Today I went and picked up a Bodyguard .380. I have been waffling back and forth on selecting a pocket .380 and when I discovered the price on the Bodyguard had recently dropped to compete with the Ruger LCP and the Kel-Tec P3AT, I figured since it fit my hand the best out of all of them; that is the one I would choose. Aside from the comfort holding it, here are my other initial thoughts and impressions (good and bad): Although small, it does have real sights on it that are in dovetails and eventually I would imagine replacement sights will be available. They are pretty easy to see, even being black-on-black. The laser appears to have been bore-sighted at the factory. Turning on the laser and lining up the sites, the laser hits at point of aim. The buttons to activate the laser are in sort of an odd place for me. Ideally a laser sights switch should be on the grip, where normal gripping of the firearm causes it to turn on. The BG380 has two buttons, one on either side; forward of the trigger guard. They must be turned on with your trigger finger or, if your thumbs are long enough, you can reach it with your supporting hands thumb. The laser buttons are inconsistent. Sometimes it takes more pressure to turn on the laser, sometimes less. The trigger is very long, and pretty heavy. The good thing: it is consistent. The pull is the same each time. The take down lever is hard to remove. You are supposed to rotate it down to 6 O’clock and lift it out – at about 5 O’clock, it stops. I have to use a piece of plastic to push it the rest of the way to keep from hurting my girly thumbs.
Take down itself is fairly easy, once you get the pin out. You clear the gun, lock the slide back, rotate the pin down and lift it out, then ride the slide forward and push it off the front end of the gun. From there, you can remove the barrel and then remove the metal guide rod and spring from it. Underneath the barrel assembly is a little door you can remove to reveal the laser module, which can be removed to replace the batteries or to replace the module if needed.
Inside the box, you find the gun, one magazine (which had a bunch of crud on the follower??), a gun rug with a holder for the gun and the mag, an extra flat baseplate for the mag, a hex tool for laser sight adjustment, the manual, some NRA propaganda and the required gun-lock. It now MSRPs for $399 – but looking around I am seeing many folks selling for $359+tax.
While I was at the store, I also picked up a cheap Uncle Mikes pocket holster and a few boxes of ball ammo. I should get it out for some actual shooting next weekend, and then I will post a review of my range experience with it.
