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 gun review: Sig Sauer P290 RS I


don’t like mouse guns. Experience has taught me to be wary of little guns for a lot of reasons. First, they can be fi nicky about ammunition. Second, their recoil is a bit harsh, resulting in groups on paper that can be a little hard on the ego. Third, they tend to be carried a lot and shot very little, as the old saying goes (which is an unacceptable practice for someone who seriously carries a fi rearm as a weapon rather than merely a talisman). Last and most important, mouse guns come mostly in mouse gun calibers. It used to be almost a given that the smaller the semi-auto pistol, the less reliable it was. However, today’s gun manufactur- ers produce some decent little pistols for concealment that also function very well. One of the good ones is the 2.9-inch bar- reled P290 RS from Sig Sauer. It is incred- ibly easy to conceal, but still off ers a decent capacity given the choice of a six- or eight- round 9mm magazine and a useable grip for full-size law offi cers like myself. It also works great for backup in a front pants pocket, on body armor, or carried on your ankle with the aforementioned six-round bullet box. Still, it’s big enough that a lower primate like me can manipulate its controls and shoot it somewhat eff ectively. Avoiding the caliber debate, my personal


preference is to carry only service calibers for defense. Even with advancements in bullet technology, I have never felt comfortable with the calibers in which most super small pistols are off ered. However, the P290 is of- fered in 9mm, which is comforting. Mostly, I don’t like pocket pistols because I have the hands of a monkey without the inordinate strength necessary to shoot them well. Big hands and long fi ngers make it especially dif- fi cult to fi nd a small handgun in an eff ective caliber with a decent grip. T ese are some of the reasons I’m an ad-


vocate of carrying something as close to a duty-size handgun as possible during one’s off -duty pursuits. Still, there’s no deny- ing the need for those little guns when it’s impossible to conceal a larger gun or for backup use. In fact, despite being an advo- cate of large gun carry, there certainly are a


17 The Police Marksman Summer 2015


 The Sig P290 RS is very much a miniaturized, single-stack version of the P250.


 The Sig P290 RS functioned perfectly with all ammunition including Corbon, Federal and PMC brands.


lot of subcompact 9mm and .40 caliber pis- tols in my gun safe, just no ‘starter pistols.’ By that, I don’t mean blank guns for signal- ing the start of a marathon, I mean the ones that are chambered in rounds that are better at starting fi ghts than ending them.


Features T e “RS” after the Sig’s P290 name stands for Re-Strike. T e P290 has second strike capability, which goes hand-in-hand with its double-action-only trigger system. T ere were some sporadic complaints involving early pre-RS P290’s with light primer hits.


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