I Carry: Taurus GX2 9 mm Pistol in a PHLster Holster

In this week's episode of "I Carry," we have the new Taurus GX2 9 mm pistol carried in a PHLster Skeleton holster with a UM Tactical spare magazine carrier.

Firearm: Taurus GX2

Taurus released its new GX2 9 mm pistol as an entry-level option, but it shouldn’t be viewed as just an inexpensive handgun. Think of it as the concealed-carry handgun boiled down to the essentials: striker-fired operation, 13-round magazine, workable sights, accessory rail and bladed-safety trigger to prevent discharge if dropped. It’s simple to take down for cleaning, has moderate texture for excellent purchase and comes with a manual thumb safety.

What the GX2 doesn’t have, interestingly enough, is an optics cut. In today’s day and age of seemingly every pistol on the market being cut for powered electro-optics, this might seem a bit incongruous. However, while talking to the Taurus team at the product launch last year, they divulged that Taurus’s non-optics-ready pistols were out-selling the optics-ready models by a decent margin, so the company decided to make the entry-level GX2 iron-sight-only. It’s the same reason the GX2 comes with a thumb safety – Taurus’ experience indicates that the consumer for this type of pistol is looking for a manual safety.

The GX2 is sized quite well for concealed carry: 3.4-inch barrel, 6.2-inch overall length and 4.9-inch overall height put it on the smaller side of compact pistols, or on the larger side of the micro-9mm double-stack guns like the P365 or Hellcat. Unloaded weight is 19 ounces, and the 13-round magazine fits into a frame that allows a full, three-finger grip. Width is 1.2 inches, owing mainly to the thumb safety protrusion. Carrying the GX2, should that be its primary function, is quite easy; it’s also quite useable as a home defense gun. There’s a Viridian laser available, and the GX4 Carry 15-round magazines will function in the GX2 should a bump in capacity be desired.

The biggest question, of course, is reliability. This is a pistol designed and marketed as “entry level,” which often gets dismissed as a less-than-perfect option. Don’t make that mistake – at the product launch at Gunsite Academy last year, we ran thousands of rounds through a large number of GX2 pistols; the only malfunction I experienced in the multiple hundreds of rounds I fired was entirely my own fault—I didn’t fully deactivate the thumb safety. That’s operator error, not a knock on the gun by any means. The GX2 I had ran well, was quite accurate, digested a wide variety of ammunition both practice- and defense-oriented and just plain worked. All that for an MSRP slightly more than $300? It’s worth a look, that’s for sure.


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