the magazine holds 7 rounds.

Felt recoil seems to be a bit lighter than other .380’s I have shot, even though it is the lightest and smallest .380 that I have tested. This is because Kahr had designed the gun so the bore of the barrel is closer to the center of your hand, which give the shooter the ability to manage recoil better. Here is a sequence of photos of the gun firing, shot at 7 frames per second. As you can see, the gun has light recoil, and a very fast cycle time.

How does it shoot? Well pretty darn good! The trigger, being a double action only trigger has a long pull. But it’s smooth, with no stacking, and after a few magazines full of ammo, you get used to it and your group sizes will shrink. Groups? From a pocket pistol? Yes! Because this gun has a real set of sights, you can easily shoot groups and tear the center of the target out without problems.

This is the first 5 shots out of the gun, never have had a round through it except at the factory for testing. Sure, not a stellar group, but plenty good enough to save your bacon if the need arises.

I ended up shooting 75 rounds out of the gun on its first outing. And except for one failure to go into battery (see the first photo on this page), I didn’t have any problems with the gun. It otherwise ran flawlessly. The one time it did stop, I pushed on the back of the slide with my thumb and it easley went into battery and continued to fire. Remember, this gun has not been broken in yet, and Kahr firearms tend to be very tight and stiff when you first used them. I’m sure that after the Kahr recommended 200 round break in, these small anomalies will disappear.

Ammo that was used for this review was Fiocchi 95 grain FMJ’s and Fiocchi 90 grain JHP. Fiocchi ammo is well known to have hard primers, and sometimes won’t run 100% in striker fired guns. The Kahr P380 is a striker fired gun, yet it seem oblivious to the harder primers in the Fiocchi ammo, which is nice as I really like this ammo as it’s reasonably priced, shoots well and is available locally. I also shoot it in my 9mm guns.

Most of the paper shooting was at 7 yards. Remember, this is a small gun with a very short sight radius. Even so, with the full set of sights it has on it, hitting steel targets out at 25 yards is easy (and oh so much fun) once you figure out where to hold on the target.

Final thoughts… This gun is great. It’s small, light, and with a good pocket holster, will be very concealable. I believe this may become my new daily carry gun. Being able to carry the same gun all year long allows me to shoot it a lot, carry it daily, and become very familiar with it. This is a big plus in my opinion.

Take a good look at this pistol next time you are at the gun shop. They are still a bit scarce, but are available.

I got mine at Tuscan Outdoors in Red Bluff (530-528-1225). Having checked around, they have the best price on the P380 in the North State.

Contact me at guntrainer1911@gmail.com if you have any other questions. I will soon post some photos and a review of the TUFF pocket holster that I will be carrying this little gem in.

Now get out there and practice!!!

Frank