The Patriot's firing pin is an unusual design, sort of like a hollow steel pencil with springs inside and out. Shortly into the testing session, the firing pin seized up with the slide--the end result being that each time I pulled the trigger, instead of the firing pin being cocked back inside the slide, the whole slide came back and then slammed forward, with no corresponding bang.

This was a bit disconcerting. After freeing up the firing pin with a scientific technique called brute force and putting a bunch more rounds downrange, the problem seemed to resolve itself, which leads me to believe it was caused by metal burrs inside the slide, which eventually got polished smooth.

The owner's manual recommends against the use of +P ammunition, a warning we heeded, and against hollowpoints because of feeding concerns. However, this is a pistol designed to be carried discreetly and used for personal defense at close range, and hollowpoints are the ammo of choice for doing that. So we made sure to test the pistol with several types of jacketed, non +P hollowpoints as well as FMJs.

The Patriot sports a ramped barrel, and I didn't have any problems getting rounds to feed. I had some extraction problems, but they seemed to be tied to specific aftermarket magazines--the expensive ones. Go figure.

The front sight is one piece with the slide. The rear sight is set in a dovetail and is adjustable for windage, but I found that the pistol hit point of aim at all distances we were shooting: 50 feet for accuracy testing and 10 yards and closer for speed work.

The Patriot .45 is not a pleasant gun to shoot due to its combination of potent caliber and light weight. It is designed to be carried a lot and shot a little, but I found that if I held the small grip tight I didn't have any problems putting holes where I wanted them to be, even with the heavy trigger.

In certain situations, the Patriot's combination of small size and big oomph could prove to be just the ticket.