I was recently contact by the law enforcement folks at CZ-USA. The idea was to highlight some of their product line for police use. I looked over their offerings and, having years off the job and longer than that out of uniform, selected the P-10 S – a nominally 12-shot subcompact variant in their striker-fired P-10 line.
We had the larger gun, the original CZ P-10 (the P-10 C) here for evaluation a few years ago. This time the package contained the gun, spare magazines, a holster and varying sizes of back straps. The new gun is “optics ready,” meaning you don’t have to have the slide milled if you want to mount a reflex optic. Going through the box yielded no mounting plates.
I know that some manufactures ship optic-ready handguns with mounting plates. CZ-USA elected not to, opting to sell the mounting plates for specific optics (along with optics height iron sights) through the CZ-USA online store.
I looked back through my notes on the original (non-optics) gun and found a few other differences between the pair. The most critical are magazine capacity and length of frame. Otherwise, they’re essentially the same. The shorter gun “lacks” the bilateral magazine release – likely to keep it from being ‘bumped’ while in deep concealment. The frame isn’t flush with the front of the slide like other guns in the line, being slightly cut back.
The sighting arrangement is interesting; the front sight features a tritium bead. The rear sight is unmarked and both sights are serrated on the shooter’s side. May not sound like much, but I’m a fan of the “glow up front, stay dark nearer the eye.” It’s unlikely I’ll confuse one of the rear sight dots as the front sight dot, on guns so equipped, but why make the sight picture any busier than we have to?
This was smart and nicely done.
The frame is reinforced polymer, under a steel slide containing a 3.5” barrel. The width of the gun is a robust 1.26” – while the frame has a nicely ergonomic shape. I didn’t bother with the other back straps in the box.
The gun is just over six and a half inches long and weighs just over 24 ounces empty. There’s a firing pin safety plunger in the slide and the face of the trigger has the ‘flipper’ safety, preventing trigger rebound if the gun is dropped. The piece carries a suggested retail of $577. I imagine the agency price is considerably less.
In the interests of time, CZ-USA’s Law Enforcement and Military Sales people sent a holster, an interesting rig called the Tucker & Byrd Deep Carry DC-2 Paddle Holster. This is a Boltaron polymer holster lined with A-grade Hermann Oak holster leather using a patent pending bonding process. I look forward to getting some holster drills in with the “Sierra” and the T&B holster.
In the short term, I got the gun to the range for my first trip in a month – sad to say. The first three rounds out of the gun were fired from sixty yards, standing without support (no bench or barricade) at a “Dirty Bird” 12”x18” BC27 Silhouette target. It looks like the NRA B-27 but sized small, with corresponding ISU-style scoring rings. I’d like to say I hammer the middle of the pint-sized target.
I can say I hit that target with those three rounds. One was outside the scoring rings on the target’s right shoulder (shooter’s left). Another struck outside the rings on the right shoulder. The other was buried in the center of the “8” ring at 6 o’clock. These would have been “C” zone hits on a USPSA silhouette; the first three rounds I ever fired out of the gun. This was fired with Speer 124 gr. Gold Dot Hollow Point ammunition.
Being rushed for time, I’d collected some ‘non-standard’ 9x19mm ammo that had been indifferently stored for a decade. Being ammo with a 65 grain ‘fragmenting bullet’ at (allegedly) high speeds – when it had been loaded – I was only asking for trouble. I got it.
There were many stoppages – all were ammo related. Can’t ding the gun for that. I fired up sixty rounds of that stuff, taking more time than it would have taken to shoot ‘bargain-basement’ ball. With the Speer 124gr GDHP, the gun shot to the sights – all the way back to sixty yards. With this stuff, the hits were going low, confirming that the round was indeed ‘fast.’ Remarkably, the ‘rooney’ ammo shot quite accurately and seemed to be consistent. The bullet was light enough, there wasn’t enough slide travel to get the job done.
I wasn’t going to let that end my range trip with the interesting little gun. I had a box of the old (and sadly out-of-print) ProLoad 115 gr. JHP (loaded with Speer Gold Dot bullets). Taking the opportunity to ensure there was lubricant on the barrel – circumference and hood – as well as the slide rails, I loaded up with the ProLoad ammo. From fifteen yards, the gun not only chugged through the quality ammo like candy, it burned the red “10” ring out of the target.
This is looking good – and there’s more to come.
- - Rich Grassi