A Taurus to love? Meh…
Caleb over at Gun Nuts just posted about a Taurus that he would recommend to new shooters: a Taurus PT92.
The Taurus PT92 is actually one of the guns that I recommend to people on a budget; it was the first gun I did any serious IDPA shooting with and one of the guns I carried the most. Mine was one of the first models with the accessory rail, which made finding holsters kind of tough, but since Beretta has producing M9s with rails for years now you can actually get a holster that will fit the PT92. Our friends at Blade-Tech make their excellent belt holster for the PT92 AR (Accessory Rail) and since the mags are the same size as Beretta 92 magazines, most generic double stack magazine pouches will fit them.
One of the first guns I ever purchased was a Taurus PT92 and I really, really have to disagree with Caleb on this one.
That Taurus was my first true understanding of the differences in manufacturing quality among gun manufacturers. At the time, those differences meant some FTFs and FTEs at the range – annoying and difficult to understand sometimes as a new shooter. Those differences and the resulting problems I ran into with that PT92 back in the day would be completely unacceptable to me now as I have zero patience for guns that don’t work every single time I pull the trigger, both from a personal defense and a competition standpoint.
Purchasing that gun – which I distinctly remember buying because it looked just like the cool Beretta 92FS but was cheaper – opened up a whole new world of learning for me, actually. It taught me to research the reliability of a gun, to research (unbiased and unpaid) reviews of guns, to just take a look around me at the guns that my peers own or carry, the guns on the belts of people I respect. As I use that yardstick today, Taurus handguns simply do not measure up to those basic qualifiers. In fact, I rarely run into gun stores I really respect that will even carry Tauruses (Taurii?). I ended up trying to sell the gun to a friend, quickly had to refund his money, and then literally pawned it off locally. I should have waited a few weeks to have Taurus look at it, taking advantage of their supposed stellar customer service, right? At least a company that finds itself having to fix a lot of its guns makes the process somewhat easy on owners, I guess. I just hadn’t learned that part yet.
If we’re talking about sub-$400 handguns for the new shooter, Taurus simply does not make the list. Not because they don’t make sub-$400 handguns but because I personally feel they make handguns that will confuse and befuddle almost any shooter that handles them. In a market where you can find Ruger SR9‘s, used Glocks, S&W SD9‘s and a Kahr CW9 for less than that price point, I don’t see any reason to sacrifice quality if you want to get out onto the range and then possibly carry your weapon of choice.
Categorised as: Shooting