Kind of an amusing story from the last couple of weeks. I recently purchased a Glock 43X, also bought 4 Shield Arms Gen 2 S15 mags, installed night sights and the Shield Arms mag release to better handle the S15 Gen 2 mags. I've had it a month or so, taken it to the shooting range every weekend trying to convince myself I didn't buy a handgun I don't shoot worth a damn, but ALAS, this last weekend after slide biting the hell out of my hand for the third time in three weeks, I came to the sad but inevitable conclusion that I made a bad purchase. Not the Glock, it runs flawlessly but in buying this small of a handgun, I thought I would still have enough real estate on the Glock 43X to get some sort of a shooters's hold on the damn thing. After adjusting my hands here and there, willy nilly, and what not, it became clear that I just can't shoot the 43X comfortably no matter how hard I try. My groupings with it are not what I'm used to. I'm not William H. Bonney or anything when it comes to shooting handguns, but I can hold my own on the range with just about any handgun you give me....except this one apparently. I went thru about 200 rounds this last Friday before I gave up in frustration. Now, the funny part, my dad owns one handgun and one handgun only. He has a Gen 3 Glock 30SF .45ACP that he carries using a shoulder holster. He very rarely shoots it and asked me last week to take his G30 with me to the range just to make sure it's still up to par. He has Glock factory night sights installed, nothing fancy, but functional. So, after my fiasco with the 43X, after I packed it away in my gun bag, I took out dad's Glock 30, loaded up his two 10 round mags with 230gr FMJ, and ran the target out to 7 yards, my usual dial in distance for groupings. I had brought about 100 rounds of .45ACP with me from my stash, 50 rounds into shooting my old man's G30, I had carved the center out the bullseye target #3 in the center of the target, not one round outside the black ring.....I was simultaneously irritated and redeemed in the fact I hadn't forgotten how to shoot...lol
Below is an example of the target I was shooting. Like I said, I put 50 rounds into the number 3 bullseye, very few of them out of the orange. I took the 43X back out, reloaded a couple more mags and disappointed myself again with all 30 rounds, constantly trying to find purchase on the handgun for my big, clumsy hands. I went back to the Glock 30 and finished off the 100 rounds by putting the next 50 into the #5 bullseye, with pretty much the same results as I always seem to have. It became clear that I was more accurate with a Glock 30 I'd never shot before than I am with my own 43X which I've put around 500 rounds downrange with. It was time to cut my losses.....
Here in Northwest Arkansas, there's a gun show just about every weekend at one of about six or seven locations within a half hour drive. This last weekend's gun show was actually in the town just north of where I live, a quick 15 minute drive so I packed up my 43X with all the trimmings and went to try and make a deal. The gun show was actually one of the better ones I've attended in the last six months as far as selection goes, there were a lot of vendors. Prices on everything were a bit high as the good old days of getting better prices at gun shows seems to have gone the way of the Dodo. I had a lot of dealers ask to look at my 43X and what surprised me was how much they wanted the four Shield Arms S15 Gen 2 mags more than they seemed to want the gun itself. I make a few of them visibly angry when I told them I was wanting to trade for something, I just wasn't sure what. I brought my receipts for everything, all tallied up I had around $800.00 into the 43X with night sights, the Shield Arms mags, mag release upgrade, etc. It took me a couple of hours to peruse the whole show, seemingly showing my 43X to just about every vendor who asked to see it. Lots of vendors offered me $600-650-ish but that's why I rarely, if ever, sell to a gun show vendor, I usually look to trade. I finally came across a vendor who's collection was marked "Private Collection"....my kind of people. He had an amazing variety of Glock handguns for sale, all of them a bit pricey but just about every model you could wish for. As I looked thru everything, I came across a Glock 30S on an SF frame, Gen 3, apparently most of those are Gen 3 Glocks. He let me look at it and the more I held it, the more I got to thinking I'd just taken my dad's and shot lights out with it. I showed him what I had with the 43X, he was also very interested in the S15 mags, which by the way, is strange to me because I bought them at one of my local gun stores, they had probably 30 of them in stock, but all the vendors I spoke with said they were having trouble buying them and weren't seeing any at the gun shows. So, I didn't tell them there was a bunch for sale less than couple of miles away, does that make me a bad person?.........redundant question.....anyway, he very much wanted the mags and the 43X so I just flat out asked him, I'll trade you straight across for that Glock 30S. I think I caught him in a hurry, he was starting to pack up to leave when I started talking to him. He barely even thought about it and just said "You gotta deal."...So, with no money, or anything else changing hands, I got to leave with a brand new Glock 30S on an SF frame. I took it to one of my favorite LGS and found some night sights that fit, paid to have them installed, bought a couple of Glock 30 ten round mags for $25 a piece at the same gun store and called it a day. I gave it a day for the night sights to sit to make sure they were set up and dried, then took it to the range yesterday and had the same results I did with my dad's Glock 30...so once again my old man was correct with his assessment of his Glock 30, that it's the only handgun he needs to carry. All in all, I felt very lucky with being able to cut my losses a bit with the Glock 43X. I've actually never had that much buyer's remorse on a handgun before but I don't like to carry a handgun I can't seem to be very consistent with. I've got a grip plug ordered for it and I always replace the mag release on my Glocks with a Vickers Tactical mag release, other than that, it should be ready for concealed carry.