The AMT backup pistol

Anyone on this forum own or have owned the old SA .380 Back Up? Was it a jammamatic or decent enough for occasional use?

I owned three of those SA AMT .380s at various times and none worked well for long, if at all. And that was with ball ammo, hollowpoints....fuhgetaboutit! You'd think I would have learned after the first or second one, but no....

I managed a gunshop in So.Cal. when they appeared.They were so problem ridden than I would in all honesty try to talk the purchaser out of it.Will

Which shop? I was at B&B in North Hollywood, same one LAPD ran to for ARs during the bank robbery. I was the warranty/special order manager and yeah, lots went back.

Curiously, the example I've shot war MORE reliable with HydraShok than ball; the ball bullet profile appears to be right at the dimension of the curvature of the ramps, while the truncated cone of the HSJHP seems to work no problem, go figure.

Not only that, as a first time firer of the Break Up, all my shots went into a rectangle roughly 8"X10" at 25 YARDS. Yes, a stunt, but with those tiny sights, goes to show you what a decent SA trigger can do.

i owned the DAO version in the early 90's when they came out.
it was reliable for the 200~ or so rounds i fired through it......traded it due to weight, the very heavy trigger pull and the fact that i needed a table vice, center punch, hammer, two more men and a small boy to field strip it.


had the trigger pull been less then the perceived 20 pounds+ and the gun could be stripped with two hands and no tools i would have kept it.

I still own a DAO version. It is awkward to clean, without a slide stop, and it is finicky with ammo. It handles 95 gr. FMJ and 102 gr Golden Saber without a problem, and its weight does not matter for IWB belt carry. Although it does not see much use for CCW, I am reluctant to get rid of any handgun that still has some redeeming value.

Hi. I carried an AMT BackUp in the '80's when I was with the S.O.
I had a square leather case on my rig to carry it. The case looked like a large notebook case.
It was a great idea. I think I also had a pocket rig from which it could be fired. I'd love to find another one of these.
I'm wondering if this is a new old one or is this a completely newly designed model.
I'd love one of these in 9mm.

I bought the AMT 45 Backup new, when it came out in the 90s. It never worked right, even after many trips back to the factory. Would not even feed ball.

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As I said before-not a gun to back up your life.And yes-Harry Sandford was a member of my gun club-nice guy but his products suffered from a lack of good production methods.Will

I had one of the 45 AMT backups when they came out and like it a lot. A close friend of mine had a lot more need for it than I did. He is still carrying it. The one I had shot anything you wanted to put in it. I could keep rounds on a typing paper sized target out to 75 yards. It looks like you get what you get. One many be good and one not.
Steve

Had one of these back in the day, it worked. Problem was that with any hot ammo it just beat my hand to death, a little like hitting a boulder with a piece of solid bar stock only worse!!! <>< Duce