You Never Forgot Your First
The .25 ACP FIE Titan
For a young man working to cover rent and diapers, this
little $50 FIE Titan .25 ACP was the best Will and his wife could do.
Everybody should start out broke. It makes the better times that come later seem all the sweeter. Starting out rich reliably leads to a ruinous life. At least, that’s the way I justified my early poverty.
In the Deep South, where I grew up, literally everybody had firearms. However, people seldom carried guns for protection. It really wasn’t necessary. Nobody does this anymore, but long guns rode openly in gun racks across the back windows of our pickup trucks. Cops were the only folks who packed handguns. And then it happened to me.
This tiny little FIE Titan in .25 ACP isn’t much of a gun, but it
was all Will could afford when he was first dipping his toes in
the exotic new world of concealed carry.
When You Least Expect It …
The year was 1994. I had signed in at Fort Rucker, AL, about a week before my actual report date. This meant we had seven days to kill before I started the Aviation Officer Advanced Course. The beach beckoned a mere 90 minutes to the south, so it seemed a great excuse for a cheap little vacation. The Air Force base on the coast afforded us inexpensive accommodations, and my wife, toddler son and I had a great time. On the way back to Rucker, we dropped by the mall in Dothan to sample the food court and the bookstore.
I minded our son while my wife hit the restroom, and then we swapped out. I don’t make a habit of studying other guys in the men’s room, but I noticed an older gentleman wrapping up his business as I entered. Once I got situated in front of a urinal, the door opened behind me and an unsettlingly large number of boisterous young men filed in.
These aspiring hooligans were both loud and profane, kicking in the doors to the stalls sequentially, ensuring they were all empty. Before I could do much about it, one of them stepped in close and popped me between the shoulder blades with a quick rabbit punch. The effect was adequate to pitch me forward slightly, but there was no lasting harm done. I fastened my trousers and turned around to get the lay of the land.
There were about a dozen of them. When they invariably shoot each other, the statistics will be attributed to the effects of gun violence on children. These weren’t kids, though. They were all strapping teenagers sporting matching gang colors. They were also now silently arrayed shoulder-to-shoulder in a semicircle facing me. I just hadn’t seen this coming.
And that is the fundamental nature of crime. It is reliably unexpected. Had I anticipated this, I would have either packed the full-auto CAR-15 I kept back at the house into a gym bag or, better yet, not gone to the bathroom just then. As it was, this was to be a come-as-you-are party.
I was an Army officer at the time and quite fit. I also habitually carried a butterfly knife in the front pocket of my jeans. However, it was 12 to one. I was clearly about to die in a bathroom in a shopping mall in Dothan, Alabama. This realization was fairly surreal.
I dropped my right hand into my pocket, slipped the catch on my knife, said a little silent prayer and moved purposefully toward the largest of the group. I had to turn sideways to squeeze between him and the gent to his right, but I got out of the bathroom without being murdered. Throughout it all, they inexplicably kept their attention focused on the urinal. In retrospect, I suppose that little prayer actually worked.
Once outside the restroom, I found my wife and son blissfully unaware. The older gentleman, apparently more streetwise than I was, had posted himself outside the door, directing other patrons to restrooms elsewhere. He explained there was apparently a gang meeting going on inside.
Once I got over the shock of the exchange, I became angry. I did not much care for that sense of utter helplessness. We left the mall and drove straight to the local sheriff’s office. Back then, an application for an Alabama concealed carry permit was a single piece of paper, $15 and an overnight wait for a background check. The little old lady in the sheriff’s department even loaned me a pen.
Either a Springfield Armory Hellcat (bottom) or a SIG P365 (top)
keeps Will company these days. Back in the day, it was this little
Titan .25 ACP (middle) or nothing.
Eventually, Will sucked it up and splurged on a stainless steel
Walther PPK/S in .380 ACP. He has been reliably armed ever since.
Administrative Details
The application had space for three references, but I had not started out this day planning to apply for a concealed carry license. As this was the era before cell phones, I did not have access to addresses or phone numbers for friends and family. When I queried the lady about this, she said, “Son, you can put Mickey Mouse on that form if you like. I’m not calling any of them anyway.” I hallucinated up some demographic data on three buddies, wrote a check for $15 and drove the 40 minutes back home.
The following day I trekked back to pick up my permit. Once there, I was gutted to find they had been busy overnight and had lacked the time to run the background checks. I explained it was a long drive and my life was about to get way busy. The lady looked me over from top to bottom and said, “Aw, hell. You look like a nice guy.” She signed my permit and handed it back.
I was dumbfounded. I thanked her profusely, but she could tell I was surprised. Her explanation represented the most sensible philosophy I have ever heard from any public servant anywhere.
First, she asked if I had ever been frisked by the police. I explained that, indeed, I had not. She further explained that I could have carried a concealed handgun from the first day of kindergarten to the present, and nobody ever would have been the wiser. She then opined the fact my standing there meant I needed that card. She patiently elaborated the Bad Guys did not typically walk into the sheriff’s office and ask permission to carry a gun. Only the Good Guys did that. I could have kissed her.
At 7 meters fired offhand, the FIE Titan .25 ACP groups well enough.
However, it hits an inch high and 3" right.
From left to right are the .45 ACP, the 9mm Parabellum,
the .380 ACP, the .32 ACP, the .25 ACP and the .22 LR.
The little .25 just isn’t much of a cartridge.
Tools
The next step was to find a gun. The only handgun I owned was a .25 ACP FIE Titan that my precious wife had given me for my birthday the previous year. It had set her back 50 bucks. We made decent money as an Army captain with flight pay, but we also had a young child. At the time, that pistol seemed like all we could afford.
I did not grow up around handguns, so I was still a bit of a neophyte. I did, however, know enough to appreciate that the .25 ACP wasn’t much of a manstopper. I, therefore, splurged for a blister pack of Glaser Safety Slugs. The name sounded spooky, so I figured it was the best load with which to charge my diminutive pistol.
Glaser Safety Slugs are still sold by Cor-Bon today. The projectiles consist of a standard copper jacket filled with #12 birdshot and sealed with a polymer tip. The company even admits that they should only be used in cool climates where targets might be wearing substantial clothing. With the benefit of hindsight, a .25 ACP Safety Slug would likely be deflected by either a T-shirt or vigorous foul language.
I pocket-carried that little .25, thusly charged with an empty chamber for a couple of years. Then I sucked it up and bought a stainless steel Walther PPK/S in .380 ACP with a proper holster. The rest, as they say, is history.
Nowadays, when not reviewing some sparkly new carry piece, I alternate 50/50 between a Springfield Armory Hellcat with iron sights and a tricked-out SIG P365 with a splendid Trijicon RMRcc. If I go for a while without practicing with the red dot, I’ll pack the Hellcat. I carry a gun whenever I’m not asleep or in the shower. Aside from Democrats in the White House and sharks, I no longer fear much of anything.
The mechanical lineage of the FIE Titan’s open-slide architecture is obvious. Beretta has used it for decades.
Ruminations
So, what would have happened that fateful day back in 1994 had I been packing my tiny little .25 instead of a butterfly knife? Don’t know, don’t care. I just knew I really hated the feeling of helplessness that came from being lyrically outnumbered and in fear of my life. Additionally, the people I loved most in the world were a mere 20 meters away. I resolved never to let myself get into that position again.
Strangely, the year before that sordid exchange in the restroom, an NCO of mine had been leaving the same mall with his family. Three scumbags, one of whom was packing a little .25 ACP pistol, confronted him in the parking lot and demanded money. In the resulting scuffle, my buddy disarmed the miscreant. In the process, one of the other thugs inadvertently caught one of the little quarter-inch bullets to the sternum. While it certainly was no .45 ACP, it still stopped the fight. It seems the best defensive gun really is the one you have handy at the time.
