Hellcat: Put Some Teeth in Your CCW Gun

As the American Grit resident Gun Monkey, I wanted to bring your attention to a fun blaster, the Hellcat. It's actually the second of an entirely new breed that I call a "one and a half stack." This comes from the way the rounds are staggered in the magazine, which results in a very small concealable gun, with very near real-sized pistol capacity.The first of the breed was the Sig P365, which was a remarkably easy-to-shoot gun with an insane capacity of either 10+1 or 12+1, mag dependent. For the first year of its existence, it was quite literally without peer. But, as we know, competition breeds excellence. And this year, Springfield Armory answered back with a contender, the Hellcat.I'm gonna go ahead and tell you that either weapon is absolutely amazing as a carry piece. And later, we will do a bit on the P365 and its variations. But today, we are looking at the new guy. The Hellcat has an either 11+1 or 13+1 capacity, which you can easily infer was designed specifically to best the P365 by 1.That is some marketing hype, and it wouldn't have mattered to me if they had just matched the capacity of the Sig. Regardless, it does put the Hellcat into a unique category. This is where the magic comes in. The biggest deal about this gun isn't that it packs enough bullets in a small package to actually have a gunfight. It's the ergonomics of the gun that make it shoot like a full-sized pistol. Five years ago, if you had told me that I could shoot a 25-yard plate rack with a micro pistol, I would have laughed you out of the room. Now, the Hellcat makes it easy. With a legit crisp trigger and exceptional design, this little baby will hang with significantly bigger guns.What else you want? Oh, cool features? Can do. The Hellcat comes with tritium night sights and one of each size mag in the box. The magazine options are cool, since they lock up in a way that changes the grip length as well. This gives you a chance to carry and shoot both sizes, before you score extras. It also comes in two models- Regular slide, or an optics cut slide for an extra $50. I highly recommend the optics cut, even if you don't plan to run a red dot optic right now. And you might not because the Shield brand optic , for which the Hellcat is pre-cut, is an extra $300. That is a lot of doll hairs up front, but it does give your gat room to grow. Red dot sights are the future, and I highly recommend you try one if you haven't.The question with a new gun is always durability and reliability. And those are questions you should ask. Much like buying a Ford in a new engine model year, it can be a gamble. But for once, I can put that to rest. When the Hellcat came out, I got to do a 10,000 round test on it in a single weekend. That is absolutely bananas on such a small gun, but it survived. And thrived. I do borderline idiotic tests on guns all the time, and I was still impressed by that one.It's a new world of hand cannons sized to cram in your pants, and its time to adjust accordingly. This one gets a highly recommend. Have you tried the Hellcat out for size yet? Want to? Drop a comment with your thoughts!