An Embarrassment Of Riches - Brief Article

American Handgunner, Jan, 2000 by Mike Cumpston

With limited production and runaway demand, the Seecamp LWS 32 is the most sought alter handgun in the country. We test four (ohmygod) different ones!

What is 4.25" long, sightless, takes three and a half years to reach maturity and holds seven shots? Most readers of this journal will instantly answer, "The Seecamp LWS-32 auto pistol."

The arrival of a long-awaited shipment from the L.W. Seecamp firm made four-- one, two, three, four, a quartet!-- of these downsize .32s available for examination and a shooting impression. The pistols are consecutively serial numbered in the 34000 range indicating that they incorporate the changes recently adopted to enhance overall functioning and strength.

Originally designed around the Winchester 60 gr. Silvertip load, the pistols are now rated for all of the 60 gr. JHPs from the various major ammunition concerns. Standard hardball loads, however, remain too long for the magazines and overall platform.

This batch of pistols was ordered in December 1995 and arrived on May 26, 1999. In the interim, significant developments occurred which challenge Seecamp's domination of the market niche previously owned by this pistol. Beretta, North American Arms and Autauga have all fielded 32 ACP handguns of the same general type.

Seecamp makes the claim that the LWS is still the smallest .32 ACP on the market. This claim was supported by direct comparison with a store sample of the NAA Guardian, which is visibly larger in all dimensions.

Our four examples were virtual clones, indistinguishable one from the other, both under visual inspection and during firing. Finish and overall workmanship were as close to perfect as any manufactured item can come.

Three Shooters

We had three shooters to assist in evaluating the function and shootability of the quartet of Seecamps. All three are accustomed to shooting near perfect scores on the Texas Concealed Handgun course of fire. None of the shooters had any prior experience with the LWS or any other pistol bereft of sights. Each selected a pistol to shoot through the 50 round course of fire.

At the 3 and 7 yard range, most of the shots stayed inside the high-scoring five ring. Firing was done point-shoulder or isosceles at each shooter's choice. Shooter number one opted to use one hand at these distances, going to a two-hand hold for the 15 yard sequences.

From the 15 yard line, each of the three shooters managed to drop three rounds completely out of the scoring area. This is not a terrible thing--15 yards is well outside the usual operating distance of this pistol and, not surprisingly, most of the point loss occurred 'with these final 10 rounds of the course.

A qualifying score on this exercise is 175 out of 250 or 70 percent. Our shooters posted scores of over 90 percent, shooting 234, 226 and 232.

Functionality

The pistol marked "#1" had been disassembled for inspection and lubrication the night before. It had been our plan to lubricate all the guns prior to firing but, in the general excitement induced by such an embarrassment of riches, we forgot to do so.

Early in the session we encountered three failures to eject, each with pistols numbered three and four. Number three choked on Silvertips while number four malfunctioned on Speer Gold Dots. At this point, we lubricated the pistols as originally planned and experienced no more stoppages.

Each of the pistols fired a minimum of 70 rounds with an even mix of Silvertips and Gold Dots. After the structured shooting, we fired several magazines of each load through guns three and four to make sure that the earlier malfunctions had, in fact, been a product of improper lubrication.

Properly lubricated, all of the pistols exhibited snappy ejection with the tendency of earlier Seecamps to trap the final empty case apparently eliminated.

Ammunition Choice

Seecamp continues to promote the use of Silvertips in these guns. Pistols serially numbered after 31000 are approved for similarly configured loads from the other companies. An ad flier accompanying the pistols documents an average chronograph velocity of 810 fps with the Silvertips.

We clocked a magazine of the rounds from each of the four pistols with a combined average of 795 fps and 63 fps extreme spread. The CCI Gold Dots clocked 775 with an extreme spread of 87 fps. None of the velocities from individual pistols varied significantly from the overall average.

Top Of The Heap

Despite growing competition, the L.W. Seecamp .32 continues to rule a seller's market. The firm sells all the pistols it can make for $450 a pop-- this without any substantial forays into advertising.

Individual owners can still sell their Seecamps for anywhere from $650 to $800. There are a lot of consumers who want the pistols and would rather pay big bucks than wait three or four years for their name to come up on the factory waiting list.

There is no need to dig into the intricacies of the Economics of Scarcity or the Pecuniary Canons of Taste to explain the continuing success of the LWS. The quality of the product explains it well enough.