Range Report
SAR K12 Sport
A sunny, steamy day at the range with a new Sarsilmarz. I was very impressed with how well this pistol is put together. It shoots super flat, thanks to the sheer heft of the frame and slide. The trigger was good. Way better than I expected after doing some dry firing.
I put it through its paces using a mixed bag of factory 9 mm ammo. I stuck with FMJ since I have no desire to carry this pistol. It ran perfectly. No break-in period to marry the slide to the frame seems needed. It ran reliably from the first shot fired. Zero FTF or FTE incidents out of the box.
It’s well balanced and the grip is comfortable. Five-shot groups fired at 25 yards nearly all stayed under 3 inches with an average spread of 2-3/4. Not bad. At 50 yards I was able to keep two 17-round mags within the black on a B-6 NRA target. All total, 200 rounds thru it today.
General comments? I’d like it more if it had better sights. Besides switching to LOK G10 grips, it needs an upgrade on the sights. This is a very capable and affordable target/race gun. Someone who practiced enough could compete on a level playing field with others shooting much more expensive pistols.
The K12 Sport is not something I would ever want to carry. There’s no rail or any of the features you might want for a home defense pistol either. As the name implies, it is a sporting pistol.
Tanfoglio Witness
I was having so much fun with the SAR K12 that I became a little fatigued after 200 rounds. But I put 100 thru the Witness anyway. My accuracy was not quite as good as with the SAR but that was me, not the gun. It was hotter than Hades and I was sweating like a racehorse after an hour but I hung in there.
Recoil/muzzle flip is barely noticeable. At 25 yards I was able to put all but four rounds from two 17-round mags into a 4 inch ragged hole. But wrapping up my session at 50 yards, my concentration and aim were fading and I was having a hard time achieving an eight-inch spread. So I hung it up and headed home.
The Witness is a lot like the SAR. Heavy but very well balanced. The wood factory grips are better than the SAR grips. Nicely textured, but I will still replace them with a set of LOK G10 thin grips. I have average-sized hands but I prefer very thin grips on pistols…. a habit I developed playing baseball. I had the same preference for thin-handled bats like hall of fame hitter Stan Musial.
The Witness trigger is a tiny bit better on the reset than the SAR, but not enough to make a big difference. The factory sights are better than the SAR also but they are nothing to rave about. I’ll reserve my suspicion on the Tanfo sights are misaligned slightly left until I check it. As I mentioned, I was getting fatigued in my second hour at an outdoor range. The noon/early afternoon sun had also become unfavorable.
This was the second time I shot this pistol and as with the first, it ran like was dipped in butter. Surprising for a gun that appears to have pretty tight tolerances. No slop in the slide whatsoever. I ran the same types of FMJs of various makes and weights I fed the SAR and in no particular order. It ate everything. Tanfoglio obviously has some good machines and machinists. Not a big surprise since they are made in the same province as Beretta’s HQ.
Bottom line: The Tanfoglio Witness is a pretty awesome full-size pistol for the money. But like the SAR, it’s principally a target/race gun. With a decent mag well extension and better sights, a skilled competitor also could do well with this gun. Is it better than much higher-priced target/race guns? No. But it is definitely good enough.
Never got to shoot the P220 I also brought with me.
