A little wave of quiet sadness hit me in December of 2023 as I was scrolling through social media and saw that Beretta was ridding themselves of their tip-up guns. The 21A Bobcat and 3032 Tomcat were to be discontinued. I have an interesting relationship with the tip-up guns and own almost all of them. I’m only missing one, the elusive Beretta Model 20 in .25 ACP. I enjoy the guns, so seeing them fade away gave me a sense of melancholy. I felt relieved at SHOT Show 2024 when, lo and behold, Beretta released their new 30X pistol.
X Gonna Give It To You
The 30X revives and remixes the 3032 series. At its core, the 30X is still a micro-sized DA/SA gun that uses a tip-up barrel design and a straightforward blowback design.
The 3032 had some interesting problems, like the frame cracking if you used rounds that were a little too hot. I don’t mean those backwoods hand loads you get at the Gun Show. I’m talking about factory loads from Fiocchi that generate more than 129-foot pounds. These could crack the frame, rendering the gun into a nice paperweight.
The new 30X promised to be stronger, more ergonomic, and even more modular. Beretta released two models of the gun. You have the 30X Just In Case pistol and the 30X Get Home Bag. The “Get Home Bag” version is the one you see featured here.
The gun comes with two 8-round magazines with a pinky extension installed on both to offer one more round than the regular 3032 magazine. It’s also worth noting that the magazines between the two guns are not interchangeable.
New Tomcat, New Ergonomics
The 30X Tomcat features a couple of interesting ergonomic changes. The tip-up barrel release is a button rather than a lever. I never had any problems with the lever design, but the button works fine. Beretta also moved the magazine release to right behind the trigger like every other modern pistol. The old magazine release used to be on the rear of the grip.
My caveman’s brain always agrees that more ammo is better than less ammo, so having one more round in the magazine satisfies the caveman part of me. The pinky extension allows for a longer grip that fits my whole hand. The downside is that a bigger magazine creates a bigger gun.
Another ergonomic move was the transition to a flat trigger shoe. I enjoy a flat trigger and don’t find many downsides to the design. It does offer a little less room in the trigger guard, but it hasn’t been a problem for me.
Throwing Pills
As a fan of the .32 ACP, I was excited to take one of the first new productions to hit the market in years for a spin. I grabbed a mix of FMJs and even a couple of boxes of hollow points and went to the range. For a little bit of pocket carry practice, I grabbed a Desantis SuperFly holster and a shot timer.
If you’re a fan of tip-up guns, you will be pleased by the new double-action trigger. Beretta claims it’s 35% lighter, and I agree. It’s a night and day difference. The idea of a tip-up barrel is to provide those without hand strength the ability to rack the slide, giving them a viable option to load and unload the gun. However, if you didn’t have the hand strength to rack the slide, you wouldn’t have the hand strength to deal with the double-action trigger on the 3032.
The Accuracy Conundrum
In testing accuracy, I ran into an interesting issue. This gun wears suppressor-height sights and has a very short sight radius. You expect some height over bore to contend with. I’ve dealt with it before, but the short-sight radius makes it a real issue. At close range, it consistently hits about three inches low. At 25 yards, I had to aim at the head of an IPSC target to get a projectile to even hit the low portion of the A-zone. There is more than a foot of offset to deal with.
I struggled to find a sweet spot where the sights were set to function. It always seemed to hit low. A glimpse through the manual resulted in nothing. You might blame me as a shooter, but I can shoot the original Tomcat and hit my point of aim just fine. Although the rounds were hitting low, they were grouping tight. When applying offset correctly, I could still ring a 10-inch gong over and over at 25 yards.
Going Fast
If you have big hands and like high grips on your guns, you might not like the 30X. It’s a slide biter that’ll eat your hands if you allow it. If you just drop your hand a little bit, you can avoid the problem. I practiced a few drills from a pocket holster, including the famed draw to the first round and my favorite, the Bill Drill.
With a few practice runs, I could do a sub-second draw to one shot on target if I start with my hand in my pocket. It takes about two seconds and some change from outside my pocket.
With the Bill Drill, I scored in the low two seconds. My goal was to get a sub-two-second Bill Drill, but I kept scoring between 2.10 and 2.08. That’s not bad, and I know I can get that sub two second time.
The recoil from the blowback-operated gun felt light and sweet. That’s the joy of the .32 ACP in pocket-sized pistols. It’s light recoiling and delivers a potent punch for a pocket pistol. The sights are big, and there is offset, but they are easy to see and quick to align. I don’t have trouble tracking the front sight and scored a nice-sized group for the Bill Drills.
Turning 30X
The 30X proved to be reliable. It chugged through a variety of 71-grain and 60-grain .32 ACP. There didn’t seem to be any rimlock issues in the hundred 60-grain PMC JHPs I fired through the gun. The little gun does a fantastic job in the reliability department.
My biggest issue is the offset of the sights. At close range, it’s not that terrible, but at longer ranges, it’s limiting. I could hit the targets because I had a fixed point of aim to apply offset to. In real life, that wouldn’t exist, and I wouldn’t be able to bracket my target slowly and carefully to get those shots on target.
Overall, I still like the 30X. Even with its problems, it’s a great gun. It’s reliable, capable of great accuracy, and has low recoil. I really want to toss a red dot on this beast, and I await the release of the Beretta optics plate. Maybe I’ll even add a comp to make it a pocket race gun. What do you think of the 30X? Let us know below!
