Recent .32NAA Guardian Purchase

[KZ]

Recent .32NAA Guardian Purchase:

On the positive side, I like the simplicity of the straight blow-back design; the stiff slide is not a bother. Being solid stainless steel, there is no frame and slide surface coating to bubble or crack. It has a solid substantial gun like feel. The grips do not hold the trigger bar in place. When this is not the case loosened grip screws can cause the trigger bar to slip rendering the trigger useless. I really want to like this firearm, however, now the range report:

The clips did not always insert smoothly. Note that one of the original clips was returned as no ammo could be loaded into it, the replacement worked o.k. The first few clips went fine, then the slide became extremely hard to manually rack after a fresh clip was inserted, and remained so for the remainder of range practice. The slide did continue to cycle after a fired round. There were a few failures to fire which was to be expected. The feeding bullet would lodge horizontally not quite in the chamber. Note the picture of the uneven slide to barrel tolerances between the right side and left side of the firearm. After range practice the firearm was disassembled for cleaning. Scratches were evident on the inside of the slides breach side (the side with the looser slide to frame tolerance). I can only guess that some brass shaving got caught there and that is what caused the scratches and made the slide so hard to manually cycle. After the Guardian was re-assembled, I decided to manually cycle some ammo to make sure the slide was not binding up again. When doing so, one Hornaday Critical Defense FTX bullet got stuck in the barrel. It looked like the other bullets with no discernible defects. It stuck out about a quarter of an inch and was not coming out. The Guardian had to be disassembled and a wood dowel inserted into the barrel to push the bullet out. I don't know if the multiple diameter barrel that accommodates the necked down .32NAA ammo is the culprit or not. Seems that there are two critical barrel tolerances to machine, not one as would be the case for a .380. Considering I have found only one distributer of Corbon .32NAA ammo, all the rest distribute Hornaday ammo, changing ammo manufacturer and giving the .32NAA Guardian a second chance is not the option it would be with the .380 Guardian. The jury is out as to whether or not I will purchase another 100 rounds of expensive .32NAA ammo and give it another go. I would not trust my .32NAA Guardian for everyday carry. If I had it to do over again, I would choose the .380 Guardian and try some different ammo before giving up on the Guardian. Hope you NAA firearm is more dependable than mine has proven to be. -Regards.