The year 2014 was wild! Well, wild for Taurus. The company pumped out a few oddballs that year. It was when both the Taurus View and the Curve hit the market. The View was this crazy odd-looking revolver, and the Curve was one of the craziest automatic handgun designs that had ever premiered. I don’t have a View, but I did stumble across a Taurus Curve. There was some fearlessness to the design, and while it’s now looked back upon with some disdain, it wasn’t all that bad.
The Taurus Curve came out in that era that was pre-SIG P365, and the pocket .380 ACP was a favorite for concealed carry. The Curve promised shooters the most concealable .380 ACP pistols. Taurus apparently thought that normal handguns and their straight design made them tough to conceal because they printed a bit too easily.
People are naturally curvy, so why not make a gun to address those curves? Remember, folks, Kim Kardashian was hot in 2014, and curvy was good. The Curve would be designed to print less and conceal easier against the human body, specifically the hip or appendix carry position. They molded the gun’s frame to be slightly curved, creating one of the weirdest carry guns ever produced.
The Taurus Curve was odd and admittedly short-lived. However, now that we’ve had time to take a breath, we can reexamine the Curve with 2023 eyes.
The Curve Isn’t All Bad Ideas
Dare I say the Curve was innovative for the era? Increasing concealment is always valuable. For some folks, carrying a gun can be tricky. In the concealed carry world, we have these nonpermissive environments. These aren’t places where it’s illegal to carry, but it might be against policy. Thus, deep concealment is necessary to remain armed and ready for whatever encounter we might have.
The Taurus Curve and its curved frame do conceal easily. Taurus included an all-in-one gun and holster package. The holster is a clip on the Curve as well as a molded Kydex trigger cover. Tie the trigger cover to your belt, and when drawn, it snaps off automatically. It’s a very low-profile system, but not exactly one I find comfortable.
However, when in use, the Curve does disappear. There is no printing or and it’s tough to spot under nothing more than a t-shirt. The Curve was only ever produced in a right-hand variant, although a left-hand variant was promised.
Light It Up
In one forward-thinking piece of brilliance, the Curve used an integrated weapon, light, and laser. That’s neat to see, but admittedly neither was very good. Integrating modern accessories into firearms is innovative, but when they barely work, does it really matter? The light has puny power, and the laser was difficult to see in anything but a quasi-dark environment.
The light and laser activation is interesting. When you draw the gun, the trigger cover comes off, and when it comes off, it activates the combination of light and laser. In my experience, that never really worked. In fact, I never got it to activate automatically. Luckily there is a manual control on the right-hand side.
The barrel is also slightly slanted at the end. This was to provide a sort of AK slant muzzle-brake-like effect on recoil and muzzle rise. I can’t say if it works all that well, but it’s a neat idea.
The Bad Parts
That being said, the innovative design wasn’t exactly enough to save the gun. Most of the innovations were somewhat half-assed, to be honest. Along with that, the Curve had a number of traits that made it a rather poor pistol.
Poor Accuracy
One of the main reasons why the gun sucks is that it really lacks any form of useful sight. The laser doesn’t shine bright, and it doesn’t exactly work well outdoors or under bright fluorescent lights. At the rear sits a crosshair-like inscription on the rear of the slide. You can align it for a better aim, but it’s not great. Even at 15 yards, I couldn’t always ring steel. My groups looked more akin to bad shotgun patterns.
Could I, at close range, hit a threat? Yes, I can hit a man-sized target. Could I make a close-range, precision-oriented shot if need be? No, I don’t really think so.
The sights suck, but so does the trigger. It’s long, heavy, and rough on hands. It’s a bit painful due to its odd design. It rubs and grates. It’s a double-action design, but not really. You don’t get restrike capability. You get all the downsides of a DAO design without the one good thing about these guns.
This leads to a gun that’s tough to shoot accurately at any range. It’s often more of a guess as to where the round will land than anything else.
A Harsh Mistress
This is a blowback-operated firearm, meaning it doesn’t have a locked breech. The problem with this is that we get a lot of recoil with every shot. A lot of recoil combined with a little grip makes it tough to get fast follow-up shots. The gun wants to buck out of your hand and fight its way up and out.
A lack of control makes the gun tough to shoot, and it really destroys your ability to get rapid follow-up shots on target. It’s a mean and harsh mistress that is tough to shoot with ease. The bad news is that it’s rare you have to worry about follow-up shots.
The Curve is not a reliable gun by any means. It downright sucks in that department. I can get a few rounds out of it before it fails, but I have only gotten through a full magazine a few times. It tends to only prefer FMJs, and even then, it doesn’t feed reliably.
The Weird
The Curve does have a few features I could nitpick. It lacks a slide hold open, and the ability to swap mags is finicky. You have to pinch the bottom of the mag and remove it from the grip. It’s sort of a compromise to make the gun a little easier to conceal and to ditch any protrusions. Small guns always have some form of compromise, so I won’t hold these against the Curve as a whole.
Ultimately the Curve was an odd gun that dipped heavily into KelTec territory. It did grace the cover of magazines and was a popular subject for its time period. It burned bright but quickly burned itself out. I don’t think we’ll see another curved pistol anytime soon.
