Meet the Contenders...

So the auditions for the polymer-frame DA/SA carry gun project have started.

When DA/SA guns meant "frames machined from aluminum forgings" and striker guns meant "the well-amortized Gen3 Glock design" there were huge differences in cost and weight that weighed on the pistol-buying decision.

However a trip to Gunbroker today shows that whether your choice of pistol is a Gen4/5 Glock, a Smith & Wesson M&P9 2.0, or one of the polymer traditional double-action pistols below, the street price is going to be in a narrow band in the low-$500-to-low-$600 range.

Let's look at the contenders...

I'm not going to lie, this is the tournament's top seed going in. I already have over 2,000 rounds through it, have the grip panels set up the way I want, and it's fresh back from a spa visit getting upGrayded with a Reduced Reset Carry Perfection Package.

Further, I can't ignore the effect of all the times Todd told me that this was probably the best carry pistol on the market today. Its downsides are the cost of magazines and replacement parts should anything break. Its upside is that, while all four of these pistols are snowflake-y to a greater or lesser degree, the P30 probably has the best aftermarket support of them all.

Further, much to the chagrin of all those wannabe-ballers who bought a P30 to flex on the poors, HK's re-juggling of its MSRPs means that the current street price of a P30 is actually less that quite a few models in the Glock catalog.

Probably the number two choice is the PX4 Storm full-size. It has the highest capacity and an easy upgrade path via Langdon Tactical. If I add the low profile safety and slide stop levers and the "trigger job in a bag", I'll have the rough equivalent to the gun I loved so much at SHOT last year.

It's a little snowflake-y, but some of that is offset by the availability of holsters and such from Langdon.

Another upGrayded piece, this is my second run at an SP2022. This one has had trigger work at Grayguns, and I've had five years of trigger work on myself since then, so we'll see how this plays out.

Thanks to production being locked in by a huge foreign contract, this is probably the most thoroughly-debugged Sig in your local showcase right now. They may up and decide to outsource P-226 decocker levers to a soup can factory in Malaysia tomorrow to save .0004¢/gun, but they can't do that with the SP2022.

The dark horse: The P07 is unabashedly the snowflakiest gun here. There are good online sources like Cajun Gun Works and CZ Custom, but you're unlikely to find much in the way of holsters, magazines, or accessories at your local shop.

Its one advantage is that it's the most Glock 19 sized of the bunch, a fluke since the local gun store had a used P07 on the shelf and no used P09's when I was shopping.

The P07 has the "Omega" lockwork, which can easily be swapped between safety-only and decock-only. Someone had switched it to safety-only and I have parts on the way to switch it back.

So those are the contestants. Let the games begin!
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