Smith & Wesson Bodyguard 2.0 .380

By: Massad Ayoob

Smith & Wesson has improved the Bodyguard .380 BIG time!

Back when Smith & Wesson came out with their first Bodyguard .380 auto, I wasn’t impressed. The trigger pull was long and heavy, the recoil was snappy, and it didn’t point well. The 2.0 version introduced last year, fortunately, is night and day different.

Striker-fired instead of hammer-fired. Sweet trigger. Excellent sights for a pocket pistol. Good natural pointing characteristics, and recoil that’s barely more than a .22. Moreover, magazine capacity is upped to twelve in the extended magazine and ten in the short concealment mag. It is, overall, a far more “shootable” gun than the one it replaces. This is all the more critical when you get down to .380 caliber, which is generally considered minimum/marginal in terms of self-defense potency — the less powerful the ammo, the more precision that’s demanded to solve anti-personnel problems.

The On Target test sample, serial number NO641, is actually the second Bodyguard 2.0 I’ve had a chance to put through its paces. My wife Gail and I had been on the road when we dropped into a gun shop, and she fell in love with one on display. I bought it for her on the spot and later tested it for another gun magazine.

Overview

This tiny gun can be completely concealed by an average-sized male hand. Unloaded weight is feathery, just under ten ounces — 9.8 ounces, to be exact. The width is only 0.88 inches, the height is only 4.0 inches, and the overall length is shorter than a snub-nose .38 Special revolver. The grip-to-barrel angle makes it a natural “pointer,” and that pointing brings to your eyes a truly excellent sight picture for a tiny .380: a bright orange circle on the front and a big U-notch rear sight. I give the sights “five out of five stars.” Bonus: there’s a tiny Tritium night sight ball in that front circle: a helluva deal on a pistol whose suggested retail is only $449.

Slide grasping grooves are generous in cut, run up over the top of the slide, and are present front and back. Indeed, more of the slide has grasping grooves than doesn’t. All this makes the slide relatively easy to run by hand.

Why did I say it had a sweet trigger? The tabbed trigger has a short take-up before you hit the “wall” of serious resistance, and a clean break thereafter … and frankly, the resistance isn’t that serious.

The pull weight on a Lyman digital trigger pull gauge averaged 4.89 pounds, which is on the light side for a striker-fired pistol (the sample we had in-house averaged 5.11 pounds.)  For God’s sake, carry it in a holster, and if you take advantage of its pocket-able size, use a good pocket holster. My wife carries her Bodyguard .380 in a leather Galco pocket holster, and it disappears on her.

Shooting the Bodyguard 2.0

Our first Bodyguard 2.0 shot way left, noticeable in close, and pronounced at 25 yards. The On Target test sample did the same. My fellow instructor, Steve Denney, was part of the test team with our first 2.0, and he applied a sight-changing tool he got from Skinner Sights to bring that pistol true to point of aim/point of impact.

Accuracy? The great majority of self-defense shootings take place at fairly close range. Tom Givens has kept track of his many students who’ve been in gunfights – he’s up to 74 of them now – and finds that the vast majority take place at a distance of about a car length or less. He’s had only one where the range was 23 yards or so. It has become the gun magazine custom to test pocket pistol accuracy at ranges of fifteen, ten, or even seven yards. This is all good to know, but it’s also comforting to know that your carry gun can protect you at a greater distance, so I still tested this petite pistola at 25 yards from a solid two-hand hold on a Matrix rest on a concrete bench.

Let me explain ammo selection. The .380 ACP is a relatively low-powered cartridge. There are three theories on how to load one to maximize its self-defense effectiveness. One is to use non-expanding full metal jacket bullets to make sure the bullet gets deep enough to pierce vital organs. Another is to use hollow-point bullets to expand its diameter. The third is to use the relatively new fluted bullets that don’t expand but spin tissue away from the wound path. To allow for all three theories, we tested each type for accuracy.

The FMJ round was 95-grain round-nose Remington-UMC, and the jacketed hollow point was Hornady’s 90-grain XTP — the rare .380 JHP, which generally hits or comes close to FBI’s minimum 12″ penetration in gelatin and still expands at least somewhat. The fluted bullet load was 68 grain Lehigh at 1100 fps nominal velocity. All the groups would have stayed in the eight-inch center circle of an IDPA target at 25 yards. The Hornady group was ruined by one shot I jerked, but the other four were in a satisfying 2.0″ cluster with the tightest trio in one and a quarter inches. The Lehigh rounds put their best three in three and three-quarter inches.

Recoil was negligible, and this combined with the good trigger and sights, made this .380 simply fun to shoot. So much fun that with two of them on hand, I couldn’t resist a bit of dual-wielding, with the gun in my non-dominant hand-held conventionally and the one in the dominant hand tilted so the left eye could more or less align them both simultaneously. Not recommended tactically of course, but fun. It’s easy to have fun with the Bodyguard 2.0.

Getting back to tactics, though, one advantage of this new pistol is that its design will allow it to fire with the muzzle in press contact with the target. This is a potentially life-saving feature in a close-quarters self-defense handgun like this one.

Getting all ten rounds into the short mag by hand was no trick, but the eleventh and twelfth in the extended mag required a loading tool. With both magazines, when completely full, there wasn’t enough flex left in the spring to allow the magazines to seat easily with the slide forward. We’ll be downloading each by one cartridge.

Summary

All of us on the test team liked the Bodyguard 2.0. With several hundred rounds between the two samples, there was but a single malfunction: a failure to feed with a fluted bullet in the On Target gun, which was instantly rectified with a tap-rack.

Small, handy size. Super-light and super-thin. Excellent sights and great trigger. Enough cartridge capacity to make even a .45 fan feel a little better about carrying a .380. According to field feedback, we aren’t the only ones who’ve found our Bodyguard 2.0 pistols shooting left, but fortunately, both front and rear sights sit in dovetails and aren’t that hard to bring into line.

At $449 MSRP, we predict that Smith & Wesson will sell tons of these new Bodyguard 2.0 pistols. See it at your nearest dealer, or for more information, contact Smith & Wesson; Tel: (800) 331-0852; Web: www.smith-wesson.com.

Specifications:

Action:                        Striker fired

Caliber:                      .380 ACP

Barrel Length:             2.75 inches

Overall Length:           5.5 inches

Width:                        0.88 inches

Height:                       4.0 inches

Weight:                      9.8 ounces

Finish:                        Black Armornite

Sights:                       U-notch rear, Tritium/orange front

Capacity:                   12+1 rds.

MSRP:                       $449.00