I was a bit put-off when the G42 was announced as a 380 ACP pistol, and said so at the time.ДЇortunately, a few readers put me straight and I reconsidered my position. I know that I have yearned for a single-stack 9mm pistol from Glock since the mid-90вЂ™s. When Glock announced the model 42, a lot of people bemoaned the caliber choice. Others hate the caliber because of a perceived lack of stopping power. Many people love it for the lower recoil and smaller guns that can be built around it. CaliberДepending on who you ask, the 380 ACP caliber is either a strength or a weakness in the G42 design. LetвЂ™s talk about some of the gunвЂ™s other features in more depth here. That is a welcome sight, and one I did not imagine I would ever see. There are even proof marks on the barrel and slide that use the stateвЂ™s shape. Manufactured in the great state of Georgia, the gun is a domestic product. Unlike the vast majority of Glock pistols sold in the US, the G42 is actually made here. Although this gun is not merely aГ‚В shrunken copy of its bigger brothers, it works in the same way millions of Glock users have come to know. Glock pistols are widely regarded as being very reliable handguns with a tough finish and a dead-simple design. Probably the number one feature that most people are looking for in this pistol is the name Glock. Few guns sell at the manufacturerвЂ™s suggested price, so most people are picking them up for a lot less than that. The suggested retail price of $475Г‚В is in the ballpark of what I would consider typical for this kind of handgun. IвЂ™ve assembled a list of Glock 42 night sights here. There are plenty of aftermarket night sights now on the market. Standard sights are typical of Glock pistols: a white dot front sight with a white outlined rear sight. With a chambered round, a shooter has a total of seven rounds ready to go. A single-stack magazine tends to hold fewer rounds, and the Glock 42 magazines hold six rounds. Where other Glock pistols tend to be a little thick to accommodate double-stack magazines, the G42 is much thinner as it uses a single stack magazine. The guns look a lot like all of the other pistols the company makes. The frame is a black polymer and the slide and barrel are made of high-strength stainless steel with a matte black finish. Like all of the Glock pistols, the gun uses a striker instead of a traditional hammer. The companyвЂ™s existing G25 and G28 pistols have only been available for government buyers due to the oddities of US importation regulations. OverviewДЄnnounced just ahead of the SHOT Show in January 2014, the G42 is the first 380 ACP pistol available from Glock for the US civilian market. I donвЂ™t think it is a perfect gun for all people and for all circumstances, but it is extremely reliable, easy to shoot and makes a lot of sense for the needs of many people. However, I gave this gun a fair shake on the range, and I was pleased by it. IвЂ™ll tell you up front that when the pistol was announced, I was less than impressed. Once I had what I needed for that, I decided I would give the gun a good workout and report my findings in a review here. I was working on another project that required me to obtain a G42 pistol for some photography. It seems I run into more and more people who have picked up one of these little guns for concealed carry. Introduced with much ballyhoo, the Glock 42 appears to haveГ‚В taken the US market by storm.

Glock 42 production dates