In a handgun niche only slightly less crowded than striker-fired compacts, the Remington RM380 is Big Green’s entry into the very packed pocket .380ACP market.  The RM380 goes head-to-head with market leaders such as the Ruger LCP and Smith & Wesson Bodyguard.  The pistol has been on the market since 2015 but has not garnered much of the market and seldom makes the cut for top lists when someone writes about pocket pistols. 

While no one would choose a pocket gun if they knew they would be in a gun fight in the immediate future, a gun that fits into your pocket (inside a proper holster) fits many circumstances of daily life and could be the only gun you have when confronted with a violent situation.  Despite the lack of recognition, Remington made a few interesting choices with the RM380 and we felt the gun was worth a look.

Despite decades of market leadership with the Remington 700 bolt action rifle, the 870 pump shotgun, and the 1100 semi-automatic shotgun, to say Remington has struggled rolling out new products is an understatement.  This trouble has been especially sharp in the pistol market with the R51 release.  We recently reviewed the R9 pistol in 9mm and while we couldn’t find anything to really dislike about the pistol other than its bulk, none of our testers loved the gun or felt they would buy one. 

But every product has to stand alone and this gun starts off with a clean slate.

History

The RM 380 is Remington’s pocket pistol offering in .380 ACP.  The gun is tiny and very light featuring a two-finger grip and a double action only firing system using an exposed hammer. The pistol is a departure from the pocket pistol norm with a light-weight aluminum frame rather than plastic.  Even with the metal frame Remington kept the weight down to just 12.2 ounces.  For comparison, the quintessential pocket gun, the airweight J-frame snub nose revolver, runs about 15 ounces empty. 

The RM380 did not start from scratch on the Engineering table at Remington.  Instead Remington bought the Rohrbaugh Firearms Company in 2014, makers of the Rohrbaugh R9 and R380.  The RM 380 is directly descended from the Rohrbaugh as the photos can describe better:

Rohrbaugh R9

RM380

While the Rohrbaugh had some issues, it was a very well regarded gun.  Remington tweaked the design, most notably replacing the European style magazine release on the heel of the grip for an American style push button.  Big Green also replaced the recoil spring, famous for wearing out ridiculously fast on the Rohrbaugh, with a double spring design.  I have seen no complaints of this spring design wearing out in an RM380.  The biggest complaint regarding the Rohrbaugh was their lack of availability so Remington made some design changes for mass production and the little guns are rolling off the assembly line without issue.  

Stats

The raw stats of the RM380 are:

Height:                 3.86”

Length:                5.27”

Width:                  .95”

Weight:                12.2 oz

Barrel:                   2.9”

Capacity:              6+1

For comparison, here are the stats of the popular S&W Bodyguard .380:

Height:                 3.78”

Length:                5.3”

Width:                  .77”

Weight:                12 oz

Barrel:                  2.75”

Capacity:              6+1

Here the RM380 and S&W Bodyguard are together for a visual reference:

For further comparison, the S&W J-Frame series has long been most people’s idea of a pocket gun.  The stats of the Model 642 Airweight are here:

Height:                 3.86”

Length:                6.3”

Width:                 1.35”

Weight:              14.4 oz

Barrel:                  1.87”

Capacity:              6

Sometimes a picture tells the tale better than statistics:

As you can tell the RM380 and the Bodyguard are so close in dimensions I can’t image anyone choosing between them based on the .2 ounce or 15/100ths barrel length differences.  Both are semi-automatic, and the whole class of .380 ACP pocket pistols come in notably smaller, especially in width, than the J-Frame revolver.  We won’t try to tackle a discussion of .38 Special vs .380 ACP in this article, but the current crop of .380 pocket guns are very concealable. 

Sights

To discuss the sights on these pistols we need to be realistic about their use.  Pocket guns are built to be concealed easily and drawn from tight quarters in an emergency.  There will not be many offerings in this category with adjustable bullseye competition sights and such luxuries would be wasted on sub three-inch barrels anyway.  Generous sights can be a detriment on a gun designed to be carried in a pocket as overly large sights can hang on cloth during the draw. 

The traditional solution has been the “sight channel”.  The sight channel consists of a groove machined into the frame in lieu of a rear sight as seen on this J-Frame revolver:

The sight channel works in a rudimentary way but most modern semi-automatic pocket pistols benefit from real sights, even if they are small. 

The RM380 tries to run the middle ground between sights that are too small to be useful and sights that are too big to be drawn reliably from a pocket – and the gun does a fairly good job.  As the photo illustrates, the sights are larger and more useful than the sighting channel on the J-frame.  They don’t muster up to full-size handgun sights, have no tritium, no fiber optics, and are built into the slide so they cannot be easily changed out.  These would all be major drawbacks on a fighting gun, but keep in mind this is a pocket sized holdout gun.

The sights were usable on the range.  We were able to hit targets at reasonable ranges and even make some plate sized groups at 25 yards.  The sights on the S&W Bodyguard and the Sccy were better, but the sights on the RM380 were better than the J-frame and do an excellent job of being snag free. 

Shooting

Shooting the RM380 is…fine.  That doesn’t sound like a ringing endorsement but for a 12.2 ounce gun with a two-finger grip, ‘fine’ is actually pretty good.  We recently fired an S&W Shield in .40 S&W.  I like shooting but I did not make it through a full magazine and the owner sold it as soon as he could.  The combination of the snappy recoil from the .40 and the tiny cross-section of the grip made for an unpleasant shooting experience. 

While the .380 is not often accused of being a smoking hot round; the small, light-weight guns often chambered for it can make it feel like a hotter round than it really warrants.  It takes weight to cancel out recoil and while 12.2 ounces in the RM380 isn’t much weight, the little gun does a fair job of eating up recoil with the double mainspring, and decent ergonomics transmit the recoil to your hand broadly enough to avoid discomfort. 

The trigger is the soul of any gun and while striker fired triggers seem simple, there are actually several steps happening while you pull.  Double action triggers tend to be heavier, but many companies find them easier to make consistent.  The Bodyguard has been my go to pocket gun for a while now, but the trigger is nothing to brag about.  The RM 380 trigger is heavy compared to many modern handguns at an average of 8.45 lbs., but the consistency was excellent at just over a quarter-pound standard deviation. 

The consistent trigger allowed us to average groups of nearly 3-inches at 15 yards.   Tiny guns are hard to group well due to their tiny sights and the inability to rest them on sandbags for grouping.  We pulled off one 3-inch group at 25 yards, but this entire category of guns isn’t really designed for 25 yard groups. 

Guns in this category, I call them hold out guns or mouse guns or ‘Get off me’ guns, are not made to shoot pretty groups at distance.  They are made to be small enough and light enough that you will actually carry them, and come out quickly and effectively when needed.  So we went to the range with a couple of pocket holsters and started shooting. 

And that’s where things came apart.

The gun arrived with two magazines; one fits flush and the other has a finger extension.  The baseplate of the flush fitting magazine appears to be metal, but the finger extension on the other magazine is plastic.  Rather than a plastic finger extension fitting over the existing baseplate, Remington’s extension replaces the plate.  Unfortunately, the plastic of the finger extension base plate is not up to the task.

In the photo below you can see the base of the magazine where two metal wings flare out.  The base plates have grooves that slide over the wings to secure the base plate to the magazine.  The finger extension base plate on the right is the original that arrived with our gun, the plate on the left is the replacement, and the strip of plastic was once used to make up the top of the right groove that fit over the flared wing of the original plate.

When one of our testers with large hands squeezed the grip for more control during his first shot string, the tiny strip of plastic above gave up only two rounds into the string of fire.  When the plastic gave way the finger grip extension departed the magazine – followed by the magazine spring, the follower, and all the remaining ammunition.  Worse, the magazine body remained in the grip of the gun and without spring pressure or the weight of the other components the magazine body would not depart.

Had this been you in a self-defense situation; two shots after you decided to defend your life you would have been standing there with an empty gun.  Had you brought your extra magazine, then when you noticed your bullets rolling around on the ground you would have tried to insert your extra magazine only to be met with the body of the previous magazine still in the gun.  We had to get the pliers on a multi-tool into the grip to pull out the magazine body.  In a self-defense scenario this would have been a catastrophic failure. 

A 12.2 ounce gun that is only five inches long makes a lousy club when you are fighting for your life. 

We started out liking the little RM380 and we thought we had a winner from Big Green. The trigger was decent, sights usable, and the ergonomics pretty good, but when the magazine failed and left the gun dead until a tool could be found to pull out the body of the broken magazine it ruined a nice little package. At the end we simply can’t recommend the RM 380.