Daily Archives: February 9, 2010

About four years ago, Glock bent the rules when it introduced a .45-caliber pistol with a smaller grip size. Glock simply shortened the .45 ACP case by about .1 inch, and the result was a cartridge that could still shoot standard .45-caliber bullets weighing from 185 to 230 grains but fit in grip frames originally designed for a 9 mm. The new cartridge was called the .45 GAP, which stands for Glock Automatic Pistol. Federal developed and produced the first ammuni­tion for the new cartridge, and Winchester started manufacturing loads the next year. For marketing purposes as much as any­thing else—and so no one could say the .45 GAP was inferior to the .45 ACP—both ammo companies worked hard to duplicate the old cartridge’s ballistics in the shorter case and pretty much succeeded. Since the laws of physics do not allow for any free lunches, there is an enhanced recoil impulse to get this performance from the smaller case, but it’s not enough to bother anyone accustomed to shooting the .45 ACP. The resulting Glock 37 did have a smaller grip, which in turn offered more control to shooters with smaller hands.

Para-Ordnance apparently believes the cartridge will sell, or at least that it has enough merit that a Para pistol chambered in .45 GAP will sell. The company’s initial model strikes me as being an excellent can­didate for the stumpy .45 for a couple of rea­sons. First, it is built on Para’s Light Double Action (LDA) platform. Without dwelling on all the LDA features, it is a double-action-only 1911 that requires just a slightly longer reach from the backstrap to the trigger than do standard-size 1911s. Because of that, folks with small- to medium-sized hands or short fingers should realize even greater benefits from the shortened grip frame of the .45 GAP pistol. The LDA trigger needs a lon­ger pull than a single-action 1911, but not nearly as long as a double-action revolver. Additionally, stock Para LDAs have a much smoother and lighter pull than out-of-the-box double-action revolvers, so with the shortened grip frame and proper trigger reset, follow-up shots should be greatly facilitated for shooters with tiny paws.

Para offers the .45 GAP in its Compan­ion Carry Option (CCO). It’s an all-steel gun with a single-stack magazine that holds seven rounds. With one in the pipe, that’s eight rounds of full-power, .45-caliber ammo in a downsized pistol.

The barrel is 3 1/2  inches long. A three-dot sight system consists of a semi-fixed rear and a blade front dovetailed into the slide. A screw in the top of the rear sight can be loosened to provide windage adjustment. The CCO GAP has the flush hammer typi­cal of Para LDA pistols, but it also features a bobbed beavertail safety, which is a big advantage in a gun that may be carried inside clothing. Two other very appropriate features are the grooves on the frontstrap and the bumper pads on the two magazines furnished with the pistol. The frontstrap grooves are like shallow half moons that help control the gun in rapid fire but, when held lightly, still permit the shooter to change his grip. Para calls these Grip-tor grasping grooves. The Griptor grooves, a checkered backstrap and the slight grip extension provided by the bumper pads combine to enhance the shooter’s grip of the gun and make recoil quite manageable.

Almost all testing with the CCO GAP was done with Winchester’s 230-grain full-metal-jacket loads. That’s partly because it was most of the .45 GAP ammo I had available, but also because I thought a 230-grain bullet would provide more of an apples-to-apples comparison with .45 ACP performance and controllability. I did fire a few rounds of Federal’s 185-grain jack­eted hollow points to check reliability of the gun. In truth, if I were carrying a .45 GAP for self-protection, it would be loaded with 185-grain jacketed hollow points for maximum performance. Reli­ability with both loads was 100 percent, but before saddling up with jacketed hol­low points for the streets, I would spend more time with this ammo for familiarity and total confidence.

I managed some range time with Barry Dueck, a former Marine and nationally ranked IPSC multi-gun shooter. Prior to our day on the range, he hadn’t spent much time with Para’s LDA pistols. A seri­ous competitor, his first test was to run the gun against the clock. Specifically, he checked split times of the CCO GAP versus a single-action 1911 he uses in competi­tion. The splits ran about .02 second slower for the LDA than for the standard 1911 during the first couple of runs. As he warmed up, split times on both guns came down, although the difference between the two guns still remained about the same.

None of Dueck’s shots wandered outside a 4-inch-diameter circle in the middle of his target. He concluded that with addi­tional range time, he could compete with an LDA, and he did not notice any adverse effects associated with the reduced grip size and slightly higher recoil impulse of the .45 GAP cartridge. More importantly, with absolutely no prompting on my part, he said that the smaller frame LDA gun in an honest .45 caliber would be outstanding for inside-the-waistband carry.

I also put the CCO GAP in the hands of for­mer Navy gunner Alena Gomez. This young lady is a fan of the 1911 and owns a couple ranging in size from a scandium-frame Smith & Wesson to a long-slide Springfield in .460 Rowland. She enjoys shooting them and has no trouble controlling the full-size 1911s, even in a rapid-fire string. Gomez stands a towering 5-foot-nothing and has extremely small hands. The idea was to see whether she could comfortably reach the LDA’s controls. She was completely taken with Para’s LDA trigger and felt very much in control of the pistol.