Best .25 ACP Pistols?

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hammie

New member
The standard drop tubes don't work real well, because of the small diameter and length of the brass. I usually drop the powder charge into a .38 spl case, and then hand fill the .25 ACP through a powder funnel.

Actually the biggest handloading challenge is distinguishing and finding your .25 ACP empties amongst a carpet of .22 LR hulls at a range. You almost have to get down on your hands and knees with a magnifying glass.
 
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Don Fischer

New member
I'm not an auto loader fan much, just for carry guns and one High Standard Military that somehow ended up in my kids house. Every time I ask about it I hear that my 5yr old grandson love's it? I wouldn't care to carry either the 25 ACP or the 22 LR amd would look for a new gun right away. I carry a couple 9mm's. If I want something else one of my revolver's get the call. Have a Smith in 32 Long with a 6" barrel I cary a lot out fooling around. Also have a Smith HD military in 38 Spec I some time's carry. Now if someone made a 25ACP in a DA relvolver I might give it some though. Probably work well on small game!
 
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In The Ten Ring

New member
Pretty neat video.

Any gun is better than using one's fists. However, modern weapons design has resulted in more powerful weapons of more reliable designs than .25 ACP.

Kel Tec .32 ACP comes to mind along with several .380 ACP units.
 
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hammie

New member
@ten ring: You are so correct. As you, "cheapshooter" and others have previously said, the reason for the .25 has pretty much ceased to be with the advent of the newer .32's and .380's which are comparable in size and weight to the .25's. And as you said, the newer pistols are more reliable, or at least better man stoppers than the .25. However, I'm not sure that I would say that they are more mechanically reliable.

I currently own a beretta 21A and an inexpensive Iver Johnson .25 ACP. Admittedly, they are low round count, but neither pistol has ever malfunctioned. Not even once. Even from a lowly Raven pistol, which I once owned, the number of malfunctions were: zero.

Although there was an exception. In the late 60's or early 70's, I once owned an HK4. (It was a switch barrel, blow back pistol, which could fire, .22 LR, .25 ACP, .32 ACP, and .380 AC). I guess you could say it was reliable, because it would reliably jam, regardless of the barrel and caliber configuration.

Edit: Oh, and I forgot. My shooting friend had an older, single action, beretta jetfire. We shot the snot out of it, and it never missed a beat. What I have observed about past and present beretta 25's, is that the recoil is surprisingly snappy. After about 2 or 3 magazines, my hand starts to sting.
 
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Sgt127

New member
I had one of those HK-4’s! I think mine was .32 and .22. It was a consistently unreliable gun is .32 and, for all practical purposes, a single shot in .22.

Not HK’s pinnacle of engineering.
 
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hammie

New member
@SGT127: We're probably getting off topic, but it is my understanding that if you have the four barrels, magazines, and the two factory cases, the HK4's have become collectible and command premium prices. I should have kept mine. I'm 71 and when I look back on the guns which I traded or sold, I begin to believe in "cheapshooter's rule". (See post #62 in this thread for the rule.)
 
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Bill DeShivs

New member
The point is: you can not make a .380 (or a .32) as small as you can make a .25.
The Baby Browning, the Bernardelli (and the I.J. copy,) and a few others are the pinnacle of small auto pistols.
If Keltec were to build a P25, it would possibly be the ultimate .25.
 
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Cheapshooter

New member
Cool vid JERRYS. Although I am completely happy with my LCP for pocket carry, also have a P32 if smaller is ever better, and even an EAA Mini in 22 Short if tiny is the trick, I'm getting the urge for one of those Taurus PT 25 tip barrels. Or maybe some other small 25. I do have a MAB GZ I bought from a guy on the job many years ago for ten bucks. It didn't have a magazine, and nobody knew where to find one. Just threw it in a "gun junk" box, but found a mag a few years latter for about twice what I gave for the gun. Still, thirty bucks for a functioning pistol isn't bad I guess.
 
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Cheapshooter

New member
As far as reliability, it depends on the pistol.
Click to expand...
Not necessarily. While rimfire pistols can be among the most finicky when it comes to ammo, the incidences of dud rounds is higher in rimfires. This speaks to an inherent problem with the ammo design itself.
Even with high quality 22 rimfire ammo, the potential for a dud round is there, and much more likely than with a centerfire 25acp round.
 
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TruthTellers

New member
Bill DeShivs said:
The point is: you can not make a .380 (or a .32) as small as you can make a .25.
The Baby Browning, the Bernardelli (and the I.J. copy,) and a few others are the pinnacle of small auto pistols.
If Keltec were to build a P25, it would possibly be the ultimate .25.
Click to expand...
If Kel-Tec made a .25, it would probably weigh as much as a NAA mini revolver.

That's great for carry, but with how Kel-Tec loves their long and stiff DAO pistols, you'd never get any sort of grouping on paper unless you were about 3 feet away. It would have to be a single action or a striker pistol.

I never thought of Kel-Tec making a .25 before, but now that you mention it, it would be awesome.
 
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TruthTellers

New member
Cheapshooter said:
Not necessarily. While rimfire pistols can be among the most finicky when it comes to ammo, the incidences of dud rounds is higher in rimfires. This speaks to an inherent problem with the ammo design itself.
Even with high quality 22 rimfire ammo, the potential for a dud round is there, and much more likely than with a centerfire 25acp round.
Click to expand...
One of the other problems with .22 is the heeled bullet design means that the bullet has to get feed oh so perfectly into the chamber, which is a few thousands larger than the bullet is.

Every centerfire bullet today goes into a chamber that's at least .02" larger in diameter, so feeding into the chamber is much less prone to jamming.
 
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