Survival and Emergency Preparedness

Just got this email: $59

https://shoptaurus.com/products/taurus- ... f962e246e1

Just thought it is interesting that Dunhams has been advertising both the G2c & 3c off and on in flash sales over the last couple of weeks. The G2c was on sale this week for $214.99 with a $25 rebate ($189.99 after rebate) and the G3c is currently $224.99 i.e... $199.99 after rebate. That's $25 cheaper (after taxes) than I bought mine last spring. Cheapest so far...who knows it could get even cheaper.

Maybe it's too cheap. I trust a $250 gun, not so much a $200 gun

That's a price that's hard to pass up. It seems Taurus marketing strategy is simply to undercut everyone else in an attempt to flood the market. And it seems to be working pretty well. Figure a pistol costs $100 give-or-take so they are still doubling their money. It must be working since they now have two U.S. factories.

I bought my G3 2 1/2 years ago for $259 and have no complaints.

I continue to EDC my G3c. Was just up at the woods house last weekend and ran a couple mags through it. I still like it a lot.

Well...it's now been a year since I bought the G2C & G3C. The 2C is down at the Florida house. The 3C gets carried everyday. Not so much during my recovery from my knee replacement but I'm back driving again so it's EDCing.

I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that I still really like the 3C a lot. Good size, capacity and handling. Possibly the best bang for the buck ever. I run a mag or two through it occasionally when I go up to the woods house. I did the Dinkin's drill (draw and fire @ 40 yards) with it and it worked fine. Still carrying it IWB with belt clip (as I do most of my pistols). I just can't think of a better all around EDC pistol.

Man, not for the money - for sure!

I wonder about the durability of these guns over extended firing sessions (I'd love to hear from trainers whether they make it through high-round-count weekend trainings - I can name you a couple big named guns that are renowned for not doing that), but for a general use pistol? Such a deal!

Erich wrote: ↑Sun Apr 02, 2023 12:47 pm Man, not for the money - for sure!

I wonder about the durability of these guns over extended firing sessions (I'd love to hear from trainers whether they make it through high-round-count weekend trainings - I can name you a couple big named guns that are renowned for not doing that), but for a general use pistol? Such a deal!

Good point about the durability. But what do you consider high count? I've got somewhere around 200 rounds through my 3c. Less for my 2c. Of course not all at the same time. Would 100 rounds at a time be a good test? Maybe 200? Or do you need more to shake it out?

Frankly I can't think of a situation where you would possibly need more than maybe 50 rounds at a time. I understand if all you did was run classes or competitions but for as you say "a general use pistol" do you really need it to run hundreds of rounds all day, every day? Okay, maybe in a zombie apocalypse but still. My experience in taking training classes is that after 50-100 rounds it becomes pretty much redundant. Yes you are building muscle memory but mostly the instructors are simply giving you your monies worth. You paid for an all day class, better go all day. Where and when else are you ever going to shoot 300 rounds at a time?

Added...I went looking for torture tests of the G3c. Found one on Youtube. A guy put 1000 rounds of Tulu steel cased ammo through it. Two issues. First the front sight came loose at around 600 rounds and he had 3 failures to feed around the 900 round mark. Re tightened and locktited the front sight screw and a couple drops of oil fixed the feed issue. That's after his initial 650 round test with no issues.

And it should be noted that G3c are still going for $229.99 in my area (less than $250 with tax) . So for less than $500 you could buy 2 in case one breaks.

I guess I'd say a high round count class would be over 1k rounds in a weekend.

But, for what it's worth (and as I indicated), I pretty much agree: these are great values for "general use" pistols. You put your G2/3c gun away in your holster in good, well-maintained shape, you have a pretty darned good expectation that when you draw it the gun will be happy to put as many rounds as you've got along with you through reliably and accurately. And they're half the price of so many guns - where are you going to find that kind of value?

Now, the reason that it's of interest to examine how a given model of pistol typically performs in high round count trainings is that it's a canary in the coal mine for how likely it is that your gun might decide to take a dump on you the first and only time you really need for it to work. So, for instance, I'd not carry (or own) a Springfield Armory Croatian gun because they're so known for clonking out during such trainings. I'm not saying Glocks don't (and don't get me started on 1911s - we'd be here all day), but if you ask five serious trainers which guns they hate to see in their class, Glock isn't one of them.

I just don't think there's enough data on these Taurus G2c/G3c guns for hard usage (people buying value guns don't take them to Gun Skool, maybe because they don't go to gun school, maybe because they harbor doubts about whether they'd work or maybe because they want the other students to look at their gear and know them to be Smoov Operators) - so we don't really have that canary in a coal mine.

As I've mentioned in this thread, I became grievously disenamored of the trigger on my G2c and eventually replaced it. That said, I'd happily buy a G3c and give it to my brother to defend his family - I don't have a better metric to show how much I trust mine.

For "general use" though, do you really want a pistol with thousands and thousands of rounds through it? Seems to me a pistol with a couple thousand rounds through it is more likely to break than one with a couple hundred rounds. I mean does a high round count matter or does it just wear the gun out? What's relevant to real world usage?

As for budget guns and gun schools. I took my $130 Hatson Escort Slugger to a shotgun class just to see if it would work. Ran with shotguns costing 10X more without a hiccup. It is now my truck gun. Sometimes cheap is cheap and you get what you pay for. Sometimes inexpensive is a good value.

I took my LC9s to a pistol class and shot about 300 rounds through it without a glitch. It ain't a Glock but it worked just fine. Lots of guys brought their best, but I wanted to use what I carried at the time. Probably now have 500-600 rounds through it total which isn't bad for a pocket gun. Like the G3c I'm fairly confident that it will work when I need it even though like the G3c I now only put about a box of ammo through it a year.

I know, I'm just trying to rationalize carrying a cheap pistol but dang if they don't work. I will continue to EDC mine until I find something cheaper (er...better) to carry.

Good points. And I've sure had a lot of failures with fancy-schmancy guns over the years. And with old, reliable workhorses (like Glocks, for instance) - the nice thing about the old reliables is they're easy to fix and people have the parts. Taking apart the G2c to replace that icky trigger took WAY longer than completely detail stripping and reassembling any Glock.

But, hey: go to gun school with two G3cs, and if you have problems, use the other one.

Anyway, like I said: I trust mine enough that I'd buy one just like it for loved ones. No more clear endorsement than that.